RAW image processing and DAM

[stuartbarry]

I know that DAM has been discussed forever, but I think that AF2 is close to being able to provide a solution alongside NeoFinder.

I can now process RAW images and do almost all my work non-destructively, saving the file as a linked RAW file. This creates 2 files: an afphoto file and an XMP sidecar file. Whereas I can re-open the afphoto file and continue working from where I left off, the metadata is not copied from the original RAW file and the thumbnail is too small, even though it does reflect the current view.

I asked NeoFinder about this and they replied as follows:

NeoFinder uses the QuickLook plugins supplied by Affinity to grab the thumbnails of these formats. It seems they only provide a small version of this.

 

While NeoFinder is able to add its own metadata, using the industry standard Adobe XMP sidecar mechanism, the handling of that metadata inside of the Affinity products is still inconsequential, and they don't offer an API to access their own embedded metadata yet.

It seems that if AF2 could take this one step forward we'd have a realistic replacement for Lightroom. What are the chances?

[mcastrobrasil]

I also don't understand how they haven't released a beta yet so we could try it out. For this, you can use the same existing Raw Editor interface (reveal), perhaps adding and improving some of the controls to make the work more fluid. It's about time we had something like this.

[stuartbarry]

Addition to the earlier post.

This is also causing a problem in Affinity Studio. I am creating a photo book for publishing. I have some of the images as jpg, where I needed to do some extra work on them, but some just needed tweaking and were stored as linked RAW. If I import these into Affinity Publisher (makes no difference whether they are embedded or linked) the embedded RAW images use the tiny thumbnail and show up as horribly pixelated. I then have to discard them, go back to Affinity Photo to do my main editing, export them as jpg and re-import into Affinity Publisher. This completely defeats the aim behind Studio Link. If this were fixed by Affinity to make its own Studio Link work properly it would also work for NeoFinder, giving me a fantastic workflow.

Is anyone from Affinity reading this and are there any comments?

Just found a reply to this topic elsewhere, so I have moved this comment.

Edited April 24, 2023 by stuartbarry
Covered in another topic

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, stuartbarry said:

This is also causing a problem in Affinity Studio. I am creating a photo book for publishing. I have some of the images as jpg, where I needed to do some extra work on them, but some just needed tweaking and were stored as linked RAW. If I import these into Affinity Publisher (makes no difference whether they are embedded or linked) the embedded RAW images use the tiny thumbnail and show up as horribly pixelated. I then have to discard them, go back to Affinity Photo to do my main editing, export them as jpg and re-import into Affinity Publisher. This completely defeats the aim behind Studio Link. If this were fixed by Affinity to make its own Studio Link work properly it would also work for NeoFinder, giving me a fantastic workflow.

Is anyone from Affinity reading this and are there any comments?

It sounds like you're now trying to report a problem, so probably you should create a new topic in the Bugs forum or the Questions forum, not here in Feedback. Serif staff generally do not respond in this part of the forums, which is reserved for requesting product enhancements.