Develop Persona wont work for Black and White photos

[Peat]

Hi all, I'm using the Affinity Photo 2 software for a 30 day trial, comparing it with other programs and trying to pick the best for my ease of workflow. 
I'm a film photographer, so I'm editing film scans, and I predominantly, but not entirely, shoot in black and white. I've noticed that the entire Develop Persona is unavailable when I'm editing my black and white photography. Is this a glitch or is there a reason for this? I was hoping to be able to non destructively and easily edit all my photos using the sliders in the Develop Persona, but if it is not compatible with my black and white photography then this app wont be the one for me. I did find other ways to edit levels and curves and the like in layers in the Photo Persona, but the Develop Persona is non destructive and far more time efficient for me.

Hoping it's just a glitch or something, I otherwise really like the setup of Affinity Photo and would love to use it as my primary editing application, currently it's in a race against efficiency with two other programs.

Thanks for the help! - Pete

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Unless you have RAW files, which must be processed by the Develop Persona, you should be able to do all your editing in the Photo Persona. And it can be non-destructive there, too.

What format are your files and how are you creating them?

[Peat]

Hi Walt,
I'm using TIFF files for my film photography as that's the highest quality/most resilient to editing file type that my scanner (an Epson Perfection V600 Photo) can spit out. For my digital photography I do work in RAW but my digital stuff is mostly color, it's the black and white film scans that I'm running into the "cant use Develop Persona" problem on.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks. You could convert them to RGB, and then the Develop Persona will work. But I would probably still use the Photo Persona. It is more non-destructive for the work you need to do on non-RAW files.

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, Peat said:

I'm using TIFF files for my film photography as that's the highest quality/most resilient to editing file type that my scanner (an Epson Perfection V600 Photo) can spit out. For my digital photography I do work in RAW but my digital stuff is mostly color, it's the black and white film scans that I'm running into the "cant use Develop Persona" problem on.

I would check see if the scanning software can output 16 bit TIFF files and then just use the Photo persona's non destructive Adjustment layers in Photo. The level of detail in a 16 bit TIFF is going to be high enough to compare with a raw file that the Develop persona would use. The quality may even be higher than what would be available from a raw file. Just save the TIFF file as a Photo File, *.afphoto and keep the TIFFs in a folder, maybe even go so far as to make them Read Only so as to prevent overwriting.

[firstdefence]

the scanner will output 16 bit greyscale but Develop Persona requires an RGB layer

[Peat]

Thanks all! You've been super helpful. It's a pain that I can't use the develop persona with my black and white photography, so I may not end up purchasing the app (I have one more criteria to research and consider that'll make my final decision) but the helpfulness of the community here is a distinct pro on my pros and cons list!

[Hangman]

Hi @Peat,

You may find this article interesting as part of your decision-making and thought process...

https://affinityspotlight.com/article/film-photography-workflow-with-simon-king/

[walt.farrell]

14 hours ago, Peat said:

It's a pain that I can't use the develop persona with my black and white photography,

I still don't understand why you need it, since you can do everything you should need in the Photo Persona.

[Old Bruce]

15 hours ago, Peat said:

It's a pain that I can't use the develop persona with my black and white photography,

I have to agree with Walt on this. If I were scanning B&W negs I would just output 16bit Greyscale TIFFs and use the Photo Persona. I doubt that would miss anything from being unable to use the Develop Persona. A well scanned 16 bit Greyscale TIFF would have a greater dynamic range than anything from DSLRs with their 12 or 14 bit dynamic range.

[Peat]

Yup! Ya'll are right, I don't need the Develop Persona, I was just missing the adjustment's tab from my workspace window so making any adjustment took a lot more searching than I wanted. Now that I have the adjustment's tab in view it's quick and easy to edit any of my photos! And thank you to @Hangman for the article! This community has already been so helpful, I think Affinity is going to end up being the right software for me after all, in large part because I know I can come here to get help if I need it. Now to just learn how to actually edit well, as post processing has never been a strong suit of mine.

Thanks again!