Affinity Photo on Mac - Nikon RAW issue

[Mike9GW]

Hi,

I've had the Affinity photo software for a while but haven't really used it, favouring some older software for Nikon RAW processing.  As the older software is no longer supported I thought I'd use Affinity.

When I load a RAW image into affinity the image is very dark.  I can kind of get it back to where I think it should be by some fairly extreme adjustment of exposure, brightness and shadow and highlight adjustment but it seems strange for me for the starting point to be so 'off'.  Any ideas if I'm doing something wrong?  

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

 

PS - if I load a RAW file into preview on my Mac it looks fine.  I'd probably adjust it a little to get what I want but it's where I would expect the original starting point of the image to be.

[NotMyFault]

Hi Mike,

You can influence the behavior by:

• Adjusting the settings of Assistant/ Development Assistant 
  • Exposure Bias
  • Apply Tone Curve
• RAW Engine (Apple / Serif)
• 32-Bit Preview (on Windows at least, probably not relevant on MacOS)
• Output Format 32 / 16 / 8 bit

Check if changing these settings brings a better brightness for RAW files.

At least increasing the exposure / brightness seems to not impact image quality, it is only an annoyance that the initial rendering is off in some cases. 

Affinity is a kind of jack of all trades, and the presets are sometimes suboptimal for frequent use cases. 

[MEB]

Hi @Mike9GW,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Do you mind sharing a RAW file from your camera for us to inspect please? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the file private - just let me know.
Thank you.

[Mike9GW]

On 1/17/2022 at 12:18 PM, MEB said:

Hi @Mike9GW,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Do you mind sharing a RAW file from your camera for us to inspect please? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the file private - just let me know.
Thank you.

Thanks. I’ll try to post one later today.

 

[Mike9GW]

On 1/15/2022 at 9:58 PM, NotMyFault said:

Hi Mike,

You can influence the behavior by:

• Adjusting the settings of Assistant/ Development Assistant 
  • Exposure Bias
  • Apply Tone Curve
• RAW Engine (Apple / Serif)
• 32-Bit Preview (on Windows at least, probably not relevant on MacOS)
• Output Format 32 / 16 / 8 bit

Check if changing these settings brings a better brightness for RAW files.

At least increasing the exposure / brightness seems to not impact image quality, it is only an annoyance that the initial rendering is off in some cases. 

Affinity is a kind of jack of all trades, and the presets are sometimes suboptimal for frequent use cases. 

Thanks.

I had a look at things such as the Serif/Apple RAW engine and there were small differences - the Serif being slightly less dark. I’ll try to have a look at the others too.

[Mike9GW]

On 1/17/2022 at 12:18 PM, MEB said:

Hi @Mike9GW,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Do you mind sharing a RAW file from your camera for us to inspect please? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the file private - just let me know.
Thank you.

I have a file - could you send me an upload link?

 

Thanks.

[MEB]

Hi @Mike9GW;
Here's the upload link. Thank you.

[Mike9GW]

1 hour ago, MEB said:

Hi @Mike9GW;
Here's the upload link. Thank you.

Thanks,

Have uploaded the NEF raw file and a screenshot of what comes from the Mac preview.

[MEB]

Thanks @Mike9GW.

[Mike9GW]

Hi,

Just wondering if you had any luck with the raw file I uploaded?

 

Thanks.

[MEB]

Hi @Mike9GW,
My apologies for the delay getting back to you. I confirm we are loading the NEF files a bit too dark and filled a bug report for this to be looked at.
Thanks for your report and for providing a sample file.

[Mike9GW]

Ok thanks. Hopefully it will be an easy fix.

In the meantime I’ve found the best way round it so far is to reduce contrast to stretch the histogram back to something like normal and then use a combination of black point, shadow and highlight (occasionally brightness) to give the desired finish prior to develop.

Before I discovered the contrast reduction I had to use some extreme settings for the other parameters just to get close and even then it didn’t look right.

[MEB]

Hi Mike9GW,
Meanwhile you can try to switch to Apple (Core Image RAW) engine in the Assistant Manager. Although it's still a bit dark for some images it seems to get an overall better result here - it surely does for the sample RAW you provided.