[AP] non-destructive RAW editing, brush based operations

[hifred]

Thank you for the surprisingly quick release of Photo Beta for Windows!

I have a few questions / comments on RAW editing as a heavy user of Photoshop and its upstream ACR workspace.
While I like that Serif actually chose a common interface for traditional photo-retouching / compositing as well as
RAW developing there's also features I miss right away.

Photoshop's RAW development allows for global editing of image properties – pretty much in the way the Develop Persona
works. That way one can raise the exposure or increase contrast – changes do apply to the whole image. Apart from that
one may use any combination of tools for non-destructive brush based operations, as well as graduated filters. The impact
of any contributing tool may get changed at any point in time. Even after bringing the edited RAW image into the main
PS application as a smart object and having worked for hours in a composition, one can still go back and each and any global,
operation as well as brush based RAW operations are still Life. One at that point can even delete the original RAW file, as
it has completely gotten embedded into the .psd. If so desired, one could strip out any changes and export to .dng again.

The Affinity RAW editor seems not to have any of the tools I just described. Also, RAW development in Affinity seems to be
understood as the first step in a linear stream of editing operations. One may of course re-enter the Develop workspace,
but all tools have forgotten the settings one had dialed in initially.

I wonder what your plans are in terms of RAW editing: Do you plan to keep Develop-setting Live?
Is non-destructive brush / gradient-based editing with any combination of tools on the roadmap?

 

I also wonder what happens if one uses a couple of RAW based images on a large Poster. In Photoshop one may use
these images at their full size or as a thumbnail. But one can scale that thumbnail up again or paste it into a new file
and raise the output size here. As the RAW information is encapsulated in the Smart Object one never loses resolution.
Obviously one shouldn't go larger that the original RAW but for all smaller output sizes one can practically forget about
resolution issues. Is there a similar solution inside Affinity Photo?