Develop Persona and saving

[Paul Hodson]

Save my sanity someone!  Converting from Photoshop to Affinity Photo. (Damn you Adobe - £250 a year???)

Converting Raw images - Photoshop has ACR - the equivalent of the Develop Persona. Once adjustments made, opening the image in Photoshop, the equivalent of the Photo Persona, saved the RAW file and a small xmp file with the adjustments in. Reopening the RAW file meant it opened with these adjustments which could be further modified.

I’m not sure if or how I can do this in Affinity. I don’t want to bake the adjustments in, nor, if possible do I want to save the proprietary .afphoto file (I already have RAW, jpegs and tiffs!)

Is there an equivalent to the Photoshop xmp file?  Please!

 

Thanks

Edited March 17 by Paul Hodson

[Ldina]

In the Develop Persona, choose RAW Layer (Linked) and open in Photo. The develop settings are written to the afphoto file and remain editable during the current edit or even when reopening the file later. You can go back and forth between Photo and Develop Personas as often as desired and your develop setting are retained and readjustable. Since the RAW file is merely a link, your afphoto file remains very small even in 16 bit. Hardly any disc space consumed. That’s my standard workflow with Raw images.

[Paul Hodson]

Thank you.  It appears then that the AFPhoto file is similar in function to the .xmp file in Photoshop (though actually seems to be 2 - 3 times larger (not that space is an issue).

The difference seems to be that in Photoshop if you at a later stage select and open the original RAW file  it opens again in ACR (Develop Persona) with the adjustments applied which have been stored in the .xmp file (which can then be modified) whereas in Affinity Photo you select and open the AFPhoto file and it opens the RAW file with the adjustments applied (which can then be modified).

It's sort of the  same - but one of them is backwards!   At least the AFPhoto file is relatively small - I feared it was actually saving the whole image file!

A lot to get my head around!  

Appreciate your help.

[Ldina]

You're welcome, and you've got it right. Just a different way of working.

LR is a DAM (digital asset manager) and ACR is too, so they store their develop settings in sidecar files (or inside DNG files if using that format). AfPhoto is a 'one at a time' photo editor, like PS. So, they store these develop settings inside the AfPhoto file itself. I really like the RAW Layer (Linked) capability for two reasons...it keeps file sizes very small, even when editing in 16 bit (which I generally prefer), and it always retains the Develop Persona settings so you can go back and forth between Photo and Develop Personas as often as needed. Comes in very handy quite often. 

When I used PS, I always saved my RAW files, a JPG copy, and the PS edited file in PSD file format. This ate up more disk space than Affinity because the PSD file was always much larger than AfPhoto (when using RAW Layer (Linked)). 

There are some great tutorials to get you going quickly.

On this forum, Browse > Forums > Tutorials > Affinity Photo. 

One Youtube, search for Affinity Revolution, Technically Trent, Robin Whalley and a ton of others. 

[Paul Hodson]

Thanks again. I would have stuck with Photoshop (CS6) - except I bought a new PC and they have turned off their activation servers so I would have had to buy/rent Photoshop. I didn’t use LR - and they doubled the price of the LR/Photoshop plan - 6 weeks before I bought the computer!   Didn’t fancy paying them £250 a year for ever - though at 80… 🤔

Still, learning a new editor will keep my mind active!

👍

[Ldina]

Yup, I still have CS6 on my old Mac Pro, with an ancient OS. I keep it running mainly for Acrobat X Pro, which I need occasionally. I rarely use PS/Illustrator/InDesign anymore. After spending megabucks on standalone Adobe software for over a decade, their subscription pissed me off, so I stuck with CS6 until I bought a new computer and switched to Affinity. For the work I do, Affinity is great, but it did take some time to learn some new ways of working. Now, I find it extremely awkward using Photoshop, and I used that exclusively for over 20 years, both professionally and personally!

The tutorials are a great way to learn. Have fun.