XMP Sidecar Files

[BC15]

I can see that there has been mention of this before, but I would like to add my support to the idea of Affinity Photo using the XMP sidecar file for a couple of reasons:

Firstly, IPTC data added to the RAW file is not transferred to the converted tif file as it is stored on the XMP which Affinity Photo doesn't read. This makes for a more complicated workflow to marry up the IPTC data on both RAW and tif files.

Secondly, if the changes made to image by Affinity Photo were stored in the XMP (or even if this were not possible a seperate, Affinity Photo specific sidecar file), this would eliminate the need for a unique Affinity Photo file type, which as far I can see is not recognised by other imaging software. This would mean that (for example), a 16 bit tif could be worked on and simply saved as a 16 bit tif (with all the changes), rather than either having to save it as an Affinity File or exporting it individually as a tif file. This would speed up the workflow as the image being procesed could simply be closed, generating an option to save changes. A batch process could then be run on any number of images later, which would export them to 8 bit files.

Alternatively, provide a save option that simply saves the tif in its updated state and forget about recording the changes made to the file, as quite honestly in most cases you really don't need to preserve all the steps, unless it was a particularly complicated amount of processing. I never for example save an image as a PSD file in photoshop. If I ever revisit an image, I'll start again, but this has almost never happened. There would still be the option to save as an Affinity File for those that require it.

 

Anyway - just a couple of suggestions as I really want this product to work well and replace Photoshop!