Images are VERY dark round tripping from Photos

[nosillacast]

Hi - I like to round trip my RAW photos from Apple Photos using the extension to get to Affinity Photo.  Lately (and I'm not sure when this started), sending to and back from Affinity Photo the photos are REALLY dark. If I increase the exposure on an image and then bring it into Affinity Photo, it gets darker and when I increase the exposure in Affinity Photo, it gets even darker when it gets back to Apple Photos.

 

I figured the best way to show you was a simple video:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d4dtot5tlax1c2b/RAW from Photos to Apple Photos dark.mov?dl=0

 

Hope this is one of those, "You dummy, you forgot to click blah blah blah" moments.

 

2016 15" Touch Bar MacBook Pro running High Sierra 13.3.3, Affinity Photo 1.6.6

[James Ritson]

Hi Allison (I think? ), I see the issue with the first part where you're using Edit in Affinity Photo. Apple Photos passes Affinity Photo the RAW file, which it opens in Develop from scratch. Because of this, all the changes you made in Photos won't carry over.

 

The solution here is to simply pass the RAW file to Affinity Photo without making any edits first, then make all your edits within Affinity Photo (you don't have to use Develop necessarily, just develop the image then use adjustment layers in the Photo persona if you wish). Once you save the document and close it, the changes should then be reflected correctly.

 

I've tried this workflow and it seems to work fine here without any issues (no big differences between Photo and Photos), just avoid making any changes first before opening the image in Photo. Do also bear in mind that you lose a lot of flexibility this way: Apple Photos will flatten the document passed back from Photo because it will always be over 16MB in size, so you'll lose your layer structure and non-destructive editing.

 

Hope that helps!

[nosillacast]

Thanks, James, but that change in the process didn't solve it. I opened a photo in Photos, hit Revert to Original to be sure I had no edits. Opened in Affinity Photo, increased the exposure, added a curve, saved, closed and went back to Photos and it's REALLY dark. I can make another video if you like but it behaved exactly as I showed in the first video.

 

Other ideas?  

[v_kyr]

Check the RAW behavior with AP alone (by using Serif's and Apple's RAW engines) and other RAW converters here, that Olympus one looks initially underexposed to me. So you can see how other RAW converters treat that one, meaning if it is initially everywhere more on the dark underexposed side shown up without further brightness tweaking.

[MEB]

Hi nosillacast,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

Cay you please attach/share a link to the RAW file you are using so we can take a closer look?

Thanks.

[Geminitiger]

5 hours ago, James Ritson said:

Hi Allison (I think? ), I see the issue with the first part where you're using Edit in Affinity Photo. Apple Photos passes Affinity Photo the RAW file, which it opens in Develop from scratch. Because of this, all the changes you made in Photos won't carry over.

 

The solution here is to simply pass the RAW file to Affinity Photo without making any edits first, then make all your edits within Affinity Photo (you don't have to use Develop necessarily, just develop the image then use adjustment layers in the Photo persona if you wish). Once you save the document and close it, the changes should then be reflected correctly.

 

I've tried this workflow and it seems to work fine here without any issues (no big differences between Photo and Photos), just avoid making any changes first before opening the image in Photo. Do also bear in mind that you lose a lot of flexibility this way: Apple Photos will flatten the document passed back from Photo because it will always be over 16MB in size, so you'll lose your layer structure and non-destructive editing.

 

Hope that helps!

Hi

if by losing the layer structure and non destructive editing how or where to put photos so it retains all this or otherwise whats the point,im a beginner on this so please explain the best thing to do with the edited photo from AP?

thanks

[nosillacast]

2 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi nosillacast,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

Cay you please attach/share a link to the RAW file you are using so we can take a closer look?

Thanks.

 

Here you go.  It isn't just this file that's having the problem.   This photo was taken last week with an Olympus E-M5 Mark II. I tested a photo from 2014 taken with an Olympus E-M10, and the same thing happened.  Rather than a video, this time I took 4 PNG screenshots to show you the progression of what happens.  They're labeled 01-04.  I've attached that ORF and sidecar file as well.

 

I have been using the edit in Affinity Photo for a long time and it worked great. I wish I could remember exactly when the behavior changed.

 

AMS04231.ORF

P7252019.ORF

P7252019.XMP

[nosillacast]

4 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Check the RAW behavior with AP alone (by using Serif's and Apple's RAW engines) and other RAW converters here, that Olympus one looks initially underexposed to me. So you can see how other RAW converters treat that one, meaning if it is initially everywhere more on the dark underexposed side shown up without further brightness tweaking.

Thanks v_kyr, but that's not the problem. I used to be able to edit photos from inside Photos using the Affinity Photo extension, but recently they get darkened on the way out and again on the way in. I tested with an overexposed photo and the same thing happened (files embedded below).

[v_kyr]

If you didn't altered any settings yourself (in OSX, Photos or AP here), do you remember if this possibly happend after some OSX system updates?

[nosillacast]

7 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

If you didn't altered any settings yourself (in OSX, Photos or AP here), do you remember if this possibly happend after some OSX system updates?

I sure wish I could pinpoint when it started happening, but no, I don't remember. The one thing I can say is that I always update system-level patches and applications to the newest versions as soon as I am aware of them. Mostly do this for security reasons.

[James Ritson]

Hi again, check your Develop Assistant settings. At some point, you've switched to 32-bit output rather than 16-bit. 32-bit will be using a linear colour space, which Apple Photos doesn't interpret correctly, so it's causing the mismatch that you see when passing the document back. Once you switch back to 16-bit and then open a RAW file from Photos, everything should then correct itself (that's my hope, anyway )

 

If you're not sure where the assistant is, check out this video: 

 

 

Bear in mind that you might have to re-open the RAW file once you've changed the setting for it to apply (the above video will need an update when I have time!).

 

Hope that solves it!

[nosillacast]

Huzzah! @James Ritson you solved it!  Changing something from 16 to 32 sounds exactly like something I would do.  32 HAS to be better than 16, right?  Why bother reading up on what it means, just push the button.

 

Thank you so much!

 

@MEB tagging you to make sure you know this one is solved.

[MEB]

Hi nosillacast,

Glad to know the issue was already sorted out. You couldn't be in better hands than with James Ritson.

Thanks for the heads-up.