Apple Photos Edit in Affinity Photo

[Adrian991]

I've just purchased Affinity Photo and I am using "Edit in Affinity Photo" from within Apple Photos extensions to edit RAW image files but I'm getting a message displayed at the bottom of the Apple Photos edit window before I save it

I use Nikon and Olympus cameras to shoot raw images and the workflow is as follows:

Open a .ORF or NEF file in Apple Photos and select Edit in Affinity Photo from the extensions tab

The  file opens in Affinity Photo and without doing anything else I select Develop, then save, then close

The window switches back to the Edit window in Apple Photos with the choice of Cancel or save Changes but at the bottom of the window is this message:

"Editing complete (16MB change limit exceeded - document will be flattened) - press save to keep these changes” .

What does this mean?

Is the image being compressed?

I 'm also trialling  ON1 Photo Raw 21 on my iMac and using exactly the same workflow I don't see any message like that

[rhmb]

The ‘16MB change limit exceeded’ question crops up from time to time but unfortunately remains unanswered. It does not seem to have any impact on the image that is saved but given the somewhat opaque workings of the Apple/Affinity interface, it is difficult to say. It’s hard to know what exactly is going on, because if all you’ve done is develop a raw image, there are no layers to flatten (at least, I don’t think so).

Here is a extract from a similar post by AndyA dated 29 Feb 2020  .... and which - to use the same phrase as AndyA, is still “knocking around” unanswered by Affinity:

”It would be nice if someone from Affinity answered the question about what the "16MB change limit exceeded - document will be flattened" message means, given it's been knocking around for a while.”

[Adrian991]

I get the impression that there is no technical support from Affinity other than through this forum.

I've sent emails on the subject to Affinity but never received a reply which is not great.

Compared to ON1 (and I'm only trialling their software at the moment)  I have had immediate response to the questions I raised so rather disappointed with the lack of support..

[rhmb]

I have been using On1 for a year now and it has been a pretty decent replacement for Lightroom and before that Aperture. It’s not without its own issues (as with all software) but that’s a topic for the On1 community forum. Affinity is more of a Photoshop replacement, On1 is more like Lightroom and Elements and a bit of Photoshop all in one package. Affinity and On1 both have their strong and their weak points. 

Getting back to Affinity .... a problem that some (including me) have had is that if you try to re-open an image previously edited or developed using Affinity inside Apple Photos, Affinity opens the original image and not the edited image. The only work around that I am aware of for this is to do a minor edit (using Photos) to the Affinity edited image before re-opening it in Affinity. This effectively freezes the Affinity edits in place so you can work with the edited image (you can, however, still revert to the original in Apple Photos if need be). This article may be of interest (written by a former developer of Aperture) 

https://tidbits.com/2019/06/14/the-ins-and-outs-of-non-destructive-editing-in-photos-for-mac-and-ios/

[Adrian991]

Thanks for that information and the link, very interesting.

I'm leaning towards sticking with Affinity (I have bought it whereas with ON1 its got 9 days of the trial left). I also have Topaz DeNoise and that works directly as a Plugin with Affinity so I can use the edit extension to send the image to Affinity and then do all the editing I want including DeNoise if necessary and send it back to Apple Photos. With ON1 I cannot do that so the DeNoise edit has to be made from within Photos using "Edit With" and I don't need the DAM feature of ON1 as I'm using Photos for that.

[rhmb]

Another work around that I found useful if I run into problems trying to save Affinity edits to Apple Photos, is the "External Editors for Photos" app. Even though this is a four year old app designed for High Sierra, it is still available on the Apple App store and costs peanuts (around $2 USD) and seems to run well on Big Sur. It was originally designed for use for apps that did not have extensions for Apple Photos. I use it from time to time for Affinity, as well as Silver FX from the old (free) Google Nik collection. It may (or may not) be more or less the same as using Edit with instead of Edit in but it works so I haven't really bothered to figure out the difference.