Develop versus Photo persona - best practices

[JeffJ]

What is the 'best practice' for processing RAW images in Affinity, process as much as possible in the (RAW) Develop persona, or process as much as possible in the Photo persona?

I'm a long time Affinity user and have post processed my RAW images both ways, post processing mostly in Develop, and post processing mostly in Photo.  I haven't found any reason to preference one persona over the other.  

The Photo persona has much more capability to enhance an image, so most of my process workflow is done in the Photo persona.  My current work flow is to apply a few adjustments in Develop; apply a lens preset, expand the histogram with Exposure and Blackpoint adjustments, and sometimes applying a tone curve to improve overall tone and contrast.  Then I transition to Photo persona where I apply more adjustments, usually global adjustments and local adjustments as needed.  

A quick look at the Affinity Help info doesn't really give guidance or strategy on this, perhaps it doesn't make much difference, which is my conclusion.  I would appreciate anyone else's thoughts about work flow strategy when processing RAW images.  Thanks!

JJ

[Old Bruce]

I was going to quote the bits of your post that I agree with, ... that is all of it and it is right there above this post so not a lot of point in repeating it.

You have a system that works for you and I honestly can think of no bad thing that you are doing. There really is no advantage in changing to Most Processing in Develop / Photo Persona.

[IanSG]

I also do a bit of capture sharpening in the Develop persona - have a look at this article.

[NotMyFault]

4 hours ago, JeffJ said:

A quick look at the Affinity Help info doesn't really give guidance or strategy on this, perhaps it doesn't make much difference, which is my conclusion.  I would appreciate anyone else's thoughts about work flow strategy when processing RAW images.  Thanks!

JJ

Can confirm from my side that your workflow seems perfect, no need to change.

Develop Persona is only a kind of stopgap functionality as Photo might be rated "incomplete" by some users. Required to transform RAW into RGB format, do only essential basics like:

• exposure corrections, shadows, highlights,
• lens correction (CA, barrel, etc)

Avoiding to use any function which is available in Photo Persona, to utilize non-destrictive workflows (in the sense of later re-edits without need to undo later edit steps).

I always prefer to use Canon DPP for RAW development (based on superior results and fully batch processing), export as TIFF 16, and then start in Affinity with Photo Persona to do all the interesting things.

Unless Affinity totally overhauls Develop Persona and includes efficient handling of multiple RAW files (recipes and batch processing, quick review / rating, digital asset management), it remains as a stop gap for quick & dirty edits.

[JeffJ]

The responses were what I was looking for, very helpful & settles the issue for me.  This question has been on my mind for a long time.

Cambridge Color's website is one of my go to sites for understanding digital image technology.  Their tutorials on sharpening are what finally helped me understand what I was performing when I sharpen and denoise my images which is an important part of my image enhancement/improvement work flow.  These days it's not often that I sharpen an image globally, instead applying sharpening locally in an image.  I find this clunky to do in RAW dev using overlays to create the masks I need.

I hadn't considered RAW development in other software as an approach or workaround.  I do have other software packages that have RAW development capability.  Something to investigate to see if there's a benefit.

Thanks everyone for taking the time.

JJ