Unable to load XMP (sidecar) edits in Affinity Photo 2

[picographer24]

I edited the exposure, white balance and other settings of a RAW photo in the Develop Persona of Affinity Photo 2. However, I’m having trouble saving and loading the XMP sidecar file. I followed the instructions on the website to "tick Load metadata from XMP sidecars in the app's General settings", but it’s still not working.

What am I doing wrong?

 

I am use macOS 14 Sonoma.

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Affinity forums.

XMP files are used in Affinity Photo only to store metadata about the file (creator, copyright, tags, etc.). They are not used to store edits to the image content (brightness, white balance, etc.).

If you want to keep that information and have it editable later, you need to:

1. Develop to a Raw Embedded or Linked layer, not a Pixel layer. This is a setting on the Context Toolbar when you're in the Develop Persona with a Raw image.
2. Save your .afphoto file once you have finished developing the image. Note that the .afphoto file will be significantly smaller if you develop to a Linked Raw layer, but then you will need to keep both the .afphoto file and the original Raw file.

 

[walt.farrell]

Additional info from the Help:

https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/Raw/raw.html

https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/Panels/metadataPanel.html

[picographer24]

Thank you for your reply @walt.farrell. I switched over from Photoshop and was used to seeing an XMP sidecar file generated after editing exposure elements of a RAW photo. From my understanding, Photoshop uses different engines than Affinity Photo to store exposure elements.

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

Your understanding is correct, I believe.