Sharpening modified when changing between personas

[C_Calmes]

Hello,

 

I experience something strange. When opening a RAW file in Affinity, I make changes in the Develop Persona (colors, exposure, sharpening).

When changing from Develop to Photo persona, I apparently loose the sharpening... (see attach)

Is it normal ? Did I miss something ?

 

Best regards

 

 

[MEB]

Can you please set both views to 100% zoom and check again? When making these type of comparisons always make sure you are seeing the images at 1:1. Affinity Photo adjustments are dynamic and their preview may change slightly depending on the zoom level.

[C_Calmes]

Hi,

I did it. And apparently there's no change. Which is good. :D  

But If you check the two screenshots I've submitted, you'll see that they have the same level of zoom (25% -see photo on the right bottom part). So normaly, I should see the same thing ! It's a bit disturbing to me ! :blink:

[MEB]

Not necessarily because in Develop Persona you are seeing the adjustments applied dynamically to the "original" image while in Photo Persona these adjustments are now baked into the image itself (you can't go back and adjust them anymore - it's a destructive operation) - so the zooming is being generated from a different set of data.

[James Ritson]

Hi,

I did it. And apparently there's no change. Which is good. :D  

But If you check the two screenshots I've submitted, you'll see that they have the same level of zoom (25% -see photo on the right bottom part). So normaly, I should see the same thing ! It's a bit disturbing to me ! :blink:

 

Just to expand technically on MEB's post, what you're seeing is unfortunately a side effect of the way Photo works with its dynamic preview. In order to speed up complex operations and keep previews as realtime as possible, it uses a technique called mipmapping - generating lower resolution versions of your image data that are displayed at lower zoom levels.

 

This speeds things up significantly, but when you're applying certain effects (e.g. convolution filters like blurring, sharpening) the preview is generated on the lower resolution image and therefore may look different. You may notice similar issues with other software; for example, Adobe Camera Raw has a little disclaimer on the Sharpening/Noise Reduction panel telling you to zoom to 100% or larger for a more accurate preview.

 

The reason your image still looks different at the same zoom level is because when you click Develop, the full resolution image is processed and a new set of mipmaps are generated from that - a new mipmap from the full resolution image with sharpening applied will still look different to the old mipmap (where the sharpening is being applied to the low resolution version). Hope that makes sense!

[C_Calmes]

Hi, 

thanks for your answer.

Sounds pretty tricky.

In that case, to avoid any problem, is it better to apply sharppening in the Develop Persona or in the PHoto mode ?

[James Ritson]

Either is fine, it depends on your workflow and what you prefer - if you work a lot with layers and make more use of the Photo persona then you'd probably benefit from using a live filter layer to sharpen your image. If you prefer to do most of your editing in Develop then just use the detail refinement options there.

 

With either scenario, as long as you preview sharpening at 100% or greater zoom then you should find the end result is exactly as you see it. Hope that helps!

[C_Calmes]

It does thanks !

:)

[Rob_Davidson]

On 4/12/2017 at 1:52 PM, James Ritson said:

Either is fine, it depends on your workflow and what you prefer - if you work a lot with layers and make more use of the Photo persona then you'd probably benefit from using a live filter layer to sharpen your image. If you prefer to do most of your editing in Develop then just use the detail refinement options there.

 

With either scenario, as long as you preview sharpening at 100% or greater zoom then you should find the end result is exactly as you see it. Hope that helps!

I realize this is an old post, but I had the same detail refinement issue and was directed here.  Part of your answer left me puzzled.  I thought that one had greater latitude in Develop persona on a raw image than one did after one left the Develop persona and entered the Photo persona.  Yet your answer suggests that detail refinement in the Photo persona would be just as effective as the detail refinement in the Develop persona.

[walt.farrell]

35 minutes ago, Rob_Davidson said:

I thought that one had greater latitude in Develop persona on a raw image than one did after one left the Develop persona and entered the Photo persona.

Mainly, I think, the Develop persona helps you when you need to recover highlight and shadow detail, or work with colors outside the gamut of your normal color profile. You have access to 32-bit linear color in the Develop Persona, and to shadow/highlight details that will be lost when developing to 8- or 16-bit images.

Sharpening, and other aspects of working with an image that don't depend on that greater dynamic and color range, aren't as sensitive to which Persona you use, I believe.