Dark Raw Images

[Amadeus47]

I've seen this topic in earlier questions and am having the same problem. The only solution I see is turning off the "Apply Tone Curve and/or "Exposure Bias" in Development Manager. These actions didn't work. I have a Canon 80D and shoot RAW + JPEG. I also read that there may be a problem with Picture Style Settings in the camera, but the answers were vague. My camera is set to Auto for picture style. If I open a RAW file in Canon DPP software or on my desktop with windows the picture appears with normal exposure, but in Affinity it is much darker. I have to increase the exposure on the tools palette between 1.0 and 1.8 to have the picture be close in exposure to the files opened in other applications or the JPEG. 

If anyone knows a fix for this, it would be appreciated.

[NotMyFault]

Owner of 80D here, too. There is no fix.

Changes Development Assistant „Exposure Bias“ to „Take no action“ is key factor. Apply tone curve should stay active, otherwise images will look dull.

If you need consistent results, especially batch processing multiple images, use DPP. It’s UI is dated, performance is slow, but the results are the benchmark and superior to Affinity in some aspects (CA, lens correction for canon lenses, ability to get identical grading to in-camera jpegs combined with ability to export in far higher image quality as TGB/16 tiff with wider color gamut).

Affinity is fine when these aspect do not matter:

• consistency across multiple images (using recipes and apply then to multiple images)
• consistency to Canon picture style
• consistency to „auto“ settings (i doubt Affinity will do the same kind of auto)
• Dual pixel optimization
• Digital Lens optimization (sharpening specific to a lens and focus distance)

Of course, after RAW development, export as tiff/16 and do all remaining edits in Affinity.

Combining DPP and Affinity will give the optimal result. When processing multiple images, the batch processing feature and recipes will even save time despite using two apps.