Is there an alternate to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) in Affinity Photo?

[Kelly Bellis]

Just wondering... Is there an alternate to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) in Affinity Photo? In tests done just now, I wasn't able to en masse open 244 images in AfPhoto2 like can be done from Bridge in ACR. Required Task Manager to kill the process.

If not, is there an alternate stand alone Windows program to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)?  Lightroom is only subscription-based.

I'm not interested in subscription-based software and is why I'm stuck with Adobe CS6 programs like Bridge which includes a path to ACR (v9.1.1)

Thank you for any thoughts.

Kind regards,

Kelly

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Kelly Bellis

[stuck]

3 hours ago, Kelly Bellis said:

Is there an alternate to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) in Affinity Photo?

If you mean, "Can Photo 2 develop RAW files?", then yes.  Download the fully functional free trail and try it for yourself.  Scroll to bottom of this page to find a download link:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

 

 

[Kelly Bellis]

Yes, I understand that there's a "Develop Persona", but it seems to act more like persona non grata.

As mentioned, I already have Affinity Photo 2. When I tried processing a group of .dng images like I would normally do in ACR, the program choked and had to be terminated using Task Manager.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Kelly Bellis]

@lacertoOnly as far as the price of it.

The issue that raised this post is a bit obscure, and very briefly, has to do with an EXIF attribute being introduced, perhaps even inappropriately.

Slightly more verbose explanation: After numerous tests this morning, it appears that Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) v9.1.1 creates the attribute DistortionCorrectionAlreadyApplied with a value of TRUE even when no CA is applied, nor any lens correction has been made. Additionally, in all tests, the attribute named LensManualDistortionAmount existed, and in all instances its value was 0 (false).

Where this is possibly relevant: In conversation with an application developer. I'm unsure why Reality Capture can't look for LensManualDistortionAmount instead. This has never presented an issue for PTGui when loading images corrected for CA.

[v_kyr]

36 minutes ago, Kelly Bellis said:

Slightly more verbose explanation: After numerous tests this morning, it appears that Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) v9.1.1 creates the attribute DistortionCorrectionAlreadyApplied with a value of TRUE even when no CA is applied, nor any lens correction has been made. ...

• https://exiftool.org/TagNames.pdf

[Kelly Bellis]

@v_kyr Thank you! Very much appreciated!!!

 

[Ldina]

Kelly, LightRoom writes a TON of metadata to RAW files, at least to DNG format. I assume ACR does as well. These extra metadata fields are there to record and recall all the various slider positions and settings used in ACR or LR. It is my experience that Affinity Photo Develop Persona completely ignores all those "extra" metadata fields that Adobe writes to the RAW files, but they are still retained inside the file's metadata, even when exporting from AP to other formats. I've always used LR and/or Bridge as my database, organizer and RAW developer (prior to Affinity), but any settings written into metadata by Adobe is ignored when opening in AP. You can choose to use LR/ACR to  export to AP while including all LR/ACR adjustments. That uses ACR to convert the RAW file before it opens in AP, which means you no longer have a RAW file once it opens in Affinity. 

Affinity doesn't have a database program like LightRoom at this time. Not sure that addresses your concern.

[Kelly Bellis]

@Ldina Thanks. v_kyr nailed it.

The workaround will be to use ExifTool to strip out the deprecated tag before loading the images into Reality Capture, at least until they update RC.

[RichardMH]

What camera do you have? Capture One Express is free for Sony, Nikon and Fujifilm and might do what you want. 

[Kelly Bellis]

@RichardMH Thanks for asking. The camera is made by DJI. The Model is the FC3170 and is on the Mavic Air 2.

Just a snip from 1 of the 244 images from the mapping mission for the 2023 World Record Ice Carousel.

More on the event here: https://www.facebook.com/NMIB21/

And in case you're interested, I've posted all of my aerial and terrestrial panos here:

• https://www.360cities.net/image/2023-world-record-ice-carousel-ready-to-spin
• https://www.360cities.net/image/2023-world-record-ice-carousel-the-big-motor
• https://www.360cities.net/image/2023-world-record-ice-carousel-1st-day-of-as-built-survey-alt-26-m
• https://www.360cities.net/image/2023-world-record-ice-carousel-1st-day-of-as-built-survey
• https://www.360cities.net/image/2023-world-record-ice-carousel-2nd-day-of-as-built-survey

Kind regards,

Kelly

 

[lphilpot]

Not sure if this will meet your needs, but darktable is an excellent and very powerful raw editor with DAM (and it's free): https://www.darktable.org

Once again, though, it may not be what you're needing.

[v_kyr]

In the open source world there are three major cross-platform apps, which deal with photo/image management and RAW processing ...

• digiKam
• darktable
• RawTherapee

... and they do mostly rely for camera RAW file processing and lens data handling etc. on the same used third-party opensource projects as APh does rely here, namely LibRaw, Dcraw, Lensfun, libexif ...

[lphilpot]

6 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

• RawTherapee

... and they do mostly rely for camera RAW file processing and lens data handling etc. on the same used third-party opensource projects as APh does rely here, namely LibRaw, Dcraw, Lensfun, libexif ...

For a slightly different / tweaked fork of RawTherapee, also check out ART (Another Raw Therapee) - https://bitbucket.org/agriggio/art/wiki/Home

Its UI / UX is a tad more conventional than RT. As the developer puts it, "ART is a derivative of the popular RawTherapee, trading a bit of customization and control over various processing parameters for a simpler and (hopefully) easier to use interface, while still maintaining the power and quality of RawTherapee." Of course neither ART nor RT offer DAM, if that's a requirement. They're just pure raw editors only.

[Kelly Bellis]

Thank you for suggestions everybody!

Kind regards.