Please add the method to save RAW edits using a side car file or another non-destructive way

[Lee.M]

This has probably been suggested already, but I really wish Affinity Photo could add a method of saving RAW edits using a xmp sidecar file (or other non destructive way like how Adobe Camera Raw remembers edits to dng files) so that I can re-open edited raw files a later date. An option to reset edits back to original settings of the RAW file should be included too.

The current method of having to bake edits after developing and to save as an .afphoto file is a pain, due to making another large file or having to re-edit the RAW again.

[carl123]

Non-destructive RAW edits are available from version 2.0.0 onwards

https://affinity.help/photo2/English.lproj/pages/Raw/raw.html

[Lee.M]

Yes, but it would be really great and super useful if I could open the RAW file again at a later time after editing it in develop persona (without needing to save it as an .afphoto file). Having all my changes saved within the raw file or in a sidecar and to be able make any other further ammendments would save a lot of time.

[F7even]

+1

This is something I really need to replace Photoshop with Affinity Photo...

[loukash]

On 1/1/2023 at 3:27 PM, Lee.M said:

it would be really great and super useful if I could open the RAW file again at a later time after editing it in develop persona (without needing to save it as an .afphoto file).

You can save Presets for each Develop panel category (Basic, Lens, Details, Tones). That works already in v1. After developing and exporting, simply close the RAW without saving.
When you open the original RAW again, apply your saved presets for that file.
Of course, eventually you may end up with hundreds of presets, so it's really just an "ugly little workaround".  

[F7even]

Well, at least in my workflow I don't use default settings that I apply to every picture, so this is no solution for me.

I don't think it would be hard to implement a feature to save the settings. For me it would also be okay if I could save the settings to a file manually. I just don't want to have an even bigger copy of every raw file I edited...

[roastable]

I'd also love to have this feature as sometimes I don't want to edit a photo all in one sitting and prefer to come back to it later for further tweaks. As previously mentioned, I'd much rather this information be stored in a smaller sidecar file rather than a full .afphoto file for every image.

 

Thank you

[chillywilly]

I basically posted the same question because I didn't find this when I searched for "linked." I don't understand. In v2.2.1, the Develop persona has an output setting called "RAW Layer (Linked)." What is this, if it is not to save a sidecar file?

[chillywilly]

I think I just figured out how this works. After I click "Develop," I need to save the .afphoto file in the same directory. What I'm saving is a much smaller file than the RAW image. I can close everything, and when I reopen the .afphoto file, the full resolution image is there. If I go to the Develop persona I see that all my previous adjustments were retained.

[fde101]

3 hours ago, chillywilly said:

"RAW Layer (Linked)." What is this

"Linked" means that the .afphoto file references the original RAW file by its path rather than copying the RAW data into the .afphoto file.  This saves disk space but also means that if you ever move or rename the original RAW file the .afphoto will need to be relinked to the new location or name; if you ever try to send the .afphoto to someone else you need to send the original file along with it.

 

On 12/31/2022 at 2:02 PM, Lee.M said:

I really wish Affinity Photo could add a method of saving RAW edits using a xmp sidecar file

This has indeed come up before but it doesn't really make sense for the type of application that Affinity Photo is.  Those sidecar files are more relevant to dedicated RAW developers and DAM-style tools such as Capture One, On1 Photo RAW and the like.

An .afphoto file with a linked RAW layer is probably the closest you can expect to get to this type of workflow when using Affinity Photo, the major difference in practice being that you need to open the .afphoto file rather than the original RAW file in order to get back to where you were.

 

On 1/6/2023 at 3:43 PM, F7even said:

This is something I really need to replace Photoshop with Affinity Photo...

Does Photoshop seriously use sidecars?  I would not expect that.  ACR (camera raw) is bundled with Photoshop and uses sidecars but it is not Photoshop - it is a separate application designed to integrate with Photoshop.  ACR is a dedicated RAW developer for which a sidecar workflow makes sense, but Affinity Photo opted to integrate basic RAW development into their otherwise Photoshop-like application instead of implementing a separate development tool, and a sidecar workflow doesn't really apply to Affinity Photo any more than it applies to Photoshop.  Wrong type of application.

[chillywilly]

19 hours ago, fde101 said:

This has indeed come up before but it doesn't really make sense for the type of application that Affinity Photo is.

We disagree on this. Affinity Photo 2 offers RAW editing, and a sidecar file makes perfect sense to me. It is industry standard, and interchangeability with other RAW editors is a workflow improvement. It wasn't that long ago that I received a batch of RAW images from a photographer who had taken the time to make adjustments. I wanted to use those adjustments, but I couldn't because AP doesn't understand XMP files. It meant I had to start from scratch with each image. If a feature would improve the product for the way I use it, then it gets my vote.

[fde101]

2 hours ago, chillywilly said:

Affinity Photo 2 offers RAW editing

Sort of.  Consider that originally Photo did not even save the RAW edits into the .afphoto file but applied them immediately upon leaving Develop mode and if you went back into that mode you would start over.  While they did improve this, Photo permits a range of destructive edits that cannot be represented easily in an xmp file.  Use of an xmp file would be misleading as any changes made using tools which are not easily reflected in such a file would either need to be stored using a custom format that no one else would understand anyway (eliminating the portability benefit you seem to be looking for) or would be missing entirely from the xmp.

 

2 hours ago, chillywilly said:

I wanted to use those adjustments, but I couldn't because AP doesn't understand XMP files.

Even if it did, you would only get an approximation at best of the adjustments that photographer intended.  Different programs apply these values differently.  Just because the XMP files transfer values between them, those values will produce different results in different programs which use different algorithms for similar tools - you would not get the exact look the photographer intended unless that photographer was using the same software you are.  You would still need an exported reference from the photographer to compare against to finish adjusting the values to match, and even with one, you may only get close, as one program may not be able to 100% match the output of another unless you recreate the image pixel by pixel.

If the photographer had already made the appropriate adjustments on the RAW image, he should have exported a high-color-depth, full-resolution version as a TIFF or PNG file and sent you that as a starting point.  As long as he got close to the final results of the RAW development process, any adjustments/changes you would make from there probably would benefit little if at all from restarting the process from the original RAW.

Note also that the original purpose of XMP was not to store RAW adjustments, and the storage of RAW adjustments is mostly in the form of extensions that vary between programs (and thus their interpretation will vary or will be omitted when transferring them between programs).  The original (and portable) purpose of XMP (whether embedded in an image file or present as a sidecar) was to carry custom metadata such as title and author information - not image adjustments, but textual information for cataloging/identification purposes.

[chillywilly]

Sure. Different applications will have their own way of interpreting the values in an XMP file. But also, XMP is an ISO standard, and I think all photo editing software tries to get similar results from similar values. Therefore, reading values from XMP files would get me very close. Consider white balance. OK, one program’s interpretation of 6700° won't match exactly as another’s... but if the image was shot at 6000°, I'd rather start with Affinity's interpretation of 6700° if that's what the photographer set in the XMP. I imagine it would be very close to Lightroom’s interpretation of 6700°.

[fde101]

59 minutes ago, chillywilly said:

XMP is an ISO standard

Only for metadata, not for adjustments.  The standard provides a few "standard" things that can be stored in the files plus a mechanism for each manufacturer to store custom data unique to their own applications.  Adjustment data is not part of the standard, but rather something that is application-specific, so no application really tries to read the adjustment data meant for an application from a different manufacturer.

 

Corel spells this out clearly in their documentation: http://product.corel.com/help/AfterShot/540111121/Main/IT/Documentation/index.html?background_editing.html

 

Other applications only bother to store metadata in the xmp files and have an additional proprietary sidecar for the adjustment data:

• On1 Photo RAW: https://www.on1.com/products/photo-raw/ideas/idea/switch-to-xmp-sidecar-files/
• Capture One: https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360009383858-Do-XMP-files-save-editing-information, https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=capture+one+xmp+support&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#ip=1)
• DxO Photolab: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66715331, https://tutodxo.com/en/side-cars-dop-files-and-database/

 

In order to use an XMP to sync adjustments Serif would need to reverse engineer the adjustment formats of each manufacturer that actually stores the adjustment data in these files (and as per those links many do NOT, using their own proprietary sidecar formats instead), and map it onto their own data format, which would still not be a 100% match.  Even if they save adjustment data in the XMP, they would need to save multiple copies of it, similarly mapped to multiple other applications (with their custom, proprietary formats that may change between versions and are not likely to be publicly documented anywhere) for those other applications to read it again.

There is nothing standard about the way adjustments are stored in sidecars - only metadata such as star ratings, author information, etc.

[chillywilly]

I see. That seems like a wasted opportunity, but if that's how it is, then OK. Thanks for the information!

[chillywilly]

By the way, in the post you provided, it says DxO PhotoLab 6 stores corrections from Lightroom in XMP.
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66715331

[fde101]

2 hours ago, chillywilly said:

it says DxO PhotoLab 6 stores corrections from Lightroom in XMP.

My understanding is that it preserves the corrections from Lightroom within the file, but does not make use of or update them.  I've never used Lightroom (and have no intention of ever using it), so I can't verify, but that seems to be what I am finding when looking around at various places.

[chillywilly]

It seems silly not to apply the basics like crop, rotation, white balance, exposure adjustments, etc. They aren't that wild. Lightroom is so common that for a competitor to be able to read XMP from Lightroom and apply the settings, it seems a compelling feature.

[Shikari]

This is probably the biggest downside I see with Affinity Photo, even though I quite like it overall. I'm used to working with sidecar files and the fact that Affinity Photo doesn't support this is a big bummer for my workflow. It's a relatively simple feature (easy to implement) so I would hugely appreciate it, if you would add this. Upvote for this! 👍

[tvih]

Just testing this software in trial as a replacement for my old Photoshop Elements 14 and... yeah, not saving RAW adjustments for when you open the file the next time is very disappointing. Saving in the afphoto format is not really a solution since the file ends up being several times the size of the RAW file. Doesn't look like they are interested in addressing this, though.

Edited February 5 by tvih

[loukash]

4 hours ago, tvih said:

not saving RAW adjustments for when you open the file the next time

Make sure to save them as Presets: Basic, Lens, Details, Tones panels, all have a Presets popup menu.

[tvih]

Probably doing something wrong as I'm new to the software, but the presets don't seem to be file-specific? Sure doesn't help that you seem to need to add a preset for each of those tabs separately. Plus there's the matter of crops and rotations and all that, too. 'RAW Layers' seem to do nothing unless you save an .afphoto file either. To be a viable alternative it really needs to be as simple as just reopening the existing/original RAW file and the previously used development settings applying automatically similar to PSE, as otherwise the workflow is much too convoluted (or taking up excessive storage space with .afphoto).

Another though more minor pain is that it seems that image export settings don't seem to 'stick' between sessions. Like having to change PNG settings each time to launch the program, easy to forget and again results in huge file sizes.

Edited February 5 by tvih

[loukash]

1 hour ago, tvih said:

the presets don't seem to be file-specific?

No.

1 hour ago, tvih said:

Sure doesn't help that you seem to need to add a preset for each of those tabs separately.

Well, that's what we've got at this time.
(Personally, I'm OK with it as I don't work with RAW very often.)

1 hour ago, tvih said:

taking up excessive storage space with .afphoto

Keep in mind that for specific tasks, you don't need to open an image in Affinity, you can also simply place it as "linked" and perform everything non-destructively. That works with RAW files just as well. The *.afphoto document size can then range from a few hundred KB (!) only to a couple of MB, because all source data will remain outside.
That's what I do in 95% of my use cases in all Affinity apps.

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, tvih said:

Just testing this software in trial as a replacement for my old Photoshop Elements 14 and... yeah, not saving RAW adjustments for when you open the file the next time is very disappointing. Saving in the afphoto format is not really a solution since the file ends up being several times the size of the RAW file. Doesn't look like they are interested in addressing this, though.

Make sure (assuming you're starting with a Raw image format) that when you Develop it you specify the Output format as Linked (Raw), not Pixel nor Embedded (Raw). Then, when you Save the .afphoto file it will be much smaller. Just make sure that you don't delete the original Raw file, or move it, and that you Open the .afphoto file after that.

(If you do need to Move the original, you can, but when Opening the .afphoto you'll need to Relink it.)

[fde101]

9 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Then, when you Save the .afphoto file it will be much smaller.

This does assume that no action is taken which causes the resulting RAW layer to be rasterized.