Confused with RAW/Affinity compatibility (split)

[Iggy]

Hello Everybody,

I understand the original poster's question (from this thread) and why he asked it.  I had the same question.  But reading through all of your helpful replies,  there is still something unanswered in my mind.  That is, if Affinity Photo is supposedly the program that "develops" the raw information into the photo that we can see and work on, what is the photo that gets loaded into the Develop viewer BEFORE any changes are made by us?  Isn't that starting/original photo already the raw information processed into a photo (before the develop button is pushed)?

In that case it seems that Affinity Photo is not the raw developer but, instead, the Canon raw developer (if it is a CR2 file) is the raw developer.  It processed the raw data first, before the Develop button was hit.  In other words, the data has already been converted into a photo before being placed into the Affinity Photo Develop Persona.

What then does the Develop Persona do to that photo?  By hitting Develop, do we lose even more information?

Like the original poster, I want to have the most information possible when making the adjustments.  It seems that by hitting Develop on an ALREADY DEVELOPED photo may be taking an extra step and losing more information than if I worked on the original picture made directly from the raw converter (the Canon raw converter).

Please correct my thinking if it is in error.  Thanks!

P.S. Aperture does not have a Develop button.  You get the raw processed file and you work on that.  No further "development" needed.  Like the Original Poster, I don't understand the developing part of Affinity Photo.

[firstdefence]

My take on it is, Develop Persona is much like any other RAW editor, every editor has to interpret the RAW data in order to construct and render an image for you to edit, as far as I am aware it doesn't load the preview JPEG it loads the actual RAW file. Every RAW editor has to load the RAW data and assemble it as an image, from there you "develop' it it to your taste.
Try taking a bad image, maybe under-exposed to blown out and see what Affinity does with it before you touch any sliders in Develop Persona.

Unless you are blowing these RAW files up to large proportions getting hung up on fine detail when the eye cannot perceive that detail is futile, zooming in on an image to the extent that you are never going see in reality is also an exercise in futility. RAW editing is a process of transformation and loss, there is no getting around decay, as soon as you start to edit a RAW you are losing something, you change one pixel and you have lost something. the RAW format isn't the god file for photography it's just a bit more flexible than most of the formats knocking around at the moment.

From the Help Files.

 To work in Develop Persona:

1. Do one of the following:
   • Open a raw image. Develop Persona will analyze the data and pre-process it, ready for editing.*
   • Select a pixel layer and then, from the Persona toolbar, click Develop Persona.
2. Activate your preferred view mode.
3. Adjust the image using the various panel options and tools.
4. (Optional) Sync applied settings within the view and repeat the above step.

5. On the context toolbar, select Develop.

   The photo or layer will adopt all the settings as displayed in the 'None' or 'After' view. The 'Before' view is for comparison purposes only.

*To remove the pre-processing from a raw image, change the develop options available in the Develop Assistant.

To follow on from the Help file Quote.

 To change initial develop settings:

On the Toolbar, do the following:

1. Click the Develop Assistant to open its settings dialog.
2. Choose from the following settings:
   • RAW Engine: Provides a choice of RAW processing engines for you to use—Affinity's own Serif Labs engine or Apple's Core Image RAW engine.
   • Lens corrections: Enable or disable automatic lens correction for supported camera lens profiles.
   • Noise reduction: Automatically enables either colour noise reduction, colour and luminance noise reduction, or disables any initial noise reduction. Colour noise reduction is recommended for the vast majority of camera raw images.
   • RAW output format: Choose between RGB (16 bit) or RGB (32 bit HDR) output when developing a raw image. Choosing RGB (32 bit HDR) allows you to maintain a full 32-bit float environment from initial raw development to export and take advantage of extra precision.
   • Tone curve: If the default 'Apply tone curve' option is active, your raw image is adjusted using a suggested tone curve. The 'Take no action' option makes no tonal correction; the image can be altered within the Basic panel later.
   • Alert when assistant takes an action: When checked, a pop-up message appears on loading the RAW image to indicate that adjustments have been applied automatically.
   • Exposure bias: Choose whether to apply exposure bias value if stored in the raw image's EXIF data. Like Histogram stretch, both 'default' and 'initial' give the same results but reports zeroed or actual values, respectively. The 'Take no action' option ignores the exposure bias value.
   • Map default region: Sets the region that displays in the Location panel, if the raw image contains no GPS location data in its EXIF data.

If you choose not to apply initial develop settings, your images will not undergo any processing. They may look flat, dull in tone and lacking contrast, but you will have absolute control in how the image is processed. This approach is similar to "log" video footage that maintains maximum dynamic range before colour grading.

[James Ritson]

Hi Iggy, sorry for the wall of text, I got into it and kept writing..

A RAW file is just digitised information captured from the camera's sensor. When you load a RAW file into Photo, it performs all the usual operations—demosaicing, converting from the camera's colour space to a standardised colour space, tone mapping, etc—in an unbounded 32-bit pixel format, which means you achieve a lossless editing workspace.

This process is equivalent to developing a RAW file in any other software, and it all takes place in the Develop Persona. You mention the Canon RAW developer—not sure what you mean here, are you referring to how the RAW file is captured in camera, or Canon's own developing software? As long as you pass Affinity Photo the .CR2 file, you're working with what was captured in camera: no development has been done prior to that.

The reality is that the RAW data has to be interpolated into something meaningful in order for us to edit it. I'd recommend checking out my article "RAW, actually" on the Affinity Spotlight site if you're interested, as I believe it'll help explain why the RAW information has to be "developed": https://affinityspotlight.com/article/raw-actually/

 

7 hours ago, Iggy said:

Like the original poster, I want to have the most information possible when making the adjustments.  It seems that by hitting Develop on an ALREADY DEVELOPED photo may be taking an extra step and losing more information than if I worked on the original picture made directly from the raw converter (the Canon raw converter).

If you use Canon's RAW converter, it should allow you to export in several formats such as JPEG and TIFF. A 16-bit TIFF in a wide colour space would be an appropriate high quality option here, which you could then open in Affinity Photo and edit. However, as I've said above, Affinity Photo's Develop stage is the equivalent to any other software's RAW development stage—so no, you won't be losing any more information if you simply choose to develop your RAW files in Affinity Photo.

When you actually click the blue Develop button, that's when things change. By default, you go from the unbounded 32-bit environment with a wide colour space to an integer 16-bit format with whatever your working colour space is set to—usually sRGB, which is a much more limited gamut. This is basically the same process as when you export from your RAW development software to a raster format like TIFF or JPEG. You can of course change both these default options if you wish to continue working in 32-bit (not recommended for the majority of users) and in a wider colour space (you can set the output profile to something like ROMM RGB which is a version of ProPhoto that ships with the app).

As regards quality loss—technically, there will always be a loss, but it is exactly the same loss you would experience when you export from any other RAW development software. As soon as you export to JPEG or TIFF, you're converting the bit depth and also the colour profile, both of which are typically lossy operations. In most use cases, however, this loss is negligible. The exception to this might be if you don't recover extreme highlight detail in the Develop Persona before developing—this detail is then clipped and lost. Similarly, if you have a scene with very intense colours and you convert to sRGB, you're potentially throwing away the most intense colour values because they can't be represented in sRGB's smaller gamut.

Here's a workflow I use for the majority of my images, and if you follow it I can pretty much promise you needn't worry about loss of quality:

1) Open RAW file in Develop Persona

2) Access the Develop Assistant and remove the default tone curve (see https://youtu.be/s3nCN4BZkzQ)

3) If required, pull the highlights slider back to recover extreme highlight detail (use the clipping indicators top right of the interface to determine this)

4) Check the Profiles option, and set the output profile to ROMM RGB (i.e. ProPhoto)

5) Add any other changes e.g. noise reduction, custom tone curve (I usually add a non-linear boost to the shadows and mid-tones)

6) Develop. This will now convert the image to 16-bit with a wide colour space

7) Edit further in the main Photo Persona. This is where I'll typically do the tonal work as well (instead of doing it in the Develop Persona) using Curves, Brightness/Contrast etc

8) Export! For sharing (e.g. if exporting to JPEG), don't forget to click the More button and set ICC Profile to sRGB—this will convert the output to sRGB and ensure it displays correctly under conditions that are not colour-managed.

Hope that helps.

[Iggy]

Hello Mr. Ritson!

Thank you for the "wall of text"!  That often comes with complete and clear answers (just like your tutorials, by the way, which I nearly binge watch in the evenings).  I greatly appreciated your response, and I also enjoyed reading the link you provided on raw files.  I've taken your advice from here and from one of your tutorials and have changed the Affinity Photo setting to 32-bit.  I don't know why people would NOT do this, other than larger file sizes.  Who wouldn't want to be working on their photos with all the information from the raw data?

Anyway, what I meant by Canon raw converter was the drop down menu in the Develop Assistant that allows the user to choose the RAW Engine as "Apple (Core Image RAW)".  My question: If I already have converted the raw data from the file using the Apple RAW Engine, then what does the Develop button accomplish?  The data has already been "developed" into the picture that I am manipulating in the Develop Persona.  Why then the need to Develop it again by pressing the Develop button? 

It's kind of moot at this point, as you have already kindly informed us of the ability to develop with 32-bit, instead of with 16 or 8-bit.  But, academically, my question still remains because another program I have used (but I love Affinity Photo the best since getting it two days ago!) allows the user to do adjustments directly on that image processed from the raw data WITHOUT having to press a develop button once the data is initially transferred/processed into the image.  I understand that, in the other program, when the image is then exported as a JPEG, or TIFF, or whatever, then in effect it is being "developed" at that point.  But why the Develop button in Affinity Photo BEFORE exporting in a different file format?  My guess is that it is because some users would like to work in a smaller color space, or different color space, when utilizing layers, effects, etc., and that is the first step in changing those parameters?  But I am a newbie so I hardly understand color spaces, etc.

Thanks again, and I look forward to learning from more of your great tutorials!

 

[lepr]

.

[James Ritson]

Hi again Iggy,

1 hour ago, Iggy said:

I've taken your advice from here and from one of your tutorials and have changed the Affinity Photo setting to 32-bit.  I don't know why people would NOT do this, other than larger file sizes.  Who wouldn't want to be working on their photos with all the information from the raw data?

Hmm, I'm not really advocating using 32-bit—it's useful for some scenarios, but I would actually recommend the opposite. 16-bit precision is often more than enough to contain all the meaningful information from RAW files. Unless you're using some specific medium format cameras, most RAW data is recorded at 14 or 12-bit precision (depending on the sensor and ADC). 32-bit is a different beast entirely, and you'll find adjustments and filters behave differently, plus some blend modes will look wrong or clamp values in unbounded.

Bottom line, please believe me when I say 16-bit is enough for your images! I hope I haven't misrepresented myself too much, I did say that 32-bit isn't recommended for most users. Honestly, if you make sure you're not clipping tones in the image, you will find 16-bit more than enough for your images.

I guess the whole Develop concept is a little strange to grasp, but here's an equivalent scenario using Lightroom and Photoshop as an example:

1. Open an image in Lightroom
2. Perform basic edits to the image (this is your Develop Persona)
3. Send the file to Photoshop (this is when you click Develop and move to the Photo Persona)
4. Perform edits in Photoshop, save as PSD (when you save your document as an .afphoto file)
5. Export for sharing/delivery

Hopefully that might clear it up?

Cheers!

[Fixx]

1 hour ago, Iggy said:

changed the Affinity Photo setting to 32-bit.  I don't know why people would NOT do this, other than larger file sizes.

I do not believe 32-bit image would be of any practical use unless you do real extreme colour transformations. 16-bit is a plenty for most users.

1 hour ago, Iggy said:

But why the Develop button in Affinity Photo BEFORE exporting in a different file format?

I think this is because AP does not user RAW data in normal image processing but its own format. Performance and code demands do not allow the use of RAW. So when you do edits in develop module you access RAW data, and when you develop and use normal module with its power tools you use optimized image format.

[James Ritson]

17 minutes ago, Fixx said:

I do not believe 32-bit image would be of any practical use unless you do real extreme colour transformations. 16-bit is a plenty for most users.

Outside of HDR and 3D, working in 32-bit has some benefits for edge cases e.g. astrophotography, heavy tonal manipulation, colour space conversions. For day to day editing, though, it can sometimes introduce extra issues into your workflow, especially if you use blend modes and filters like sharpening.

17 minutes ago, Fixx said:

I think this is because AP does not user RAW data in normal image processing but its own format. Performance and code demands do not allow the use of RAW. So when you do edits n develop module you access RAW data, and when you develop and use normal module with its power tools you use optimized image format.

The main difference is the pixel format. The Develop Persona works in unbounded 32-bit with a ROMM RGB colour profile. Unless the defaults are changed, clicking Develop converts the image to 16-bit integer with an sRGB colour profile. That's the key difference. The Develop Persona doesn't work with the RAW data since that would be meaningless—it has to be demosaiced, converted from the camera's native colour space, tone mapped, gamma corrected, have lens corrections/pixel remapping applied and so on. This is true of any RAW developer.

I think the main confusion arises from how most RAW developers work "non-destructively", in the sense that they always re-develop the original RAW file using settings stored in a sidecar file (e.g. XMP). So you have this perception of working on the "RAW data", when really it's the same as when Photo creates something meaningful from the original RAW file. The difference is that Photo doesn't store develop settings—the Develop Persona is literally there to get from A to B so you can have a starting point to work on your image further in the Photo Persona. Once you open and develop the image, it's now in a raster format. Reloading the RAW file again would be like starting from scratch. There is a DAM in development (no further news yet) that would provide this kind of "revisiting your original RAW development settings" functionality, however.

[Iggy]

Mr. Ritson and Mr. Fixx, thank you both for your help with my understanding!  

With both of your inputs, it makes sense now, why Aperture (an Apple product) and Affinity Photo are different.  I'm new to this field so the concepts of a "sidecar file" and "raster format" are completely new to me!  That's probably where I got hung up in my question to begin with.  Although I don't understand the hard techie details, this idea of being able to store the changes "re-developing" a RAW file explains why there is no Develop button in Aperture, yet there is one in Affinity Photo.

Again, thank you for your time and attention.  This conversation, at least on my end, has been very informative and enjoyable!

Until my next newbie question!