Affinity Photo Noticeable Darker than Camera

[Joshua1]

Hi, I have been having this problem for a while now and was wondering if there was a fix for it. When I view my pictures in camera and on Nikon software like ViewNXI it looks much brighter than it does on Affinity Photo. I have windows 10.

 

Here is an example. 

 

ViewNXI - 

 

Affinity - 

[Fixx]

That is RAW file. You are supposed to edit it to make it optimal.

That said, different applications do different automatic preprocessing to RAW images. Nikon apps may read camera produced jpeg optimization instructions, some other apps do some preprocessing developer has deemed necessary. AP does not much preprocessing and it is up to user to adjust image. (And now I wish there was an "auto" button in develop.)

[R C-R]

13 minutes ago, Fixx said:

AP does not much preprocessing and it is up to user to adjust image. (And now I wish there was an "auto" button in develop.)

The Affinity Photo Develop Assistant gives users some control over the settings applied. For Macs, it looks like this:

For Windows it will be different.

[toltec]

14 minutes ago, R C-R said:

 

For Windows it will be different.

Not a lot different

[v_kyr]

Well Nikon's own RAW software probably may use some auto amount of their Active D-Lighting and/or Picture Control settings here (if those are activated in the cam), which then do enhance and influence an image brightness. Other third party RAW software mostly doesn't know how to handle these Nikon vendor specific features/settings and thus you will have to dial in more brightness manually there by altering the image settings yourself accordingly to your liking.

Further when you compare the histograms of both you can see that the Nikon software gives you as default a more evenly distributed and exposed image, AP in contrast does not as default here.

[R C-R]

17 minutes ago, toltec said:

Not a lot different

Well, for Macs we get "Noise reduction" & for Windows you get "Noise correction." 

 

But seriously, the only significant differences are the choice of RAW engines (because for Macs the alternative is the one built into the Mac OS) & the Map Default Region setting, which (I think) hooks into the Mac OS service that displays maps.

[Alfred]

18 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But seriously, the only significant differences are the choice of RAW engines (because for Macs the alternative is the one built into the Mac OS) & the Map Default Region setting, which (I think) hooks into the Mac OS service that displays maps.

 

The Windows version doesn’t offer a choice of Raw engines (because Windows doesn’t have one built in).

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, Alfred said:

The Windows version doesn’t offer a choice of Raw engines (because Windows doesn’t have one built in).

Thanks for the clarification. I thought I had read somewhere on the forums that there was at least one other engine that might appear as a choice if it was installed (maybe a third party one?) but I could easily have misunderstood what was meant.

[Joshua1]

8 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Well Nikon's own RAW software probably may use some auto amount of their Active D-Lighting and/or Picture Control settings here (if those are activated in the cam), which then do enhance and influence an image brightness. Other third party RAW software mostly doesn't know how to handle these Nikon vendor specific features/settings and thus you will have to dial in more brightness manually there by altering the image settings yourself accordingly to your liking.

Further when you compare the histograms of both you can see that the Nikon software gives you as default a more evenly distributed and exposed image, AP in contrast does not as default here.

 

I currently do have D-lighting active in my camera, and I am using Neutral picture control. Do you think I should disable D-lighting or something? What type of Picture control would affinity have the easiest time understanding? 

[Fixx]

If you shoot RAW those setting are ignored and AP imports plain RAW. 

[HVDB Photography]

Very useful  info 

RAW, JPEG and TIFF - What they are and when to use them ?

 

 

[v_kyr]

17 hours ago, Joshua1 said:

 

I currently do have D-lighting active in my camera, and I am using Neutral picture control. Do you think I should disable D-lighting or something? What type of Picture control would affinity have the easiest time understanding? 

No these are pretty Ok settings (fine as they are) for Nikon cams and Nikon related software, as you can see from the well balanced histogram Nikon ViewNX-I or Capture NX-D will show you. - The point is just, that other no Nikon RAW converter software, doesn't know mostly to make any use of those Nikon custom vendor settings and thus you have to tweak things differently, more manually, with other third party software here. Obviously Affinity and other raw converter software don't know Nikons own RAW format as well as Nikon themself, so you have to setup/adjust whitebalance, exposure adjustments etc. with such third party software explicetely in order to yield similar results!

[Joshua1]

I decided to do a little test and found that if I turn off D-Lighting and set Picture Control to standard Affinity and ViewNX-I yield nearly the exact same result.

 

ViewNXI - 

Affinity - 

 

5 hours ago, v_kyr said:

No these are pretty Ok settings (fine as they are) for Nikon cams and Nikon related software, as you can see from the well balanced histogram Nikon ViewNX-I or Capture NX-D will show you. - The point is just, that other no Nikon RAW converter software, doesn't know mostly to make any use of those Nikon custom vendor settings and thus you have to tweak things differently, more manually, with other third party software here. Obviously Affinity and other raw converter software don't know Nikons own RAW format as well as Nikon themself, so you have to setup/adjust whitebalance, exposure adjustments etc. with such third party software explicetely in order to yield similar results!

 

Thank you for this but I was mainly just trying to figure out a way to get the 2 softwares to look the most similar so I don't have to edit it nearly as much to get the same result. It can be very confusing having an image look perfectly balanced in the camera only to see it 4 stops underexposed in processing.

[digger1914]

I thought this was a bug with the histogram???

If I open a raw file (I shoot DNGs) with any other app and compare the histogram with the Affinity one, Affinity is squeezed toward the shadows and or highlights.  If I then make an adjustment and develop then re-enter the raw persona the histogram looks as I would expect.