Open failure

[ms.fuentecilla]

This file type was saved by photo after processing a focus stack from Olympus TG6 in RAW (ORF) but it cannot open it. How is it possible for a file saved by the software to be then refused by the same software?

_8290481stack.ORF

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, ms.fuentecilla said:

This file type was saved by photo after processing a focus stack from Olympus TG6 in RAW (ORF) but it cannot open it. How is it possible for a file saved by the software to be then refused by the same software?

I see that the EXIF data in that file says it was created by Affinity Photo, and that it is a file in the ORF format. But as far as I know Affinity Photo does not save files in any RAW format. If it saved the file then it should be a .afphoto file, or a .jpg, .png, or .tiff; not a .ORF file.

So I'm puzzled about the workflow that created it, or by the existence of a function in Affinity Photo that I've apparently missed completely.

[ms.fuentecilla]

Precisely! It isn't an important file fortunately, merely testing a camera function. Bafflement!

[Ron P.]

I managed to open the file after I converted it to TIFF using XnConvert.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, ms.fuentecilla said:

merely testing a camera function

But how did you create that file? Detailed steps, please. It says it was created by Affinity Photo but that should not be correct.

[Ron P.]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

It says it was created by Affinity Photo

Where are you seeing this? I've looked at the Exif data in a few different apps, and can not find where it states it was created by AP. I also ran a couple of focus stacks on an some macro images I had made for focus stacking. Looking at the Exif info for those, there's nothing saying it was created with AP.

I saved the afphoto file and of course it shows that the file is an Affinity Photo file.  I'm also puzzled how the file has the RAW extension after Focus Stacking in AP. You either export it to some other format (jpg, tif, png) or you save it as an afphoto file. 

Ok, found it looking under the EXIF Tool, which lists AP as the Software Agent...

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Ron P. said:

Where are you seeing this? I've looked at the Exif data in a few different apps, and can not find where it states it was created by AP.

From exiftool, which when run against the image in the first post shows this:

ExifTool Version Number         : 12.25
File Name                       : _8290481stack-3.ORF
Directory                       : C:/Users/Walt/AppData/Local/Temp
File Size                       : 15 MiB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2021:08:30 09:41:01-04:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2021:08:30 09:41:02-04:00
File Creation Date/Time         : 2021:08:30 09:40:55-04:00
File Permissions                : -r--r--r--
File Type                       : ORF
File Type Extension             : orf
MIME Type                       : image/x-olympus-orf
Exif Byte Order                 : Little-endian (Intel, II)
Image Width                     : 4014
Image Height                    : 3016
Bits Per Sample                 : 8 8 8
Compression                     : Adobe Deflate
Photometric Interpretation      : RGB
...
History Action                  : produced
History Software Agent          : Affinity Photo 1.10.1
History When                    : 2021:08:29 16:14:41+02:00
...

 

[Ron P.]

Yep, finally found it there. The EXIF (not tool) does not show the History Action.

[Tom Lachecki]

This is not an ORF file, but a TIFF file. ExifTool ignores that and just reports the TIFF metadata (and uses the file extension for deducing a mime-type, albeit incorrectly).

If you rename the file to .tiff then it will open in Affinity Photo as well.

Just naming a file .orf doesn't make it an ORF file. Affinity cannot produce proprietary RAW formats.

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, Tom Lachecki said:

Just naming a file .orf doesn't make it an ORF file.

Thanks, Tom.

I presume, then, that if @ms.fuentecilla provided answers to my questions about the file, that her workflow would look like this:

1. Create a Stack in Affinity Photo.
2. Export as a TIFF.
3. Rename the file to xxx.ORF for some reason.
4. Try to open the incorrectly named file in Affinity photo again.

With an explanation of the workflow, and telling us about step 3, the reason for the problem would have been immediately clear.

[ms.fuentecilla]

Well, I didn't name the file, AP did that. It puzzles me rather than causes me any problem and is reported as a strange event from AP. A long time ago, several years, I had something similar from AP with a panorama. But thank you for your investigations, which prove interesting. The workflow was a straightforward focus stack which was saved as an Affinity Photo file.

There was no renaming on my part Tom. And it was not uploaded as a deliberate puzzle. I don't have time for such.

I shall look at changing the suffix to .tif out of interest in due course but probably the best would be to repeat the stack anyway since the components are not really photography. This is a weird little camera with many failings.

I have just checked back and the request was for this to be exported as a tiff. The ORF suffix was what AP gave it

Edited September 1, 2021 by ms.fuentecilla
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