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My DNG photo is loading with all the shadow detail gone and has no relation to the quality of the original picture I wanted to edit. 

What loading on to affinity has done is to make my picture so awful that no amount of edits could improve it.  It render your editor as unusable.

Fix it or die, Affinity.  I do not expect to have to come on here because your app destroys the photo before I've even so much as begun.  It's a lousy update.

Here's the original DNG photo and the developed and exported jpg version with no edits from me after I gave it to Affinity

IMG_20200204_154301.jpg

IMG_20200204_154301.dng

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22 hours ago, Chimes said:

My DNG photo is loading with all the shadow detail gone and has no relation to the quality of the original picture I wanted to edit. 

What loading on to affinity has done is to make my picture so awful that no amount of edits could improve it.  It render your editor as unusable.

Fix it or die, Affinity.  I do not expect to have to come on here because your app destroys the photo before I've even so much as begun.  It's a lousy update.

Here's the original DNG photo and the developed and exported jpg version with no edits from me after I gave it to Affinity

....

IMG_20200204_154301.dng 10.51 MB · 1 download

Your first post. Rude and ignorant. Have some respect. I and many thousands of users have and DO use AP now 1.8 with NO issues.

I suggest you tone down and ask for assistance not demand like a spoilt child.

 

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1 hour ago, Chimes said:

What loading on to affinity has done is to make my picture so awful that no amount of edits could improve it.

What's wrong with it. If that was taken on a camera phone I would be quite happy with it

 

IMG_20200204_154301.jpg

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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Hello @Chimes

 

I don't think you can expect more from a Phone Camera.
This is my result with Affinity Photo.

 

Cheers

IMG_20200204-Pixel3a.jpg

Affinity Photo 2.4:         Affinity Photo 1.10.6: 

Affinity Designer 2.4:    Affinity Designer 1.10.6:

Affinity Publisher 2.4:   Affinity Publisher 1.10.6:    

Windows 11 Pro  (Version 23H2 Build (22631.3296)

 

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Thanks folks but I need an editor that loads the picture at least close to what is seen from original and not have to put in more work than should be necessary.  Sadly, none of the quality of these edits improves on the DNG(the file linked underneath not the JPG you can all see)  It's plain that the original unedited DNG is a clearer better defined image. I make no apologies whatsoever to anybody just because they don't like me complaining.  I don't have money coming out of my ears and if they want to take it personally because somebody might not be boosting Affinity or their ego, tough.  Also, telling me I won't get better from a phone completely misses the point, you can get decent photos from worse and cheaper cameras and deletable dross from full frame pro.  I thought even amateurs understood that.  I want an editor that doesn't load the picture worse than the original and sends it back to file with quality missing.  Even windows basic photo editor doesn't do that.  No matter how much, or little, I pay, my money is not for making my pictures worse.

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I'm actually quite pleased with Affinity Photo's default processing of DNG photos from a Samsung S10 smart phone.  The photo in the screen shots below was deliberately taken with the ISO manually set to 400 to allow for a faster shutter speed (trying to minimise old age handshake).  So the setting were ISO 400 , f/1.5, Focal length 4.32mm Shutter speed 1/974sec. I had the phone set to take DNG+JPG so I could compare the two.

It only needed a tweak of the black point to get what I think is a close enough match between the developed DNG and the JPG.

 

DNG comparison.jpg

Intel i7-10700 Gen10 CPU, 32GB RAM, Geforce GTX 1660 OC 6GB
Windows 10 Pro 22H2, 1x 1TB M.2 NVMe, 1 x 2TB M.2 NVMe. Affinity APh, APu, ADe

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13 hours ago, Chimes said:

Thanks folks but I need an editor that loads the picture at least close to what is seen from original and not have to put in more work than should be necessary.  Sadly, none of the quality of these edits improves on the DNG(the file linked underneath not the JPG you can all see)  It's plain that the original unedited DNG is a clearer better defined image. I make no apologies whatsoever to anybody just because they don't like me complaining.  I don't have money coming out of my ears and if they want to take it personally because somebody might not be boosting Affinity or their ego, tough.  Also, telling me I won't get better from a phone completely misses the point, you can get decent photos from worse and cheaper cameras and deletable dross from full frame pro.  I thought even amateurs understood that.  I want an editor that doesn't load the picture worse than the original and sends it back to file with quality missing.  Even windows basic photo editor doesn't do that.  No matter how much, or little, I pay, my money is not for making my pictures worse.

No you don't need an editor, you need a photo viewer. You seem to not have the patience, or desire to learn anything. Plus your first post is totally out of line. I would think Serif boot you and ban you from the forum. Images shot with a cellphone are notoriously low quality, unless the photographer is very highly skilled. (moderated)

My recommendation for you is to forget about shooting or converting your images to DNG (which is a type of raw file), and just use the jpeg (jpg) images. They have been processed by your cellphone camera, which saves you the headache.

Affinity Photo 2.4..; Affinity Designer 2.4..; Affinity Publisher 2.4..; Affinity2 Beta versions. Affinity Photo,Designer 1.10.6.1605 Win10 Home Version:21H2, Build: 19044.1766: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3301 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s);32GB Ram, Nvidia GTX 3070, 3-Internal HDD (1 Crucial MX5000 1TB, 1-Crucial MX5000 500GB, 1-WD 1 TB), 4 External HDD

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  • Staff
22 hours ago, Chimes said:

.....it's a lousy update....

@Chimes

Do you think that 1.7 gave you better results, or just that 1.8 has not improved the results?

To others in this thread, do not attack this customer, where he is clearly talking directly to Serif. However your suggestions to him how to get better results are appreciated

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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Again, nobody is listening.  THE ORIGINAL PICTURE QUALITY IS BETTER THAN THE QUALITY OF THE IMAGE AFTER IT IS IMPORTED INTO THE EDITOR BEFORE ADJUSTMENTS AND THE QUALITY IS SO BAD, ADJUSTMENTS ARE NOT CORRECTING THE LOSS OF QUALITY.  NOT ONE OF YOUR EDITS MATCHES THE IMAGE QUALITY OF THE ORIGINAL PHOTO. What difference would it make which camera I use?  The original is better than the image that gets loaded on to Affinity before edits.  Feel free to throw me off the forum for telling Affinity to fix it or die, I had no idea Mr Affinity was an actual person who I could offend and quite frankly I've lost all interest.  No wonder the app is starting to get bad reviews. 

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11 minutes ago, Chimes said:

and quite frankly I've lost all interest. 

Me too...

I'm sure there are other users on this forum that actually want help with their use of the products rather than just posting to moan and bitch about them.

I'm off to try and help someone else.

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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3 hours ago, Chimes said:

Again, nobody is listening.  THE ORIGINAL PICTURE QUALITY IS BETTER THAN THE QUALITY OF THE IMAGE AFTER IT IS IMPORTED INTO THE EDITOR BEFORE ADJUSTMENTS AND THE QUALITY IS SO BAD, ADJUSTMENTS ARE NOT CORRECTING THE LOSS OF QUALITY.  NOT ONE OF YOUR EDITS MATCHES THE IMAGE QUALITY OF THE ORIGINAL PHOTO. What difference would it make which camera I use?  The original is better than the image that gets loaded on to Affinity before edits.  Feel free to throw me off the forum for telling Affinity to fix it or die, I had no idea Mr Affinity was an actual person who I could offend and quite frankly I've lost all interest.  No wonder the app is starting to get bad reviews. 

> THE ORIGINAL PICTURE QUALITY IS BETTER THAN THE QUALITY OF THE IMAGE AFTER IT IS IMPORTED INTO THE EDITOR BEFORE ADJUSTMENTS AND THE QUALITY IS SO BAD, ADJUSTMENTS ARE NOT CORRECTING THE LOSS OF QUALITY.

Do you have the original JPEG from that image that you converted to DNG? It's a bit hard for us to comment if we can't compare the images in question.

 

Minor tip when communicating on the internet: Humans are reading your messages, they have feelings and emotions, just the same as you do. First posts with comments such as

Quote

Fix it or die, Affinity.  I do not expect to have to come on here because your app destroys the photo before I've even so much as begun.  It's a lousy update.

will not motivate us to investigate your issue with the highest priority.

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8 hours ago, Fritz_H said:

...and I still wonder what an "original picture" is - esp. since I thought, that the DNG was natively created by the Smartphone itself parallel to the JPG.
(because converting a JPG to a DNG does not make sense to me.

Aside from those camera's that natively produce RAW in DNG format, and that category includes some conventional cameras and some smart phones:

There are those who are converting proprietary RAW photos from their particular brand of camera (Nikon, Canon, Sony etc) in the belief that from an archival point of view, the ever changing proprietary RAW formats may not have future support, and that DNG because of  its supposedly open standard, might have.

There are those who are converting their proprietary RAW photos to DNG to save storage space, because the file sizes are generally smaller.

And then there is the software conversion of JPG to DNG. To quote one advert for that sort of product "XXX allows  you to edit JPGSs as if you originally shot them in RAW. This machine learning powered software will recover a portion of the lost dynamic range. This will help bring back lost shadow and highlight details ...."   

So there are ex camera DNG's, proprietary RAW's software converted to DNG's, and DNG's created from JPGs.  Seems to me that not all DNG's are created equal. 

Intel i7-10700 Gen10 CPU, 32GB RAM, Geforce GTX 1660 OC 6GB
Windows 10 Pro 22H2, 1x 1TB M.2 NVMe, 1 x 2TB M.2 NVMe. Affinity APh, APu, ADe

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@Greyfox 
Thanks for all that information but that does not answer what the OP means when he refers to the "original" picture.
He uses a Google Pixel 3a. This Device may create JPGs and DNGs simultaneously (afaik).

So to me, the complaint of the OP refers to the visual difference between the JPG (created and pre-processed by the Phone-APP) and the RAW DNG (created but un-processed by the Phone-APP).
Obviously the OP expected the DNG to look at least as good as the JPEG - with Affinity Photo doing all the magic automatically.

If your explanations refers to my "...converting a JPG to a DNG does not make sense to me...":
I do not think that AI-Voodoo can recover details from a blown out sky if its just a JPEG.

But converting a RAW to DNG may indeed be useful to save the Data in an open format, no doubt.

Fritz

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Out of curiosity, I extracted the embedded JPEG from the DNG file. It's a low resolution copy but looks like this:

embedded_jpeg.jpg

I realise everything is subjective, but I don't find this result particularly pleasant, and some light editing in Affinity Photo can absolutely achieve a much better image.

The camera tech in the Pixel 3A clearly has some shortcomings, namely severely narrow dynamic range which appears to be compensated for with underexposure and heavy in-camera image processing. Looks like some degree of tone mapping is applied to compress the tonal range, but unfortunately it can't mitigate the ugly clipped dark tones. These are especially noticeable in the foliage on the left hand side of the image.

Affinity Photo's RAW engine doesn't apply any kind of "adaptive" tone curve or initial processing, which leads users into believing it has shortcomings in this department when they are presented with a dark, underexposed image to begin with. The Pixel 3A has intentionally underexposed the image and then attempted to correct for the underexposure with in-camera processing. However:

On 3/3/2020 at 4:01 PM, Chimes said:

What loading on to affinity has done is to make my picture so awful that no amount of edits could improve it.  It render your editor as unusable.

 

On 3/3/2020 at 4:01 PM, Chimes said:

Fix it or die, Affinity.  I do not expect to have to come on here because your app destroys the photo before I've even so much as begun.  It's a lousy update.

Ignoring the "fix it or die" comment which is a little inflammatory, I can reassure you that the app isn't "destroying" the photo. RAW files are processed in linear, unbounded floats. This means that no pixel colour values are being clipped or compromised during the development process. Yes, the DNG is initially quite dark. With processing, however, you can not only achieve the result you see with the in-camera JPEG, but frankly you can far surpass it.

Editing is mostly subjective, a matter of taste, therefore everyone's opinion on how you would process this image will be different. I had a quick go at editing: I removed the default tone curve, used Curves for my own tone curve, then developed the image. I then used some adjustment and filter layers in the main Photo Persona to create a fairly balanced edit. My main goal was simply to even out the tonal range of the scene and have a pleasing, natural looking result. I also straightened/rotated it, as the original orientation was a little crooked.  I've attached it below:

processed_raw.jpg

 

The reality is that Affinity Photo may not be for you (and there's nothing wrong with that). If you want the RAW development to match the exact result you get with the in-camera processed image, that cannot be guaranteed. Aside from an adapted tone curve, there may be additional in-camera processing (e.g. structure enhancement, tone compression, noise reduction, sharpening) that is introduced to take what is technically a very underwhelming initial result and make it more palatable. You can of course apply all of these techniques and more in Affinity Photo, but that requires engaging with the software and finding a workflow that suits you.

 

On 3/4/2020 at 5:48 PM, Chimes said:

What difference would it make which camera I use? 

There is actually an argument to be made here. I've mentioned it above briefly, but for how much smart phone photography has come the last few years, they are still technically compromised devices: tiny image sensors, trying to cram in greater pixel density in the name of the megapixel race, coupled with small optics. Any linear RAW data from a smartphone camera is going to be quite underwhelming, and there's been a lot of focus recently on AI enhancement/machine learning to overcome these physics-based limitations. Generally speaking, photographers shooting on larger sensor devices like typical DSLRs/compact system cameras have far fewer complaints with Affinity Photo's RAW processing. There are fewer issues with dark images because the camera metering generally exposes for a balanced scene, rather than underexposing to compensate for limited dynamic range. The other factor here is that photographers generally want manual control over their camera settings, so will be more likely to determine their own exposure, and this is reflected accurately when you open the RAW file in Affinity Photo.

The main sticking point is, as you mention, not automatically applying some "smart" initial processing which would have to vary between each RAW format, and indeed each camera. There is perhaps some work that could be done here, but crucially not so that it compromises existing photographer's workflows who are happy with the RAW handling. Hopefully that's understandable.

Thanks for reading!

Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader

@JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more
Official Affinity Photo tutorials

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