Affinity Photo workflow for Lightroom users

[andrewmv]

Trying out Affinity Photo for the first time as it's recently been recommended to me as an alternative to Lightroom, but I'm struggling a bit with the tutorials and guides as they're all coming from a Photoshop perspective. I've never really been a PS user, and honestly always found its layer-based workflow confusing.

The develop persona in Affinity is quite slick, and exactly the type of thing I'm looking for in terms of editing capabilities, but I can't figure out how to import/export my photo workflows - I only seem to be able to able to open, edit, and export one RAW at a time.

Am I approaching this wrong? I'm open to adjusting my workflow and learning new ways of doing things, but I'm going to need some hand-holding on how to approach this suite as a photographer rather than a graphic designer.

[NotMyFault]

Welcome to the forum.

The Develop Person of Affinity Photo is a band-aid to check some boxes for advertising of functionality but not on par with standalone apps.

it missis many core functions like:

• no DAM
• no scripting
• so XMP/sidecar support
• no xrite / Camera profile support
• no saving of recipes. Instead you have a cluttered pack of presets.
• Weak DNG support
• long wait for updates of Camera and Lens profiles from LensFun DB
• No AI assisted upscale
• no AI assisted denoise
• unable to read Camera recipes/profiles
• iPad version even more crippled

Ok for relaxed occasional usage, but no replacement for a professional app

[andrewmv]

Ah, I think Digital Asset Management might be the term I'm looking for here. There's a new "How to leave Adobe" post making the rounds that has added Affinity to the "Lightroom Replacements" column alongside the usual suspects, RawTherapee and Darktable, and though those projects don't quite meet my needs, they at least follow the basic photography-centric workflow, so I think I was approaching this with unfair expectations.

I might also be unfairly comparing those desktop projects to a mobile app - Is the desktop version of Affinity Photo any different in this regard?

 

[NotMyFault]

Affinity did some marketing in the past a la „desktop power on iPad“, I don’t remember the exact details.

The iPad versions are quite capable performance wise (M1 iPad equals M1 Mac Mini assuming same RAM CPU GPU SSD count/size), and ~95% feature compatible. I curate a list of feature discrepancies. 
I love to work with iPad in my hands, freely rotating device or canvas as needed, use pencil, and those missing features hurt every single day. There is absolutely no acceptable reason for the remaining discrepancies, iPads are far more powerful than 90% of PCs a few years ago.

It is either ignorance, lack of capability, „management decisions“ that the gap does not get close, but widens with every release.