is the Develop Persona Destructive?

[Wanderer3]

The following statement was made on another photo forum in a thread on Affinity Photo by someone who claims to teach photo processing and to have used Affinity Photo in the past:

"In what way is AP a forced destructive process for a raw workflow? Start with a raw file and it opens in the Develop Persona. Perform edits: set the white balance, make tone/color changes, crop, sharpen the image and when you're ready click Develop. All your edits are applied and the raw file is converted to and RGB image and opened in the Photo Persona. But any work you did in the Develop persona got discarded. AP doesn't save your Develop Persona editing, all other raw converters do."

And in another post by the same person:

"AP doesn't save my editing work for my raw files?!! That's got me cussing and spitting on the ground."

It seems to me that at least some of the actions he describes are not done in the develop persona, being listed under the adjustments sections in the interface.  I would appreciate any comments on these claims, and suggestions for rebuttal if such is possible.  I just don't understand his criticisms and claimed experiences with Affinity Photo but his level of expertise is way above mine.  Thanks for any comments.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

I believe he's complaining about Photo not creating a .xmp file as a kind of "side-car" to capture all the changes that were made while in the Develop Persona. If Photo were to create such a file, then:

1. You could apply the edits easily to another photo; and
2. If you messed things up in the Photo Persona, you could revert to the RAW file and easily re-apply the changes you made the first time.

But no, the RAW development process is not destructive, because the RAW file itself is not changed. That's a misleading use of the term, in my opinion, @Wanderer3.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Wanderer3 said:

"In what way is AP a forced destructive process for a raw workflow?

I believe the emphasis is on "RAW workflow" here and in that sense what that person initially said is correct. APh doesn't have and offer any reusable recording of to a RAW file applied/made changes. It just offers to change initial develop settings. - Other RAW converters use xmp side-car files for these purposes, which gives them a recorded history of all applied steps made to a processed RAW file.  The later can be reused for redevelopment of a developed RAW file, or for a series of continiously taken RAW files etc.

[Wanderer3]

Thanks to  both of you for the replies, I appreciate it.

[Jowday]

It is p

On 5/22/2020 at 12:07 AM, Wanderer3 said:

The following statement was made on another photo forum in a thread on Affinity Photo by someone who claims to teach photo processing and to have used Affinity Photo in the past:

"In what way is AP a forced destructive process for a raw workflow? Start with a raw file and it opens in the Develop Persona. Perform edits: set the white balance, make tone/color changes, crop, sharpen the image and when you're ready click Develop. All your edits are applied and the raw file is converted to and RGB image and opened in the Photo Persona. But any work you did in the Develop persona got discarded. AP doesn't save your Develop Persona editing, all other raw converters do."

And in another post by the same person:

"AP doesn't save my editing work for my raw files?!! That's got me cussing and spitting on the ground."

It seems to me that at least some of the actions he describes are not done in the develop persona, being listed under the adjustments sections in the interface.  I would appreciate any comments on these claims, and suggestions for rebuttal if such is possible.  I just don't understand his criticisms and claimed experiences with Affinity Photo but his level of expertise is way above mine.  Thanks for any comments.

I have developed tens of thousands of RAW files in a variety of RAW developers for over a decade. All of these RAW files are in my photo library and the development settings is there with them in one way or another. Photoshop remembers them - so do Dxo Photolab and Capture One Pro etc. I can return and redevelop images when the software itself is improved or more likely, my skills improved and I make a few tweaks to my original settings. Or even got a better colour profile for the camera. The RAW engine in Photoshop was improved four or five times since I began using it. Batch converting all images to use it with original settings is a breeze.

With Affinity Photo you start from scratch every single time you open the RAW file. Imagine returning to the RAW image 18 months later wanting to make some small adjustments. I imagine you won't remember too well what you did. Then imagine you need to adjust 200 images.

Even free open source programs got this right. Why Serif never implemented this - also in their previous program PhotoPlus - is impossible to understand. Cussing and spitting on the ground is justified in this case.

It is actually a very poor RAW developer so it is a good reason to check out the ones that actually do save settings.