Affinity can't handle shadows...

[Southwest_Visuals]

Hey Guys, I'm really frustrated.. 

I'm coming from car photography and my style was aways to shoot kinda underexposed and drag the shadows up, to get that moody feeling. When I was using Adobe products, there was absolutely no problem with that. But since I use Affinity, my photos are getting worse, because I'm struggling to get a clear image which is crisp. The image is always kinda washy and I can't bring the shadows back :(

 

For reference 3 pictures:

Original Photo, The one with the watermark is made in affinity and the other one is a 30s lightroom mobile edit, which came out better than the 3h Affinity edit...

 

Thanks in advance!

Max

[fde101]

The Curves adjustment will generally give the best results for something like this.  Shadows & Highlights is not considered to give ideal results by a number of users on the forum.

 

For the below, I just copied your top image, did a New from Clipboard in Photo, hit the Auto White Balance button, added a Clarity Live filter (93%) and a Curves adjustment layer (dragged the bottom up and in a bit and the top straight to the left).  This might not be exactly what you are looking for, but perhaps a step closer?

 

[Southwest_Visuals]

Thanks for the fast reply!

BTW: I noticed I posted into the wrong forum. Could a moderator please move the thread?

 

Yeah I noticed that the curves do a much better job. But still I'm frustrated that such a basic feature, which shouldn't be time consuming or hard to do in my opinion is not working like other softwares on the market

I'm a huge fan of Affinity, but I need to find a solution for this problem or how I can work around it. I use curves for the moment but the general image doesn't just look as crisp...

Maybe someone can give me insight on the technical sight?

 

Cheers,

Max

[Murfee]

4 hours ago, Southwest_Visuals said:

I need to find a solution for this problem or how I can work around it. I use curves for the moment but the general image doesn't just look as crisp...

Hi,

I did the same as fde101 except for the clarity, I didn't use it, I duplicated the image and took it into the tone mapping persona, I added some local contrast. If needed you could adjust the opacity of this layer or use the average blend mode. You could also just add a mask to keep the crispness focussed on the car.

[Murfee]

You can also add to the moodiness by adding a live vignette & changing the blend range to darks. 

[kirkt]

I have always found AP's handling of black point, contrast and shadow detail in the Developer (I.e., raw conversion) persona to be extremely sensitive and twitchy, with very little room between default rendering and pure crushing of significant shadow tones.  

kirk

[Southwest_Visuals]

Thanks for the effort Murfee!

I really need to try this out! Looks better than my edit for sure!

2 hours ago, kirkt said:

I have always found AP's handling of black point, contrast and shadow detail in the Developer (I.e., raw conversion) persona to be extremely sensitive and twitchy, with very little room between default rendering and pure crushing of significant shadow tones.  

kirk

Yeah that's what I am experiencing too. Maybe they will fix the "dead slider space" in order to free more room to play instead of crushing those blacks at 20%

Thanks for the help guys!

Maybe someone else has a pro tip for us!

Cheers

 

[Murfee]

15 hours ago, Southwest_Visuals said:

I really need to try this out! Looks better than my edit for sure!

Thanks...start to finish about 5 mins, that includes a rough & ready paint job on the mask. I tried to do a macro for you, just leaving the mask painting to do...but the macro doesn't allow saving from the tone mapping persona, hopefully this will be improved soon.

15 hours ago, Southwest_Visuals said:

Maybe someone else has a pro tip for us!

As much as I love working in Affinity Photo I do not like the develop persona as it is. I only use it as a method for opening my raw files, I work in 32 bit from raw, these tend to open darker than I like, I just increase the exposure a bit, occasionally I alter the white balance...however this will depend on the image. If my highlights are blowing then I might pull them down but only enough to control the blown out parts. I then select the colour profile either ProPhoto or ROMM. Then hit develop. I can now get serious about editing, using a combination of adjustment layers that I can go back and alter if needed.

I would really like the team to make improvements to the develop persona, the shadows & highlights adjustments could do with a user adjustable range control, currently they seem to be operating too far into the mids, this leaves a flat appearance (however they are a lot better than they were), blackpoint & contrast cause tone clipping a bit too quickly. The settings that have been used also need to be fixed at the point the develop button is clicked, the image can then be returned to from the photo persona, users can pick up exactly where they left off.

Presets could also do with a bit of attention, at the moment the basic panel needs to keep all of the settings, it keeps some, white balance needs the tick applying and profiles are completely ignored. There is also a need for all settings in all tabs to be saved as a master preset, this will then enable users to use the exact settings for multiple files, this can sort of be achieved at the moment but they have to be done in each tab...which is a bit of a pain, especially if one tab gets forgotten.

These improvements would go a long way to enabling users to do more work in the develop persona, meaning less adjustment layers needed in the photo persona...this will help keep file sizes down 

These suggestions have been made before in various posts and I am sure the Devs are aware, however it doesn't hurt to give a gentle reminder now and again, particularly in the beta thread where things are being worked on 

[Southwest_Visuals]

6 hours ago, Murfee said:

Thanks...start to finish about 5 mins, that includes a rough & ready paint job on the mask. I tried to do a macro for you, just leaving the mask painting to do...but the macro doesn't allow saving from the tone mapping persona, hopefully this will be improved soon.

As much as I love working in Affinity Photo I do not like the develop persona as it is. I only use it as a method for opening my raw files, I work in 32 bit from raw, these tend to open darker than I like, I just increase the exposure a bit, occasionally I alter the white balance...however this will depend on the image. If my highlights are blowing then I might pull them down but only enough to control the blown out parts. I then select the colour profile either ProPhoto or ROMM. Then hit develop. I can now get serious about editing, using a combination of adjustment layers that I can go back and alter if needed.

I would really like the team to make improvements to the develop persona, the shadows & highlights adjustments could do with a user adjustable range control, currently they seem to be operating too far into the mids, this leaves a flat appearance (however they are a lot better than they were), blackpoint & contrast cause tone clipping a bit too quickly. The settings that have been used also need to be fixed at the point the develop button is clicked, the image can then be returned to from the photo persona, users can pick up exactly where they left off.

Presets could also do with a bit of attention, at the moment the basic panel needs to keep all of the settings, it keeps some, white balance needs the tick applying and profiles are completely ignored. There is also a need for all settings in all tabs to be saved as a master preset, this will then enable users to use the exact settings for multiple files, this can sort of be achieved at the moment but they have to be done in each tab...which is a bit of a pain, especially if one tab gets forgotten.

These improvements would go a long way to enabling users to do more work in the develop persona, meaning less adjustment layers needed in the photo persona...this will help keep file sizes down 

These suggestions have been made before in various posts and I am sure the Devs are aware, however it doesn't hurt to give a gentle reminder now and again, particularly in the beta thread where things are being worked on 

Wow, thanks for the huuuge answer! I'm kinda used to editing in photoshop and Lightroom, but never touch things as profiles and stuff. But I could follow your argumentation and I agree with you! 
At the moment I can't grasp whether the develop persona is meant to regulate the picture editing wise or in my personal style. So I don't know whether I should tweak the image so I can edit it afterwards (like making the image look "flat") or already go into the direction I want to head later.

But I tried the live-filters! They work definitely better than the other filters!

Thanks for the help guys! 

 

Cheers

Max

[kirkt]

Good insights, re: the Develop persona.  I have a feeling that if the Photo app gets a DAM-type auxiliary app, the raw converter will get spruced up too.  I do not use or depend upon DAMs for my work, but I can imagine that a DAM will place more emphasis on getting a larger portion of the heavy lifting of raw to RGB image editing done at the raw conversion stage, as many folks prefer in applications like LR and C1.  I agree, these suggestions have been floating around for while and a gentle reminder is always good - considering what the Serif team have managed to push out in the last few years, I have no problem cutting them some slack in the priorities department.

If any Mac users are looking for a raw converter that offers exceptional control over tone and color, consider the free (upgraded features for a donation) application called Raw Photo Processor (RPP).  Do not let its spartan interface fool you into thinking that it has limited functionality - it is, hands down, one of the best raw converters I have used and produces exceptional output (including 32bit if you prefer).  The interface and workflow take some time to get used to in the GUI world of sliders and instant previews, but once you get the hang of it, it is so much more efficient and gets you to the converted output quickly and efficiently.

See:

http://www.raw-photo-processor.com/RPP/Overview.html

kirk

[Patrick Connor]

Sorry.

Thank you for reporting a problem using the pre 1.8.0 beta builds. It appears that a member of the Affinity QA team didn't get round to fully investigating this specific report posted in the bugs forums. We are very sorry for this oversight. Yours is one of a number of reports that I am posting this apology to, using an automated script. 

Now we have released 1.8.3 on all platforms containing many hundreds of bug fixes, and we hope your problem has already been fully addressed. If you still have this problem in the 1.8.3 release build, then the QA team would really appreciate you reporting again it in the relevant Bugs forum.

• Report a Bug in Affinity Designer
• Report a Bug in Affinity Photo
• Report a Bug in Affinity Publisher

Each of those links above contains instructions how best to report a bug to us. If that is what you already did in this thread just copy paste your original report into a new thread. We appreciate all the information that you have including sample files and screen shots to help us replicate your problem.

This thread has now been locked as the QA team are not following the threads to which this automatic reply is made, which is why we would appreciate a new bug report if you are still have this problem in the release build.