Dark RAW files

[smadell]

R C-R...

DxO applies a standard preset by default. But this can be changed. And it is possible to remove ALL corrections. When all correction is removed both in Affinity and in DxO, the differences are still quite profound.

[Gregory St. Laurent]

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

From what I read here, DxO always applies a 'standard' preset by default:

I believe the same is true for LR.

I have the "standard" default preset turned off in the options, so it is opening all raw files flat.

[lepr]

.

 

[pixelcoder]

Seems like it affects only the windows version, wich I think uses a different raw engine than the iOS and Mac version.

 

here a screenshot from the iPad version of your raw. 

Cheers,

lutz

 

[Gregory St. Laurent]

4 minutes ago, pixelcoder said:

Seems like it affects only the windows version, wich I think uses a different raw engine than the iOS and Mac version.

 

here a screenshot from the iPad version of your raw. 

Cheers,

lutz

 

WOW! big difference!

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, Gregory St. Laurent said:

I have the "standard" default preset turned off in the options, so it is opening all raw files flat.

So what does that blue "Apply Preset" button in your earlier screenshot do? (I don't have DxO or the like so I have no idea how that works.)

 

Also, it could just be because the screenshots are JPEGs but while the DxO one is certainly brighter, it also seem to have blown out a lot of details, particularly noticeable in the white water, compared to the Affinity one.

 

Maybe I am totally wrong about all this, but it suggests to me that DxO must still be applying some processing even with the standard preset turned off (because otherwise there is no image to display other than a pre-corrected preview version in the RAW file) & that the 'correct' exposure (& saturation & so on) is at least partially a matter of subjective preferences rather than any objective standard.

[lepr]

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[Gregory St. Laurent]

13 minutes ago, R C-R said:

So what does that blue "Apply Preset" button in your earlier screenshot do? (I don't have DxO or the like so I have no idea how that works.)

 

Also, it could just be because the screenshots are JPEGs but while the DxO one is certainly brighter, it also seem to have blown out a lot of details, particularly noticeable in the white water, compared to the Affinity one.

 

Maybe I am totally wrong about all this, but it suggests to me that DxO must still be applying some processing even with the standard preset turned off (because otherwise there is no image to display other than a pre-corrected preview version in the RAW file) & that the 'correct' exposure (& saturation & so on) is at least partially a matter of subjective preferences rather than any objective standard.

You click on the Blue "Apply Preset" button to apply any presets (Which I didn't) that you have saved or apply any that came installed with the program. You can also from here click on "Customize" and start applying changes to the RAW file that you can in-turn save as a preset similar to how Lightroom does it.

[smadell]

OK, guys. Now I'm really confused. I have 4 different Raw processors on my drive. I opened the same .ORF file in Raw Photo Processor (RPP), Iridient Developer, DxO PhotoLab, and Affinity Photo (but only with the Serif Engine, since I am using El Capitan which - I assume - will not handle this particular RAW file through the Apple engine). I got interesting results. In summary, the Affinity Photo (Serif Engine) and RPP results are basically the same; the results from DxO and Iridient are the same, but very different from the first two.

Here is the Affinity Photo version:

Here is the Raw Photo Processor version:

Here is the DxO PhotoLab version:

Here is the Iridient Developer version:

All of these screenshots were taken with the Raw developers set (as close as I could tell) to open the files with no default processing. Obviously, there are at least 2 different methodologies going on here. What"s the explanation? I have no clue.

[Gregory St. Laurent]

I too have several RAW processors but the only one that is dark is AP with the Serif engine for me (which is the only one the Windows version uses). I'm using the latest version of Windows 10 with all updates applied and is the same across 3 different computers with 2 dedicated and 1 with integrated graphics. I'm thinking maybe that the Serif Engine doesn't apply any of the in camera setting to the RAW file where as other editors use the camera settings as a base point. But when I see the earlier post of the iPad and Mac screenshot all bets are off.

[R C-R]

27 minutes ago, smadell said:

All of these screenshots were taken with the Raw developers set (as close as I could tell) to open the files with no default processing.

If there is literally no processing there is no image to see, other than possibly (but unlikely in this context) one derived from a thumbnail the camera generates & includes in the RAW file.

 

Also, in most of your screenshots it appears that some kind of processing is being performed. For example, in the DxO one, "DxO Smart Lighting" is set to "Uniform" & "Slight," whatever that means. In the Iridient one, the "Settings" panel seems to indicate a preview of a Custom preset of some sort is being shown. The RPP one is showing a "Film-like" curve with a 50 (units unknown) value. There is nothing obvious in the Affinity screenshot but regardless of the RAW engine or any other setting, if there is no processing there is no RGB image for the app to display, whatever that app might be.

[h_d]

1 hour ago, smadell said:

 

Here is the Iridient Developer version:

All of these screenshots were taken with the Raw developers set (as close as I could tell) to open the files with no default processing. Obviously, there are at least 2 different methodologies going on here. What"s the explanation? I have no clue.

 

Looks like Iridient is using the same settings as the camera for its input profile, which I would guess (we're all guessing) means it's applying the same settings as it would if the image was shot .jpg.

 

This is what happens when I switch to "Camera RGB" profile in the Colour Tab in Iridient:

 

 

My Affinity Photo and RPP are similar to yours. I don't have DxO

[smadell]

So, I was tinkering around with DxO some more. I wanted to figure out why it seemed to be adding something to my "no correction" preset. It turns out that DxO will, by default, render the colors according to the camera's default. I'm not even entirely sure what that means! But, if I open the RAW file with no corrections (no geometry corrections, no color or tonal changes, nothing....) but then change the panel labelled "Color Rendering" to a Generic Setting called "Neutral Color, Realistic Tonality (gamma 2.2)" I get an image that is more-or-less in line with the un-corrected images from Affinity and RPP.

I believe this is the way to go (for me, at least - and zfor now). This seems to give me a flat image to start with, and gets all my highlights, shadows, and midtones squeezed down into a usable histogram - it seems to avoid the clipping problems that were evident in the setting I had been using previously.

Once I get my histogram properly placed and my white balance corrected, most of the other work can be done in the Photo Persona of Affinity Photo.

[Gregory St. Laurent]

2 hours ago, smadell said:

So, I was tinkering around with DxO some more. I wanted to figure out why it seemed to be adding something to my "no correction" preset. It turns out that DxO will, by default, render the colors according to the camera's default. I'm not even entirely sure what that means! But, if I open the RAW file with no corrections (no geometry corrections, no color or tonal changes, nothing....) but then change the panel labelled "Color Rendering" to a Generic Setting called "Neutral Color, Realistic Tonality (gamma 2.2)" I get an image that is more-or-less in line with the un-corrected images from Affinity and RPP.

I believe this is the way to go (for me, at least - and zfor now). This seems to give me a flat image to start with, and gets all my highlights, shadows, and midtones squeezed down into a usable histogram - it seems to avoid the clipping problems that were evident in the setting I had been using previously.

Once I get my histogram properly placed and my white balance corrected, most of the other work can be done in the Photo Persona of Affinity Photo.

For me I wish Affinity Photo had the ability to open the RAW files with the camera setting as a base line. When I'm editing a wedding with hundreds of files I need a place to start I can't take the extra time to start from scratch, it would take me 4X longer and time is money!

[Gregory St. Laurent]

I don't know what happened but I updated to the release ver. 1.6.3.103 and the Develop persona seems to be a lot better now!

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Gregory St. Laurent said:

For me I wish Affinity Photo had the ability to open the RAW files with the camera setting as a base line.

But if @h_d is right in his guess about what Iridient does (which of course may or may not be true), that would mean this baseline would be about the same as if AP was using the same settings that the camera would use if the photo was shot in the JPEG format to begin with. That probably would save time but I am not sure it would really be a good starting point.

[Gregory St. Laurent]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

But if @h_d is right in his guess about what Iridient does (which of course may or may not be true), that would mean this baseline would be about the same as if AP was using the same settings that the camera would use if the photo was shot in the JPEG format to begin with. That probably would save time but I am not sure it would really be a good starting point.

I shoot in RAW for the ability to tweak with greater latitude than a JPEG would provide, I'm not looking to adjust every RAW from scratch. Probably 70% of my shots are pretty much fine out of camera with little adjustments needed. On a large photo shoot such as a wedding, editing every image from scratch would put me out of business. For some reason the newest release version has fixed most of my problem with the develop persona!

[R C-R]

31 minutes ago, Gregory St. Laurent said:

Probably 70% of my shots are pretty much fine out of camera with little adjustments needed. On a large photo shoot such as a wedding, editing every image from scratch would put me out of business.

I don't doubt that, but some of the default settings/presets all these apps use to develop an image (because "out of camera" there is no image until it is developed) seem to blow out a lot of highlights. I am just guessing but I would think that would be problematic for wedding photography (white wedding dresses & dark tuxedos & such), so maybe the real issue is how to quickly find the ones that need more tweaking to avoid sacrificing the greater latitude shooting RAW enables?

 

I am not sure what the best way to do that might be but I suspect Affinity Photo is not the app best suited for that part of your workflow. 

[Gregory St. Laurent]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

I don't doubt that, but some of the default settings/presets all these apps use to develop an image (because "out of camera" there is no image until it is developed) seem to blow out a lot of highlights. I am just guessing but I would think that would be problematic for wedding photography (white wedding dresses & dark tuxedos & such), so maybe the real issue is how to quickly find the ones that need more tweaking to avoid sacrificing the greater latitude shooting RAW enables?

 

I am not sure what the best way to do that might be but I suspect Affinity Photo is not the app best suited for that part of your workflow. 

I do find highlights easily get blown out with all the whites in a wedding shoot but a quick slide of the highlights remedies that instantly without having to set everything else. That is the beauty of using RAW files and with the new release Ver. 1.6.3.103 the RAW developer is behaving much better. I'm not getting the totally flat dark images anymore out of the Develop Persona.

[BrentB]

I have the same issue.  When I open RAW files in Lightroom, Adobe RAW, or even Preview on my Mac, the image nearly matches the corresponding .jpg pair in terms of exposure.  These are file pairs from three different cameras (Nikon, Canon, Sony).  When I open them in Affinity Photo, the difference is remarkable - even with the Tone Curve applied in Develop, they're still very dark and appear markedly underexposed.  And flat.  Really, really flat.  The only way I can get them close is by using Apple RAW instead of Serif and still using the Tone Curve - even then, they're still not that close.

 

I have no idea what, if anything, Lightroom, Adobe RAW, and Preview are doing to the RAW image - but most of my RAW files look awful when opened in AP using the default (Serif) engine and it's odd this might be the way it's supposed to be working - even with the Tone Curve "preset."  Everyone else I know who has used Affinity Photo shared similar concerns.  I see others on the forum have noticed the same issue having come from a variety of other image editing products.

 

I have never heard anything like what R C-R said about Lightroom applying a preset.  I can't find anything when searching to back that up either, nor can I find evidence of it in my current version of Lightroom when opening RAW files taken with the Canon we have here at work.  Not saying it's not possible, just that I've not heard of that.

 

I guess the bottom line is if RAW files don't look underexposed and flat with other image editing products, it seems odd that they would in Affinity Photo (and more odd that this would be done intentionally).

[Gregory St. Laurent]

6 minutes ago, BrentB said:

I have the same issue.  When I open RAW files in Lightroom, Adobe RAW, or even Preview on my Mac, the image nearly matches the corresponding .jpg pair in terms of exposure.  These are file pairs from three different cameras (Nikon, Canon, Sony).  When I open them in Affinity Photo, the difference is remarkable - even with the Tone Curve applied in Develop, they're still very dark and appear markedly underexposed.  And flat.  Really, really flat.  The only way I can get them close is by using Apple RAW instead of Serif and still using the Tone Curve - even then, they're still not that close.

 

I have no idea what, if anything, Lightroom, Adobe RAW, and Preview are doing to the RAW image - but most of my RAW files look awful when opened in AP using the default (Serif) engine and it's odd this might be the way it's supposed to be working - even with the Tone Curve "preset."  Everyone else I know who has used Affinity Photo shared similar concerns.  I see others on the forum have noticed the same issue having come from a variety of other image editing products.

 

I have never heard anything like what R C-R said about Lightroom applying a preset.  I can't find anything when searching to back that up either, nor can I find evidence of it in my current version of Lightroom when opening RAW files taken with the Canon we have here at work.  Not saying it's not possible, just that I've not heard of that.

 

I guess the bottom line is if RAW files don't look underexposed and flat with other image editing products, it seems odd that they would in Affinity Photo (and more odd that this would be done intentionally).

I agree this is an issue that still plagues the current version. The newest update does seem a little better but it's still frustrating that all my raws are showing very underexposed when I know they are not!

[BrentB]

A quick-and-dirty comparison using Affinity Photo 1.6.6 trial (since I'm at work).  The top is Serif and tone curve applied via the Develop Assistant settings (the best possible setup using the Serif).  The bottom is the RAW file opened in Preview.  Personally, I find the difference significant.  Not the end of the world, but I'm not excited about doing more work than I have to in order to get my RAW file to a decent starting point in order to start processing.  One of several trade-offs of paying $50 once vs. the $29.99 a month I was spending on Adobe CC, I guess...

 

 

[BrentB]

RAW in Lightroom (top) and Preview (bottom).  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

[v_kyr]

Well it always depends how a certain RAW converter software treats camera specific RAW files here.

Most camera vendor specific and commercial RAW converters do also take initially over and into account some cam vendor specific data here, meaning certain makernote specific informations about cam captured whitebalance, lighting, contrast, sharpening and lens distortion correction settings etc. Other RAW converters do keep things instead more plain and flat as default when opening cam specific RAW files.

So a bunch of RAW converters do initially apply some sort of initial lighting, contrast and sharpening values/corrections as default, which they do read out from the RAW file supplied EXIF data (often makernote specific settings which are nowadays partly also known to them, or which they found out to interpret over time). Though of course not every software knows how to deal with every cam vendor/brand specific exposure value settings here. - For example not every RAW software which can read Nikon NEF files knows how to deal with Nikon cam D-Lighting, Picture Control, etc. settings, though Nikons own software of course knows how to deal with these things.

Affinity Photo keeps things AFAI can tell very basic here, meaning they don't apply as default any lighting, contrast or sharpening adjustments etc. here, thus it's developed RAW defaults look more flat and pale here in contrast to the defaults other RAW converter software give.

EXAMPLES:

• Nikon NX-D
  
  
   
• Adobe Camera Raw
  
  
   
• Apple Preview
  
  
   
• Affinity Photo
  
  

[LCPete]

• I’m getting a similar issue with the iPad version 
• I’m loading in Canon 6D mk 2 raws and about 2 out of 10 images are very dark in affinity develop , unusable , I ended up using affinity on my PC to convert them which was fine 
• frustrating as affinity on iPad is otherwise excellent but this issue is a real problem for me as I end up having to process my raws on PC anyway