Why are RAW files so much noisier than DNG files?

[Riffamortis]

I recently purchased Affinity Photo, and while I can definitely see the potential in it, I'm having issues with the Develop persona.

 

When trying to edit RAW files from my Canon 80D (using Apple's RAW engine since Serif's puts a purple tint on all my photos), they're extremely noisy - even at low ISO's. I've watched the instructional videos on how to use the noise reduction but it's very finicky and not overly responsive.

 

I decided to try to convert the RAW files to DNG files using Adobe DNG Creator and after importing the DNG files, the difference is night and day. Almost all of the chroma noise from the RAW image is gone from the DNG image (the exposure is also slightly increased) despite all settings being left at their default. Is this normal? Should the RAW files look so bad? I'd really like to avoid the extra step of converting to DNG if possible. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Edit: This article explains a lot of the problems I'm having with RAW files: http://loewald.com/blog/2015/07/affinity-photo-no-good-for-photography/

[Leigh]

Welcome to the forums Riffamortis :)

 

Affinity Photo doesn't automatically reduce noise within RAW images but If you send me one of your RAW images via PM I will look into this further for you :)

[william7]

Edit: This article explains a lot of the problems I'm having with RAW files: http://loewald.com/blog/2015/07/affinity-photo-no-good-for-photography/

 

Im curious about the devs thoughts on this, I currently use my iphone as my camera and thus do not currently shoot in raw although with ios 10 I will, and in a year or so will be buying my first dslr which I will also shoot in raw. This article is pretty scathing of the raw engine in AP, are there planned improvements for it? why is it that even with noise reduction all the way the image is still noisier than the apple raw engine? if I select the apple raw engine will apples noise reduction be applied or no?

 

I want to clarify that I love AP and want to see it succeed thus my concern for this. If this is a problem I would love to see steps taken to correct it. Thanks guys.

[william7]

Bump

[Leigh]

As stated above, Affinity Photo doesn't automatically reduce noise within RAW images. If you're using the Noise Reduction adjustment and you're not seeing any changes in the preview, try changing the Zoom Level to 100%.

 

The Apple Core Image RAW engine option will perform some automatic noise reduction and sharpening when selected :)