Affinity Develop extension in Photos- confusion!

[Tim Scott]

Hi, new member here with a question. I've recently discovered the delights of processing from RAW and in particular for music gig photos. It was truly eye opening for me to see how much better these types of images can look in comparison to the jpegs. Anyway, my question relates to the way the 'Affinity Develop' extension works in Mac Photos. 

 

So far this is the process I've used (Camera is Olympus OMD EM-10, MacBook Pro Retina 13"):

 

• take photos as RAW and jpeg
• import directly into Photos
• find photo, 'Edit', 'Use RAW as original'
• click on Affinity Develop extension
• edit image using extension controls
• 'Save changes', 'Done'

 

I now have a nice image which still shows in Photos but with an 'R' in the top right hand corner rather than a 'J' suggesting it's still a RAW image. However, if I 'Return' on the new image to edit it again it now says 'jpeg' at the top of the image?? But if I right click on it and choose 'Info' it says it's still a RAW file (.ORF)!!!

 

I'm seriously confused.

 

Does the Develop extension convert the image to a jpeg or is it still a RAW file?

 

Now that I'm less scared of RAW processing in future I think I'll only take RAW images and not bother with the jpegs for this type of photo but I still don't fully understand what the Develop extension is doing to the image. I have previously experimented with using the full Affinity application for developing from RAW and in there the 'Export to jpeg' function is clear but I'm a bit confused about the Develop extension.

 

Really grateful for any help here.

[R C-R]

From the Wikipedia Raw image format article:

Quote

A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner.[1][2] Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor.

Thus, the image you see in Photos is the result of processing ("developing") this data -- there is no RAW image in the file as such. When you have both a jpeg & RAW version stored in Photos "Use RAW as original" tells Photos to show you the image created by processing the RAW data & use it as the basis for edits rather than the jpeg image.

 

In Photos, edited versions of your photos are stored separately from the original "master" versions, which remain in their original unedited form. If you do any edits, Photos displays the edited version but the "Info" panel still displays the data for the original, which is why it says it is a RAW file if you are using that as the original.

[Tim Scott]

Thanks for the reply R-C-R. I think I understand......

 

I've just gone back into Photos and by sharing one of the images I've edited (one with 'R' at the top corner) I can see that it's now a jpeg of 4Mb in size. However, if I right click on the image and ask for 'Info' it tells me that it's still a RAW file (.ORF) of 15.9Mb. I'm guessing that its true size is 15.9 plus the 4 Mb jpeg. For reasons of storage I'd now like to delete the RAW file but keep the jpeg- from what I've read elsewhere this looks less than straightforward. Any advice?

 

Also, unlike the full Affinity application it looks like the Develop extension doesn't allow any configuration of the final image type and size. Is this correct?

 

Once again, many thanks for your help so far. 

[v_kyr]

Well the Photos info shows you the origin of the selected image, so to say if it was initially a RAW or plain JPG image here. - Usually if you want to keep the developed/exported JPGs you place those into a suitable category/folder and afterwards delete just the RAW files. However, note that RAW files are always more like your former time negative film originals here than JPG images which are developed out of these.

[Tim Scott]

Thanks v_kyr. I understand the difference between RAW and JPG. 

 

So it sounds like I need to move the JPG out of Photos and then take it back in after deleting the RAW file. I like Photos as an album resource so ultimately want to keep all my pics in there.

 

[v_kyr]

No you can create new albums for the JPGs from inside of Photos and move selected/desired images then into these. Look at the Photos menus and discover what operations these do offer!

[R C-R]

39 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

No you can create new albums for the JPGs from inside of Photos and move selected/desired images then into these. Look at the Photos menus and discover what operations these do offer!

I do not think albums will help with deleting the RAW versions of photos stored as both RAW & JPEG originals. As I understand it, albums don't actually store anything besides the lists of the items in them -- basically, just pointers to where the originals or edited versions are in the Photos library. So deleting something from an album does not delete the original & deleting an item removes it from any albums it might be in.