Develop vs Photo Persona when editing ?

[SAW]

I have just started shooting in RAW only (Sony A7iii) so obviously when I open the image in AP in will open in the develop persona, now I would normally just click the develop tab so it would open in the photo persona and I would edit my image from here.

Should I be doing the editing in the Develop Persona first ?

What's the difference between editing in the develop persona compared to developing in the photo persona ? 

How far should I edit my image in the develop persona before doing the final if any editing in the photo persona ?

Thanks.

[Old Bruce]

I use the Develop Persona for my raw files (Canon CR2, Pentax DNG) and essentially only change the obvious problems of Exposure and fix the Noise and Chromatic Aberration plus Defringe in the lens Tab. Everything else can be done in the regular Photo Persona. Note that modern lenses are far far better than some of the old glass I use so Chromatic Aberration and Defringe may not be needed as much.

[v_kyr]

27 minutes ago, SAW said:

Should I be doing the editing in the Develop Persona first ?

If you shoot primary RAW yes!

27 minutes ago, SAW said:

What's the difference between editing in the develop persona compared to developing in the photo persona ?

The working gamut (color space) will be a difference here, in develop persona (RAW mode) you should as default have a wider color space spectrum to deal with. Thus making common RAW image adjustment here makes sense before taking an developed image over to photo persona.

27 minutes ago, SAW said:

How far should I edit my image in the develop persona before doing the final if any editing in the photo persona ?

Usually as far as you can, meaning in terms of what the develop (RAW) persona offers you to change and apply here. - Everything else that goes beyond that in terms of image manipulations (specific filtering, masking, selection/exchange image portion maniputions etc.) can either way then only be done then in photo persona.

[Chris26]

 RAW development is for Global adjusting  -- Photo Persona is for Targeted editing - In a nutshell

[AlejandroJ]

Basically, as it is usually recommended, it is better to correct the white balance (if needed) while processing your raw file. It is also better dealing with noise when processing raw. And definitely, you can recover shadows (information from the shadows) and lower down exceeded highlights while processing raw. Once you “develop” your raw file (that will keep as is and will not be modified), the information from the extremes of the tonal range that you did not recover while processing the file, won’t be there for editing in the Photo Persona.

A raw file has the data of what the sensor of your camera captured (all of it, in up to usually 12 or 14 bits), and the program or developing module of a program (Develop Persona in the case of Affinity Photo) ought to interpret it (and this interpretation will not be the same as the one that the camera does when it generates a jpg inside the camera itself if not using a/the program supplied by the camera's maker). While developing a raw file, you can adjust or alter (mostly globally) that initial interpretation that a program (Develop Persona) does of that data. A raw file is not an image, but once developed, what you get is a pixel image as developed (not necessarily having made use of all the information that was at your disposal in the raw file if you didn’t make use of it). Observe that once you develop your raw file, what opens in Photo Persona is a pixel layer, which you can then further edit and manipulate in 16 bits (per channel, in reference to the RGB channels). With other raw developing programs, you might be exporting to an image file, and that you will normally do to a 16 bits tiff file (to allow you to work with a “wider color space spectrum” as V_kir explained, with a wider and richer tonal range that gives you more editing verstility and tolerance to manipulation, than if working with an 8 bits file as are for example the jpg files).

There is a lot much to it (if you google you can find lots of articles about the subject) and my explanation is probably not very technical nor maybe precise, but I hope it helps you to understand that there are benefits in processing (working on) your raw file before developing it.