Returned image from affinity to apple photos is dark with excessive contrast

[Paul Buckingham]

When I edit in Affinity from the Apple Photos edit screen the returned image is dark and excessively contrasty. I have tried reinstalling Affinity and it works normally for a few times. When I return to the application on a second occasion the fault arises again. This was happening with the previous version of Catalina but was fixed. It has resurfaced with the latest apple update. I attach the original raw file and a copy of the returned file

DSC00057.arw

[Gabe]

Hi @Paul Buckingham,

Sorry for the delayed reply. 

We are aware of this and it has already been logged with our developers. 

[Gabe]

Update: As a workaround, in Affinity Photo you can set the Assistant Options > Develop Assistant > RAW output format: 16bit 

[Gabe]

Sorry for the delayed reply. We were closed over Christmas/NY. 

This is not something I see on my end. Can you attach a screen recording of your workflow? 

[Paul Mudditt]

@Paul BuckinghamI am primarily an iPad user for AP so thought I would do some tests on the image you uploaded to the Serif forums after your question in my Affinity Photo Facebook group today.

Firstly on the iPad the  only way to load in a RAW image is by using open from cloud or open from photos. Here I opened from my photos album and successfully opened your image and correctly the develop persona is open ready for the develop stage. 

On my mac I tried to do the same thing on V1.8 and V1.9 beta and tried to use open from media option. What I found is I could not to find your image until I edited in Apple photos which creates a JPG version which then appears in the photo album. However naturally when opened it did not go to develop mode.  
Now on to your issue, when you use edit in AP it looks like it is trying to use a JPG version of an image (not just yours but my raw files too) rather than the RAW.  So for RAW processing ‘Edit In’ appears to be useless as MACOS is NOT supplying the raw image to the application(any application?). 
It looks like you always need to export your unmodified originals to a folder to make the RAW image accessible to Affinity. 
In this respect, it looks like iPadOS is ahead of MACOS since as I described at the beginning the iPad was able to open the RAW image correctly directly. 
Sorry this is a bit long winded, and doesn’t really supply an solution for your workflow but may hint at what is going wrong in MacOS.

[Electrokate]

I am having a similar problem with a 2013 Macbook Pro/Catalina Island. The laptop is sorta a little too old for Catalina Island, maybe that is the problem, but I don’t know. Spent hours today trying to find the perfect exposure on a new LED lit aquarium, always tricky, but no matter how high the ISO the result was the same-super saturated, very high contrast and dark. The photos were indistinguishable. Somewhere in my workflow I began to suspect some kind of autocorrection, probably on Apple’s end? Thought I would see your opinion. I am not very technically sophisticated and don’t understand most of what Affinity Photo does or most of the preferences options. Profiles and such. Can someone point me in the right direction to turn off whatever is making my photos hyper saturated and dark? I took a screenshot of 4 windows showing the same photo on my monitor. Upper left: Canon software for downloading showing the preview of the image still on the camera. Upper right: Post download onto the Macbook, as seen in Preview (Apple app opened when I click on the photo in Finder). Lower Left in Affinity Designer with no adjustments. Does not change when I hit Develop to convert the raw file. Lower right how the photo looks in Finder. It looks like preview also adds sharpness and is lighter, suggesting to me that both AD and preview do their own autocorrection separately. Sorry for the newb questions! I try to watch tutorials and am learning specific skills. But I don’t know how to google this. It wouldn’t be a huge deal if everything grey wasn’t dark blue or blown out magenta. Including the white sand.