What happens when you open a DXO Pure Raw dng file in Affinity Photo Develop Persona?

[alecspra]

My current workflow is to open my Fuji RAF files in DXO Pure Raw, let it do its magic, then export the photo as a DNG file, open it in AP Develop Persona in Adobe 32 bit HDR, do some minimal tweaking (WB, ), then continue working on the image on the Photo Persona in 32 bit HDR in order to take full advantage of JR's tone mapping macros; or alternatively go to the Tone Mapping persona before going to the Photo Persona. Once I am done with any tone mapping I convert the 32 bit file to 16 bits.

The main thing I dont know is what happens when I open the Pure Raw dng file in the Develop persona: Does it cancel out the adjustments to the raw file made by DXO Pure Raw or does it make adjustments on top of that? Also, if you think the workflow I described is not optimal and there is a better way of doing it, please feel free to advise. Thank you.

[NotMyFault]

affinity Photo was never able to read „recipes“ from Camera or other apps stored in RAW files or as XMP sidecar.

It will recognize only RAW data and a small set of basic adjustments like WP, exposure, and tries to detect lens model based on metadata (which often fails).

it ignores all other „adjustments“ like sharpening, noise reduction, color shift, contrast settings or usage of „picture profiles“ (Canon speak) or Fuji styles / LUTs.

[NotMyFault]

When using affinity apps, you must decide between:

• doing basic RAW edits in other apps: export to tiff,  .. to continue editing in Photo based on exported pixel data with applied/baked-in edits from other app
• do all edits in Affinity, use DNG or supported Camera native RAW formats (and lens corrects based on lensfun DB with long delay or manual updates)

It is not possible to start editing RAW in other apps, and import those edits as starting point for Affinity, while using the original RAW or DNG.

[alecspra]

Uauu! I didn't know that AP Develop persona disregards the changes made by Pure Raw.

Ok, the dilemma is that if I do the Raw edits in Pure Raw and export the file to AP as a 16 bit tiff, I have lost the ability to take full advantage of the tone mapping macros or the tone mapping persona which work best with 32 bit files. My understanding is that I can't revert back to 32 bit from a 16 bit file.

 

 

[Old Bruce]

14 minutes ago, alecspra said:

.... My understanding is that I can't revert back to 32 bit from a 16 bit file.

You can convert to 32 bits. Document > Convert Format/ICC Profile...

A personal opinion aside: I have to say that the over 12 billion distinct colours available in 16 bits should be plenty. 32 bits is necessary if you are using files for scientific research; Astronomy, Medical imaging, etc. but it is overkill for fine art or commercial photography.

[NotMyFault]

31 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

You can convert to 32 bits. Document > Convert Format/ICC Profile...

A personal opinion aside: I have to say that the over 12 billion distinct colours available in 16 bits should be plenty. 32 bits is necessary if you are using files for scientific research; Astronomy, Medical imaging, etc. but it is overkill for fine art or commercial photography.

Don’t forget the main reason: having unbound values beyond [0-1] range

unfortunately Affinity lost touch with outer world (meaning: image file format evolution of real world last 8 years) who moved to log/PQ transfer curve and unbound values even with 8..16 bit color depth

[smadell]

To get back to the original question posed by @alecspra, my understanding of what DxO PureRaw does is to create a new raw file (a linear DNG) and it does not simply add an .xmp file or other “directions” to the original raw file. The DNG file that PureRaw kicks out incorporates sharpening, noise reduction, lens correction, and demosaicing. It does not incorporate any changes to exposure, white balance, etc. As such, this new DNG file acts as any raw file does, except that the demosaicing has already been done. As such, if you process in PureRaw and then do additional raw processing in Affinity Photo’s Develop Persona, you should probably ask AP to avoid any step that would add additional noise reduction, sharpening, or lens correction. My best guess is that simply asking the Develop Persona to not apply a default tone curve will accomplish this. You can then do color and exposure correction to your heart’s content inside of AP before exiting into the Photo Persona.

As a disclaimer, I use Capture One as my raw developer and so have much less experience with AP’s Develop Persona. I do use PureRaw, however, and have never had any (known) issues with using Capture One with a linear DNG file created by PureRaw.

For additional reference, there is a nice article about Linear DNG’s on the DxO site. https://www.dxo.com/news/linear-dng/

[alecspra]

Thank you all. Lots of great insights! 

So it seems there are a couple of interesting questions here:

Does it make sense to use 32 bit files, because it is overkill for fine art and commercial photography? I don't have an opinion on the matter because I dont know enough about the technolgy to have an informed opinion. I have however read many comments on AP videos and elsewhere that to take full advantage of HDR and tone mapping you need to work with 32 bit files. The assumption here is that this will give you more control and better results even if later on you bound the imag file range to SDR for printing or for posting online. For instance, I have been trying JR's Tone mapping macros and he clearly says that if you don't use 32 bit files you may get strange or unpredictable results.

There is two different points of view her on what happens when you bring a Pure Raw DNG file into AP Develop persona. One view is that it disregards the adjustments made by Pure Raw, and the other is that it does not if you ask AP to avoid any step that would add additional noise reduction, sharpening, or lens correction. This is something I will try to test and report back here, although I think AP (Serif) should give us the official version of what happens. We shouldn't have to guess and run time consuming experiments.

[smadell]

@alecspra - after my initial post, I decided to test whether the advice I was giving you was correct. I took a photo in my back room. I purposely chose a dark room, used a wide lens (14mm), and set my aperture to f16 (which gave an ISO of 12,800 and lots of noise). I took the raw file that resulted into Affinity Photo, both before and after processing with PureRaw. I set my Develop Persona assistant to avoid any additional lens correction, noise reduction, or added tone curve. My result? The DxO PureRaw processing is most definitely preserved.

Here are the Develop Assistant settings I used:

Here are both photos, one processed with PureRaw and the other not.

And here is a 200% magnification of the upper right corner, in which the noise and lens distortion is clearly seen in the non-PureRaw photo, but is obviously absent in the photo processed in PureRaw beforehand.

[alecspra]

I did quick unscientific test comparing the same image RAF file that I opened first in Pure Raw, converted the output to dng, then opened the DNG file in AP Develop, with the RAF file that I opened directly in AP Develop.

I edited both files in the Develop using mostly brightness, highlights, and exposure (the image was deliberately underexposed to see how shadow noise in handled).

What I noticed is as far I can tell from just a visual observation is that AP preserved the noise reduction and chromatic lens aberration of the dng file. It did not erase those changes. All in all I preferred the result of the image that was processed first by Pure Raw then tweaked a bit in AP Develop, compared to the RAF image that was fully developed in AP. The differences were subtle but at high magnification you can tell.

Conclusion?: It seems AP Develop does preserve the changes made by Pure Raw. 

What do you think?

[alecspra]

@smadell We ran the same test simultaneously! It seem I had the same results you had. That should strengthen our confidence that AP Develop does indeed preserve the changes made by Pure Raw dng. At least it was obvious regarding noise reduction, lens correction, and chromatic aberration. Not sure about any other changes made by Pure Raw. In your example, the with Pure Raw file also seems a bit brighter than file without Pure Raw.

[alecspra]

Also I want to encourage Serif to publish a clear statement regarding this non-trivial issue. Users should not have to invest their time in doing these experiments.

[smadell]

I agree with your conclusions, @alecspra. As to the increased brightness in the PureRaw-processed version, I suspect this is a result of PureRaw trying to correct lens vignetting in the raw file. As to whether Serif can comment on the question, I’d certainly be in favor of hearing something official. However, they certainly have a lot of fish to fry and if a statement like this takes a back seat to quashing bugs and so forth, it wouldn’t bother me too much.