Canon RAW files displayed too dark in develop persona

[DW52]

I had this bug before in V1.x, I thought it would have gone, but found it now again in V2.0.4: When I open a RAW file from my Canon EOS 70D, it is displayed in Affinity Photo much darker than it really is (other 3rd programs, eg Faststone Image Viewer, display it as expected). I have to increase "exposure" by around 2 steps to get it displayed correctly. What amazes me: with the increased exposure an export to JPG will have fine results.... But in the end I cannot imagine that Canon RAW files are that dark.

I read that several users complained about this problem, but all the answers given did not help me further. Is there any "easy" explanation or workaround?

To demonstrate the problem, I attach a screenshot with one CR2 file, displayed in Faststone Image Viewer, Windows Explorer, and Affinity Photo 2.0.4.

Thanks & hello from Germany.

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

First, Windows File Explorer is not showing the RAW image. It is showing a JPG preview built into the RAW file. 

Next, Faststone Image Viewer may be showing the actual RAW image, but with Canon-specific adjustments applied to it as specified in the RAW file.

However, Affinity Photo does not apply manufacturer-specific adjustments. It shows you the raw data actually captured by the sensor, and depends on you to make further adjustments to make the image look acceptable to you. There are exceptions to this:

1. You can ask to have a default tone curve applied. You can set that in the Assistant Manager, with its development options.
2. You can also ask to have an exposure bias applied, if it's recorded in the RAW image. This is also controlled in the Assistant Manager.
3. You can ask for lens correction to be applied (or not), and for noise reduction to be applied (or not), again in the Assistant Manager.

Either 1 or 2 might help you, if you do not have them enabled. I think they are disabled by default.

You can find more information in the Help: https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/Raw/raw.html

 

[carl123]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

However, Affinity Photo does not apply manufacturer-specific adjustments.

I guess at some point you have to ask the question, why not?

You would think the manufacturer would be the best person to know the best initial default settings to apply to their RAW images

I would think that are lot of non-professional photographers would be quite happy with what the manufacturer's default gives them, saving them the hassle of having to adjust each RAW file on opening it

Maybe Serif could add an option to the Assistant Manager to do this in a future update/upgrade

 

[DW52]

13 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

First, Windows File Explorer is not showing the RAW image. It is showing a JPG preview built into the RAW file. 

Next, Faststone Image Viewer may be showing the actual RAW image, but with Canon-specific adjustments applied to it as specified in the RAW file.

However, Affinity Photo does not apply manufacturer-specific adjustments. It shows you the raw data actually captured by the sensor, and depends on you to make further adjustments to make the image look acceptable to you....

Thanks for your detailed reply. But I must admit that it confuses me. So you state that Canons RAW does not include the sensor's original data, but compresses them in a Canon specific way? You can see from the attached picture that Affinity shows less contrast, less luminosity etc. Is this what the sensor really "saw"? Does it really need an alogorithm to "reconstruct" the original view? Up to now, this was not my understanding of a RAW file. I had learned that for example it has to be compressed to be displayed as an JPG, not the other way round. 

I tried to "rebuild" an IMG file from its RAW file in Affinity Photo, and it was rather sophisticated. That's nothing for "normal" users. Why does Affinity not apply the Canon algorithm when displaying the RAWs? At least as an option?

That would be more than helpful. In my eyes this would even be necessary to make Affinity Photo the right tool to process RAWs.

Edited February 28, 2023 by DW52

[carl123]

35 minutes ago, DW52 said:

You can see from the attached picture that Affinity shows less contrast, less luminosity etc

It does look a little dull in comparison.

Do you have Apply Tone Curve enabled in Assistant Preferences (Manager)?

Also, could you upload that RAW file, here, for testing?

[winfried_z]

14 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

...

However, Affinity Photo does not apply manufacturer-specific adjustments. It shows you the raw data actually captured by the sensor, and depends on you to make further adjustments to make the image look acceptable to you. ...

I am a bit confused. I observe significant differences for Nikon Z raw files developed with Affinity and NX Studio (provided by Nikon),  both applied with default settings. Affinity yields softer pictures, similar to the comparison above by DW52. And Nikon says about NX Studio: "NX Studio is always up-to-date with the latest and most precise Nikon camera information for RAW .NEF and .NRW image files so you always work with the purest image data without interpretations or alterations of file information, meaning you will always get the best out of your .NEF or .NRW files." Thus, even without interpretations, there seems to be ample room for differences in the results.

[DW52]

48 minutes ago, carl123 said:

It does look a little dull in comparison.

Do you have Apply Tone Curve enabled in Assistant Preferences (Manager)?

Also, could you upload that RAW file, here, for testing?

Up to now, I only used the default settings, so no tone curve is enabled. I made the experience with all of my own RAWs (Canon EOS 70D) and for the picture in my last posting a demo picture from http://www.rawsamples.ch/index.php/en/canon, here the one from EOS 1Dx.

Another amazing fact: It takes around 10 seconds on an INTEL i5-11400 with 16 GB RAM to load and display the 28 MB .CR2 file. 

[carl123]

16 minutes ago, DW52 said:

so no tone curve is enabled

I see the same as you with no tone curve but once enabled the results are comparable to the comparison you displayed above. I think having the Tone Curve enabled is the best way to initially process RAW files

 

Time to load image is 4 seconds on my i7, 16GB

[DW52]

45 minutes ago, carl123 said:

I see the same as you with no tone curve but once enabled the results are comparable to the comparison you displayed above. I think having the Tone Curve enabled is the best way to initially process RAW files

I enabled the Tone Curve and in fact it (right side) looks very close to the Windows Photo Display tool. But what is this "Tone Curve", is it something stored inside the RAW file, so comparable with the "manufacturer-specific adjustments" that Walt Farrel talked about in his initial reply to my orginal posting?

[carl123]

8 minutes ago, DW52 said:

But what is this "Tone Curve", is it something stored inside the RAW file, so comparable with the "manufacturer-specific adjustments"

I think it may just be some automatic tone curve adjustment algorithm that works similar to Auto Levels and Auto Contrast (etc) that you find in Filter > Colours...

I don't think it is manufacturer specific but only a Dev or Support staff will be able to give you a definitive answer as to what it does and how it works

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, DW52 said:

So you state that Canons RAW does not include the sensor's original data, but compresses them in a Canon specific way?

No. I said that manufacturer-specific adjustments are not applied by Photo. For example, many cameras have settings for White Balance, or for a view mode (Sports, Portrait, Landscape, etc.) which influence how the JPG created by the camera will look. And which some RAW development programs will apply automatically to the RAW data when they read it.

Photo does not do that. It just gives you the raw sensor data.

[DW52]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Photo does not do that. It just gives you the raw sensor data.

OK. I understand your explanation. But I do not understand why Photo does not use these data to display the file. They are an integral part of the photo. If not by default, it should at least be possible to apply these data within the development process. 

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, DW52 said:

OK. I understand your explanation. But I do not understand why Photo does not use these data to display the file. They are an integral part of the photo. If not by default, it should at least be possible to apply these data within the development process. 

Someone from Serif would have to answer that. 

[JDC56]

I am seeing the same issue with RAW images from my Nikon.

[DW52]

No idea what had caused the problem of "dark" RAW files (in my case Canon .CR2 files), I haven't had this problem any more for quite a while (always using the latest release of Affinity Photo).

[JDC56]

Retested. Nikon RAW okay when opened as single file, but but when used to create a panorama. I've attached an screenshot of the stitched panorama (composed of 4 RAM files) vs the developed RAW image of the first RAW image of 4. The panorama is definitely darker.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, JDC56 said:

Retested. Nikon RAW okay when opened as single file, but but when used to create a panorama. I've attached an screenshot of the stitched panorama (composed of 4 RAM files) vs the developed RAW image of the first RAW image of 4. The panorama is definitely darker.

You should not make Panoramas from RAW files. The expected workflow in Photo is to use Open, and Develop the files, then use them for Panoramas, or for Stacking, or HDR Merge, or Focus Merging.

There are settings in the Develop Assistant (Apply Default Tone Curve, Apply Exposure Bias) that are used in Open/Develop, and in New Batch Job, but are not used in New Panorama, New Stack, New HDR Merge, or New Focus Merge. That can end up making the final image darker if you use RAW files directly for those functions. So you should Develop to a 16-bit file, probably TIFF or PNG, before you use them for those functions.