Destructive?

[sailfree]

Read a review that auto adjustments in Affinity are destructive.  If true, please provide more info.  I currently use Lightroom and all adjustments are non destructive.  Thanks.

[firstdefence]

Welcome to the forum

The Auto levels, Contrast, Colour or White Balance are destructive but they are not the only means for image adjustments.

You don't have to use Auto adjustments, you can use the Layer Adjustments for fine tuning an image, personally I never use Auto levels, Contrast, Colour or White Balance.

 

https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Adjustments/adjustment_applying.html

[Fixx]

I so wish layer adjustments had auto button.

[firstdefence]

35 minutes ago, Fixx said:

I so wish layer adjustments had auto button.

I think "auto" seldom gets it right and invariably you would end up tweaking the Auto adjustment but as a quick starting point I suppose it would help. I prefer the preset option but this can be very image specific, so what works for one image, may have a totally different affect on a similar image.

[R C-R]

I know of two ways to make the 4 auto enhancement adjustments more or less non-destructive:

Duplicate the image before applying any of them & apply them only to the duplicate. That way, there is always a 'backup' of the unadjusted image, so you can delete the dup & return to it, or use the Erase Brush Tool on the dup layer to selectively 'undo' parts of it.

Make a snapshot of the document before applying any adjustments (if needed -- there may already be one depending on the file type of the file you opened), & make others as needed after applying the different ones. That way, you can restore to any snapshot, or often even better, use the Undo Brush Tool & its opacity, hardness, etc. settings to selectively restore parts of the image to any previous 'snapshot' state.

However, since either one can substantially increase file size when saved, as @firstdefence mentioned, using adjustment layers instead often is a better alternative, even though that means manual tweaking.

[Fixx]

5 hours ago, firstdefence said:

"auto" seldom gets it right and invariably you would end up tweaking the Auto adjustment but as a quick starting point I suppose it would help.

That is how I do it in PS; in Curves or Levels click "auto" and after that tweak back as needed. That way there is no need to wonder where is the clip point and process is very quick.