Raw developement i Affinity Photo

[Nille]

Hello,

When I develop the raw file associated with the attached jpg files I'm unable to recover the sky by adjusting the highlights in AP. The Info window in Develop persona shows 255,255,255 (_1040091_aff.jpg). However when I develop the same file in Capture One the sky is easily recovered by adjusting the highlights. This is by no means a criticism of AP nor is the raw file in question of any significance, I'm simply curious to know if its's possible to improve AP.

sincerely,

Nille

 

[carl123]

Can you upload the raw file?

[IanSG]

30 minutes ago, Nille said:

When I develop the raw file associated with the attached jpg files I'm unable to recover the sky by adjusting the highlights in AP. The Info window in Develop persona shows 255,255,255 (_1040091_aff.jpg).

I'm confused!  You're developing a RAW file in the Develop persona but the filename says it's a jpg.  Are you using a file that's previously been exported by AP?

[Jörn Reppenhagen]

IanSG: Exactly my own thoughts.

Nille: If you've got a sky's RGB value of 255, 255, 255 (except in the brightest part of a cloud) in a JPG, there's no way of recovering anything, not with AP, not with CaptureOne, not with alien technology.
Only way is replacing the sky completely.

But just upload the RAW (not the JPG ), if you won't mind.

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, Nille said:

when I develop the same file in Capture One the sky is easily recovered by adjusting the highlights.

There is a Highlights and Shadows section in the Develop persona. Use the online help feature whilst in the Develop persona.

[Nille]

3 hours ago, carl123 said:

Can you upload the raw file?

Why?

[Old Bruce]

Try using either (or both) of these sliders.

[Dan C]

@Nille, you are selecting the 'Report' option for posts and not 'Reply' as your last 3 posts here have been submitted as reports to our Forum moderators.

I suspect this is a mistake and you are meaning to reply based on the reports contents - I can force these posts to be re-posted here under your name (see below), but please be mindful of this going forward to avoid creating unnecessary moderation reports.

Many thanks

[Nille]

3 hours ago, IanSG said:

I'm confused!  You're developing a RAW file in the Develop persona but the filename says it's a jpg.  Are you using a file that's previously been exported by AP?

Well it seems that my message caused some confusion and total misunderstanding as to how I was developing the raw file,so I'll restate to avoid confusion. I developed a Panasonic Raw file. While in the Develop Persona I could not adjust the overexposed sky using the Shadows and Highlights function for the simple reason that the Info panel showed 255,255,255 so there's no way to correct this other than cloning. The jpg file I referred to is the name of the affinity file I  subsequently exported from the Photo Persona which I uploaded in order to illustrate the problem. It has no other function!  Uploading a raw file would not illustrate the problem. I was not developing a jpg file in the Develop Persona!!!

Now in Capture One 20 Pro the RGB values for the sky are shown as 240,251,255. Thus CO could adjust the highlights (as illustrated in the second jpg filed I uploaded)

I was hoping that Affinity Support would pickup my report and possibly comment on twitching  the demosaicing algorithm used in the Develop Persona.

[Nille]

2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

There is a Highlights and Shadows section in the Develop persona. Use the online help feature whilst in the Develop persona.

Unfortunately you have totally misunderstood the demosaicing problem!

[Dan C]

4 hours ago, Nille said:

when I develop the same file in Capture One the sky is easily recovered by adjusting the highlights. This is by no means a criticism of AP nor is the raw file in question of any significance, I'm simply curious to know if its's possible to improve AP.

1 minute ago, Nille said:

I was hoping that Affinity Support would pickup my report and possibly comment on twitching  the demosaicing algorithm used in the Develop Persona.

We'll need a copy of your RAW file here to investigate this further, which is why other members have already requested this. Each RAW file is different and certain RAW developing apps may apply changes that Affinity does not apply automatically (and vice-versa).

[Nille]

OK! Here's the raw file.

_1040091.RW2

[IanSG]

7 minutes ago, Nille said:

Well it seems that my message caused some confusion and total misunderstanding as to how I was developing the raw file,so I'll restate to avoid confusion. I developed a Panasonic Raw file. While in the Develop Persona I could not adjust the overexposed sky using the Shadows and Highlights function for the simple reason that the Info panel showed 255,255,255 so there's no way to correct this other than cloning. The jpg file I referred to is the name of the affinity file I  subsequently exported from the Photo Persona which I uploaded in order to illustrate the problem. It has no other function!  Uploading a raw file would not illustrate the problem. I was not developing a jpg file in the Develop Persona!!!

Now in Capture One 20 Pro the RGB values for the sky are shown as 240,251,255. Thus CO could adjust the highlights (as illustrated in the second jpg filed I uploaded)

I was hoping that Affinity Support would pickup my report and possibly comment on twitching  the demosaicing algorithm used in the Develop Persona.

Thanks for clarifying that!

[Old Bruce]

Here is a small section of one of my many grossly overexposed pictures. All I did was change the Highlights value. I left the exposure alone.

Before, two places at 255 255 255

After, note the change.

There are situations where overexposed areas are completely blown out and are thus unrecoverable, this image has some.

[Dan C]

Many thanks for the RAW file provided!

Using the following settings in the Develop Persona, I was able to recover some of the lost highlights from your image -

However I do agree that C1 has done a better job at retaining the information here, likely due to a different algorithm in place.
I will be sure to log this with our developers as an improvement for the Affinity app, as it isn't technically a bug when developing but I can see room for refinement within Affinitys algorithms

[Old Bruce]

Lots of detail in the sky in your raw file. 

 

 

[Nille]

Thank you DAN C for the reply.

 I was also able to recover the highlights similar to your result. However, since it was a clear sunny day the result was not very flattering.

I should mention that this photo is not in any way a five star candidate. It was simply a shot taken while out walking in a nearby Royal Palace garden.

Although the lighting was a bit tricky with lots of shadow and several highlight areas including the sky.

[carl123]

A lot of the cloud detail and blue sky is still there, it's just hard to get at it.

But I can't compare it to the Capture One image you uploaded as that one is far too small 

 

[Jörn Reppenhagen]

carl123: What exactly did you do to recover all the blue tones in the sky?
I ended up with similar results (also with the same erroneous blue in the clouds) - but with the lower part of the sky being gray instead of blue.

[NotMyFault]

I get good results by using extreme settings in Develop Persona:

• Exposure -5
• Brightness +25%
• Blackpoint -10%
• Shadows +50

This  results in a flat image, but sky fully recovered.

Then continue in Photo Persona to regain contrast, e.g. levels with blend mode multiply, S-Curve etc.

 

 

 

 

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

I get good results by using extreme settings in Develop Persona:

FWIW I could not get anything close to your results using exactly the same Develop persona settings, no matter what I did to regain contrast in the Photo persona.

Then I noticed you are using the iPad version while the rest of us are (I think) using the desktop one. So I assumed from that that you probably are using the Apple RAW engine in the Develop persona, not the Serif engine. So on my Mac in AP's Develop Assistant I changed to the Apple one & tried again, this time with much better results.

Conclusion: at least on Macs, the Serif engine is not up to the task.

[Nille]

Hi,

I don't have an iPad! I work exclusively in W10 and used Capture One to retrieve the blue sky. I agree that the demosaicing algoritm in AF could do with some tweaking. As a matter of curiosity I converted the raw file to DNG and imported it into the last version of Lightroom I owned  (before Adobe pulled the rug out from under us all), namely version 6.14, ACR 10.1. By simply adjusting the highlights to -50 I could retrieve a perfect blue sky!

I would really like to see an improvement in AF's raw translation as I use AF exclusively for all my photo processing and consider it (all round)  to be the best photo editing  program on the market. And believe me I've tried them all, ACDSEE, ON1, Luminar, Rawtherapee, Darktable etc.

nille

[Ron P.]

@Nille,

I done the same as you, imported to LR (same version), and yes it done a great job. AP needs some serious work on the RAW develop engine. I can get the details in the sky using AP, but it does take some serious work on the adjustments/sliders.

As long as LR still works for me, I keep it as another tool. I don't limit myself to just one program, if I can't get AP to do the job, I try something else. I like to treat AP, as I treated PS, for removing, touching up, ect.

That said, there are numerous techniques in AP, to get images processed, not just adjusting brightness/contrast, wb, ect. Using the Channels, and Procedural Texture can be very powerful.

[befehr]

A little late to this one but I thought I’d post what I got in AP on the iPad. All I did was adjust the highlight slider in raw edit. I was pretty impressed with its ability to recover highlights.

[Nille]

Hello,

Well, I'm also impressed! This is also what I did in Capture One and Lightroom - a little adjustment on the highlight slider. So it would seem that the demosaicing algoritm on the iPad does a better job than that in AP for Windows 10. So the Affinity photo developers have an easy  modification for Windows AP - if the iPad uses the Seriff raw engine!!!

 

nille