A bit lost between others soft, and Develop & Photo

[Scriblerus]

Hi everyone. I need to notice first that I'm kind of new to editing picture in general, but also with Affinity (it's been a month I'm using it, but hardly).

Even If I watched almost the entire (well mades) movies by the team, and even a bit more made on youtube by other people (even members of this forum), I'm still a bit lost with how to use the software properly, especially with what we can do for a raw file before processing to Photo.

I also need to say I use Fast Raw Viewer to see my Raw files before editing to Affinity, I took it because my Fuji Raws are not supported by Apple preview.

And I also have Darktable on my desktop (I dont use it that much). That's all I've got (and no experience with LR, Photoshop or others).

My main question is a general one, not aim to a specific tool or filter or function : what are the things we are "more" suppose to edit on the Develop panel that we should do before getting to the Photo part. Because what I'm a bit lost about is there are multiple tools available in both panels so I feel like I could do either 10% of adjustment in the Develop window then a lot on the Photo one, or the opposite, doing 90% of adjustment in the Develop and almost nothing in the Photo one.

For examples B&W, Curves, Exposure, WB or Shadows and Highlights are things I dont know if I should play on them on the Develop or Photo window because we can find them on both.

My pictures are 90% of the time in RAW, and I never do huge huge modifications ( I never add items like a sky, or a tree, I dont do replacement), I most of the time try to correct things and enlight a bit the general mood of the picture. I also do a lot of bracketting so HDR merge is a huge addition to Affinity on my side, but once again, I play with many functions but then once I'm in the Photo part I feel like I have the same menus, same functions.

Thanks a lot

[firstdefence]

In Develop Persona you have more latitude to make adjustments such as better control over white balance, exposure, curves and shadow and highlights. Use Develop Persona to get your image as close to how you would like it to be and then export it into Photo Persona and make adjustments not found in Develop Persona.

[hifred]

9 hours ago, Scriblerus said:

My pictures are 90% of the time in RAW, and I never do huge huge modifications ( I never add items like a sky, or a tree, I dont do replacement), I most of the time try to correct things and enlight a bit the general mood of the picture. I also do a lot of bracketting so HDR merge is a huge addition to Affinity on my side...

If it is so, that you shoot in RAW and only want to work with what is already in the shot - then you don't need Affinity Photo or Photoshop or any layer based image editor. Layer based image editors are made for compositing various images and for adding special effects and text and such.

You should find all required tools for exposure and tonal correction in any good standalone RAW editor - any of them offers a lot more performance than Photos Develop persona (in particular when working with series of images).

HDR merging is doable directly inside some RAW processors too - I'm no expert in this area but I know for sure that one can do this in Lightroom.

 

 

[Scriblerus]

Thanks for your answers.

@firstdefence : that's what I was thinking so I'm gonna keep it that way.

@hifred : Well. I'm still trying to find "my" way of dealing with the workflow because there are pros and cons for my using of affinity.

For example, as you said, if it's just to process raw with basics editing, I guess I could use DK (even if I think Affinity has a better UI and works better with my doped MBA), but for example DK is not that good for HDR merging (even more when you need to align pictures). LR can probably do it but Affinit is less expensive and do it well.

On the other side, for batch processing raw with just a few editing, that's true that because we cannot apply presets to a batch processing, that's not that easy to work on several pictures quickly.

On 11/30/2018 at 10:16 AM, hifred said:

If it is so, that you shoot in RAW and only want to work with what is already in the shot - then you don't need Affinity Photo or Photoshop or any layer based image editor. Layer based image editors are made for compositing various images and for adding special effects and text and such.

That's most of my workflow right (let's say 80%). I can sometimes do a bit more but maybe not enough to required a layer based image editor.

But then what could be the most appropriate RAW editor that is not LR or DK, with some kind of "easy" UI like Affinity does ?

[hifred]

2 hours ago, Scriblerus said:

But then what could be the most appropriate RAW editor that is not LR or DK, with some kind of "easy" UI like Affinity does ?

There's a huge variety of nice RAW processors, with or without database. All of them (in contrast to Affinity) load RAWs pretty much instantly + let you very easily transfer settings from one image to any number of other images. Some RAW processors support layer based editing and complex masking, even compositing several images together and basic text overlays. Just have a look yourself and try out what seems interesting to you.

[Polygonius]

2 hours ago, Scriblerus said:

On the other side, for batch processing raw with just a few editing, that's true that because we cannot apply presets to a batch processing, that's not that easy to work on several pictures quickly.

Batch processing works very well in AP, at least for jpg, png, tiff... for RAW  idont know. But for "images" just start a batch puts as many files you want and run one or several macros you have prepaired... works really well!

But yeah, you seems to be more the DAM type of user. AFAIK Serif is working on such an App, which fits more to your wishes. Look the feature request forum. 

[Scriblerus]

Ok thanks (I even see hifred has a poll about this, I'm gonna check it)

I think I'm gonna keep training on Affinity for some specific pictures, since I bought it anyway. But I'm gonna look for a DAM on the side too.

[hifred]

On 12/1/2018 at 12:30 PM, Polygonius said:

Batch processing works very well in AP, at least for jpg, png, tiff... for RAW  idont know

Batch processing is indeed unavailable in APhotos Develop persona.
But silly batch processing was way too unflexible for RAW processing anyway  +  running batch operations would needlessly take ages, – as Affinity needs to open and embed RAWs while other RAW processors simply add  settings files to the RAW (in miliseconds). Presently Affinity can only develop in a lossy fashion, whereas practically any other RAW Editor works losslessly. If  want you may have a look here...