Please remember RAW processing settings

[matthiasbasler]

Most (if not all) RAW processing software I have worked with so far have ways to remember settings and later continue the RAW processing with these settings or perform adjustments to these settings if the final outcome (e.g. final JPG image) proved to be not perfect.

 

There are two aspects here which imho need improvement to make this iterating process less frustrating:

 

1. Saving photo-specific RAW settings (e.g. to sidecar files)

Currently Affinity Photo has only one rather cumbersome way to achieve this: You have to create a Preset for each tab where you changed settings and if you re-open the RAW file later you have to load all these presets again. (Affinity Photo shows them selected, but this is irritating since they have not actually been applied. Only after switching to another preset and then back are the changes taking effect. - A small bug I'd say.)

 

Most other RAW processing software either automatically stores or optionally allows to store a small sidecar file together with the (unaltered) RAW file so that if the RAW is later opened again, the user can continue where it left off.

An alternative is Affinity keeping an internal database about the settings of each RAW file, but this approach usually fails if images are moved to a different folder or archived (which happens to all my images after processing) and Affinity doesn't know about this.

 

2. Allow switching back to real RAW processing from Photo persona

Also when I developed a photo and then switched back to the Develop persona (without doing any edits inbetween, I should note), I found myself not editing the original RAW file, but applying further edits on the already processed image. This was a big disappointment, as it defies the benefits of working on the RAW file.

This means for example that If I found out I applied too strong noise reduction or too strong highlights clipping then switching to Develop again does not help, because what is lost in the developed image cannot be recovered.

 

Please offer the user an easy possibility to apply changes to the originally processed image afterwards. (Which means, that the application must remember the RAW settings at the time the image was last developed).

 

Matthias

[Brian D]

Non destructive develop layer is on the roadmap (https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10075-affinity-photo-feature-roadmap/), so I think it's being worked on... but yeah, I'd like to second this request, it's pretty important for raw development.

[Space Martin]

What is the progress of this?

I feel minimum is to support (1), but (2) would also be nice...

[Patrick Connor]

@Space Martin

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums

we do not tend to discuss progress on feature requests, but Affinity Photo is not currently designed for non-destructive RAW editing, and both of these suggestions would need that approach

[Space Martin]

Thanks!

The way I understand it, (1) does not need non-destructive approach:

it's basically just autosaving a raw-preset with the same name as the raw file (in the same dir as the raw file) when the user presses develop.
And when a raw file is opened, check if there's a raw-preset with the same name, and if so, load it.

(If the user developed a raw into a afphoto, it should not be updated/reflect changes to the raw-preset automatically)

[Space Martin]

Photoshop does both (1) and (2), however the simple auto-save preset approach (1) is the most important (it accounts for like 98% of of my use cases)
This is because you rarely need to do more than what you can do with the raw tools.
And also if you use (2), your developed raw document will be much larger on disk than just adding a preset file.