AP: Using an external RAW editor (Darktable, Win10)

[ColinG]

I never said PS did not have raw editing capabilities, what I said was LR is a dedicated raw editor (and none destructive at that). It is ACR plus. AP is  not a dedicated raw editor it is a PS type of editor that has raw functionality up to a point. Not sure what using PS has to do with it but for what it is worth I always use it for content aware fill. To be honest I Use LR and PS far more than I use AP. For raw editing LR wins hands down for me and more often that not gives me the results I need. Of course we could also say Adobe Bridge is a raw editor as it can also access ACR.

[AlainP]

I've been a user of Lightroom and PS for years, switched to On1 Photo Raw two years ago, Affinity Photo was not up to the task during those years. During that time I kept testing Rawtherapee and Darktable.... I make a few thousands RAW images a year. Recently I installed Darktable 3.0 as my RAW program of choice, this is the one I got the best results over all the other RAW software. It takes some time to master, but then.... I won't go back.

This being said, in the last weeks I also tested RAW development with Affinity Photo. I got very good results with it. But.... for non destructive work you have to save the files in Aff Photo format... and that fills up a hard drive rather quickly. And when you come back with 400 RAW files.... Affinity is certainly not the way to go. Again.... so far, Darktable is still on top. But as I mentionned above, you have to spend quite some time with it.

Choosing a RAW editor is often a "personnal" thing, it depends of your workflow, how many images you have to work on, and also the camera you use. I always used Canon and Panasonic cameras.

But I have never been able to "integrate" Photo with Darktable. I still have to export to JPG from Darktable and then edit with Photo.

 

[AffinityFran]

20 minutes ago, AlainP said:

But I have never been able to "integrate" Photo with Darktable. I still have to export to JPG from Darktable and then edit with Photo.

 

On 8/31/2018 at 9:54 AM, AffinityFran said:

It is possible to more or less integrate Affinity Photo with Darktable. There is an extension to Darktable that gives another option in the export module to open the selected image in The Gimp. It's straightforward to install (copy and paste a few files into a folder) and then instead of pointing it at the gimp executable, you point it at the AP executable.  Then in Darktable you select the file you want to edit in AP,  use the new export option which opens up the file in AP, do your edits, save and close AP and the new image is automatically imported back into DT and grouped with the original source image. Works a treat (on my Win 10 machine - no direct experience of any other OS). some info here: https://github.com/darktable-org/lua-scripts If you are at all technically minded you can edit the script to change references in the displayed text from "gimp" to "external editor" although this is not needed for this to work.

It's not full integration, but it does work and keeps your Affinity Photo edits grouped together in Darktable with the original. Make sure you use a lossless format such as TIFF (16 or 32bit)

[AlainP]

Thanks @AffinityFran I'll give it a try as soon as I can.

[timlt]

I will just mention that although I like DT too and currently use it, if you want INTEGRATION between AP and a competent raw editor, try current version Rawtherapee (5.7).  It has an option in settings to set the path to an external image editor.  I tried setting that to AP 1.8 beta and it works great.  Do your edits in RT, click the external image editor button, and the image loads as a .TIFF in AP with your edits intact. 

[timlt]

@AlainP, since you were recently using ON1 Raw, I'm curious if you've compared ON1 2020 version with DT 3.0 "rc" version that was just released?  I am a big fan of both Rawtherapee and DT, using both for a couple years along with Digikam.  But this last week I started trying On1 2020 and found it had a few things I need, which might also be things you need:

1.  Better integration with AP.  In the ON1 settings, you can specify one or more external editors that On1 will hand off a file to in TIFF, PSD, or JPG format.

2.  Imports Canon's raw CR3 file format.  Something I need, otherwise I was just having to use Adobe DNG converter to convert CR3 > DNG.  Another thing DT doesn't have and won't commit to, although I know for a fact the FOSS libraw library already has CR3 support, because I'm *using* it in the Digikam 7.0 beta version on Windows, just integrated last week.  

3.  Strong metadata support.  Another area that DT doesn't have anything beyond the bare bones.

Bottom line:  ON1 has a *lot* for a DAM feature set and integrates nicely with AP, much better than DT.  So I'm wondering if you had a chance to compare the quality of the RAW conversion output of On1 2020 against DT 3.0. 

 

On 12/3/2019 at 8:20 AM, AlainP said:

Thanks @AffinityFran I'll give it a try as soon as I can.

 

[AlainP]

9 hours ago, timlt said:

Bottom line:  ON1 has a *lot* for a DAM feature set and integrates nicely with AP, much better than DT.  So I'm wondering if you had a chance to compare the quality of the RAW conversion output of On1 2020 against DT 3.0. 

I have recently uninstalled ON1 Photo Raw and I now use only Darktable 3.0 for my RAW editing. One thing I don't like about ON1 is that you have to be connected to your account to use it. Their support dpt told me that they don't "spy" on us but that they only look how we work with the programm.... well, for me, it's kind of spying. 

This aside, I sold all my Canon stuff and I now use Panasonic cameras and Darktable does a very good job, the "Denoise profiled" module works wonderfully well. I really took the time to learn Darktable, and once you fully understand the UI and the modules.... it's hard to go back. And on top of that.... it's free.

 

[timlt]

^That makes sense given you're out of Canon stuff.  I think for a Canon CR3 user, if you want a single tool that can convert your CR3's, process raw, and function as a DAM, ON1 has gotta be high on the list.  If you don't need CR3, from everything I've seen DT or RT, or increasingly even Digikam with its RAW processor, are the equal of most of the commercial offerings in terms of output quality.  

One note for CR3 users:  As I mentioned above, I was interacting with the devs on Digikam, and just pinged them about the fact that the OSS libraw library added CR3 support.  So they patched the Digikam 7.0 beta, now you can directly import CR3 files into Digikam's RAW processor and work with them in the program.  If you want to download Digikam beta and use it together with Affinity Photo as a DAM, they work great together.  

[Greytable]

Hi to All,

Newbie at this photo editing stuff. Got kicked off Adobe for having non authorised photoshop & lightroom programs.

Now have Affinity Photo (legit copy) and Darktable. Would like have Darktable to to be able to open or export to Affinity as in this old post.

Can anyone assist with step by step details of how to do this? Affinity can work with photoshop, if it just worked with darktable would be great.

I am not technically minded, so all the help I can get. 

Can any one help? Thanks in advance.