Processing RAW photo with Detail Refinement

[DaFaDa]

I just started using this program (1.10.4.1198).

I am on a Windows PC processing a collection of RAW files from a Canon EOS Rebel T6

As soon as the processing is finished, the new Raw Image no longer has the Detail refinement clarity it had before the processing. 

I do not believe it is a screen resolution or display issue, as the appearance obviously not as clear.

Any advice would be helpful. I like this program as it is fairly easy to use and most of all... I can afford to use it... But once I saw the clarity this one tool provided, I would have to proceed without it working properly.

If nothing else, an option to achieve the same results if the bug can't be fixed right away. 

Thanks in advance

[v_kyr]

33 minutes ago, DaFaDa said:

I am on a Windows PC processing a collection of RAW files from a Canon EOS Rebel T6

Not sure if you mean after batch processing RAW files here?

38 minutes ago, DaFaDa said:

As soon as the processing is finished, the new Raw Image no longer has the Detail refinement clarity it had before the processing.

Also there are no new RAW images, Affinity Photo doesn't create any new RAW files out of processed RAWs, you probably mean the resulting JPGs/PNGs/TIFFs after processing a RAW?

What happens if you process a single RAW (via Open ...) and apply some initial settings, do you then come close to what any embedded JPG-previews inside your RAWs show up?

Note: that Affinity doesn't apply per default automatically any brightening, sharpening, etc. settings, like Canon's own RAW converter, or some other third party RAW converters partly do when processing RAW files. Other RAW converters take some of these informations out of camera specific Exif data and then preapply some brightness, resharpen, etc. adjustment settings. - Affinity doesn't do that automatically, you would have to setup some own initial adjustments as reusable defaults here for your T6 cam RAW file processing.

[DaFaDa]

On 11/13/2021 at 4:11 PM, v_kyr said:

Not sure if you mean after batch processing RAW files here?

 

In this case, I did not do the batch processing, I did individual file processing.

On 11/13/2021 at 4:11 PM, v_kyr said:

Not sure if you mean after batch processing RAW files here?

Also there are no new RAW images, Affinity Photo doesn't create any new RAW files out of processed RAWs, you probably mean the resulting JPGs/PNGs/TIFFs after processing a RAW?

Sorry... Correct: The output was the default .afphoto file

On 11/13/2021 at 4:11 PM, v_kyr said:

What happens if you process a single RAW (via Open ...) and apply some initial settings, do you then come close to what any embedded JPG-previews inside your RAWs show up?

Note: that Affinity doesn't apply per default automatically any brightening, sharpening, etc. settings, like Canon's own RAW converter, or some other third party RAW converters partly do when processing RAW files. Other RAW converters take some of these informations out of camera specific Exif data and then preapply some brightness, resharpen, etc. adjustment settings. - Affinity doesn't do that automatically, you would have to setup some own initial adjustments as reusable defaults here for your T6 cam RAW file processing.

Forgive me as I am not in front of this program at this time, but what I did do is go through and do some of my own presets to apply to RAW files. I noticed that the setting: "Detail Refinement" had its own, what I will call setting's group. When I played with this and created a preset file, I noticed a huge improvement in my photo clarity. After then processing the file, the specific clarity I saw added, was removed. 

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, DaFaDa said:

I noticed that the setting: "Detail Refinement" had its own, what I will call setting's group. When I played with this and created a preset file, I noticed a huge improvement in my photo clarity. After then processing the file, the specific clarity I saw added, was removed. 

So if I understand you correctly, things looked Ok in the Develop Persona, but after you developed the file and it was taken over into the Photo Persona it lost it's clarity looks there? - Hard to tell without seeing any image comparison and settings screenshots, what might cause such a behavior then

 

[DaFaDa]

I tried screen shots, but they come out looking different from the start, so that's not going to work.

I did notice one thing however: Once I processed the RAW file (*.CR2), it went to the photo persona as a CR2 (Revised). From there I could save it as a .afphoto and / or export it as another file type. The .jpg file I attached looks pretty good; better than the .sfphoto file I also added that the .jpg came from.

I am definitely a NOOB with all this and I have been applying myself to learning the program and the mechanics of processing photos overall... but I still have a long way to go.

Thanks for your assistance. 

IMG_0308.afphoto

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

 

for me both files (afphoto and jpeg) look identical. If they look different on your PC, we should find the cause.

You said the screenshot looks off: the please provide the screenshot, or better a screen recording.

Please use a zoom level of 100% when inspecting or comparing images regarding sharpness or noise. Otherwise you could get misleading results.

As a general measure, please deactivate OpenCL in Edit>Preferences>Performance (and provide a screenshot of the settings). You can activate it again later if it doesn’t make any difference while viewing/ editing images.

We would need to see your color profile settings on OS level, too.

 

[DaFaDa]

[NotMyFault]

Thank you for your reply.

The images differ in sharpness, but this difference is probably caused by the zoom level.

The size of screenshot is 1200x800, your actual image is ~6000x4000, zoom level ~20%
Affinity does not give an accurate rendering of sharpness (and noise category filters) if using zoom level below 100%. This is “by design”, e.g. using mipmaps and bilinear resample method (view quality).

Similar issues have been raised multiple times. I agree that this is very confusing for new Affinity users.

But there is something even more important, about the workflow and philosophy of image editing.

Almost all other RAW development apps except Affinity Photo apply some sharpening by default. This sharpening is global, affecting all pixels. Affinity stands for a different philosophy: Here you don’t sharpen globally in Develop persona. Instead, you sharpen later in Photo Persona, and mainly selective depending on content to give some extra focus to those parts who really matter.

For landscape you normally never sharpen the blue sky, or any large areas with homogeneous colors, as this often looks unnatural and noisy. Instead, you would sharpen only the building.

For portrait (facial), you almost never sharpen the skin, but only e.g. the eyes or hair or other small details when they are relevant, to attract the eye of the viewer.

Another reason to sharpen as late as possible in the workflow sequence is that sharpening actually depends in image size (in pixel).

If you export multiple versions in different sizes, for optimal results you need to use different sharpening settings (the more the smaller the size).

Having this explained, there is nothing wrong if you stay with your workflow style and sharpen in Develop Persona. I only explained how these edit styles lead to different results you are observing. It might be unexpected, but this is (mostly) by design and not a bug.