Affinity Photo

[Hunter Chan]

Share Affinity Photo tips here!!!

[Manfred M]

I'm not sure what you are after?

From a post-processing standpoint, Affinity Photo and Photoshop CC are very similar. Are there specific things you are interested in?

The biggest tip I can come up with is that all your processing should involve adjustment layers and layer masks; key elements of a non-destructive workflow. The one area where Photoshop has an advantage is that it supports SmartObjects / SmartFilters so these functions can be be non-destructively as well.

[dje]

Share Affinity Photo tips here!!!

The Affinity people have a very good set of video tutorials here

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/tut...photo/desktop/

Also the Affinity Forum has a lot of information.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/

Dave

[Acorn]

The Affinity software offerings are certainly turning heads. Somewhat slightly off topic, Affinity's latest software package in the field of desktop publishing, aptly Affinity Publisher, is already turning people away from the Adobe subscription racket. People are liking the software and presently there are a goodly number of demonstration videos. It's only a matter of time before a weighty handbook is produced.

[Manfred M]

The Affinity software offerings are certainly turning heads. Somewhat slightly off topic, Affinity's latest software package in the field of desktop publishing, aptly Affinity Publisher, is already turning people away from the Adobe subscription racket. People are liking the software and presently there are a goodly number of demonstration videos. It's only a matter of time before a weighty handbook is produced.

Barry - I also know a few people that started with Affinity and switched over or back to Photoshop.

If you look at the profitability of Adobe, they are not hurting with their subscription model. I use both Affinity and Photoshop, but for the type of work I do, Affinity is usually my second choice as it is missing some functionality I rely on a lot (SmartObjects and non-RGB colour spaces).

[DanK]

If you look at the profitability of Adobe, they are not hurting with their subscription model. I use both Affinity and Photoshop, but for the type of work I do, Affinity is usually my second choice as it is missing some functionality I rely on a lot (SmartObjects and non-RGB colour spaces).

In fact, they have done extremely well financially over the past year.

It would take a lot to lead me to switch software because of the time I would lose re-learning things. Nonetheless, I would find it useful to have a simple tabular comparison of features relevant to photographers. The reviews I have read are limited, listing a few pros and cons that are particularly relevant to that particular photographer. For example, I read several online comparisons of Affinity and Adobe and never came across the fact that Affinity is limited to RGB, which would be a deal-breaker for me.

[shreds]

Adobe is the well established market leader and whilst disliking their subscription model, (which you cannot blame them for, they are after all a business), changing from what you know is an incredibly difficult thing to do. The Affinity limitation on formats being an obvious pita, and whilst it has great assistance on screen as a guide, I cannot get into it. A bit like moving to Linux on programming, its learning everything over again.

I also become irritated by both companies incessant online marketing emails which actually have the opposite effect, they just get unsubscribed.

[selig1656]

I believe that already have a book albeit their tutorials are are pretty darn good.

[AaronRoberts]

As regards the reported “limitations” of Affinity Photo,

1) Adjustments and most filters can be applied as “live” layers - non-destructively and completely editable at any point in the editing process. Adjustment and filter layers can be placed (and moved) anywhere in the Layers stack, can be grouped, and can be masked. They can also be made children of another layer (“clipped” to a layer, in Photoshop parlance).

2) Affinity Photo’s color space choices include RGB, CMYK, LAB, and Greyscale.

[Manfred M]

As regards the reported “limitations” of Affinity Photo,

1) Adjustments and most filters can be applied as “live” layers - non-destructively and completely editable at any point in the editing process. Adjustment and filter layers can be placed (and moved) anywhere in the Layers stack, can be grouped, and can be masked. They can also be made children of another layer (“clipped” to a layer, in Photoshop parlance).

2) Affinity Photo’s color space choices include RGB, CMYK, LAB, and Greyscale.

Thanks for this information.

I'll have to play around with it some more to master the Live Layers aspect of Affinity. The issue I run into here may have more to do with lack of support by third party plug-ins that I commonly use than the native filters that are part of Affinity Photo.

I still have not been able to find any way of producing output from the built-in raw converter that is not an RGB colour space. Having a tool that can handle these colour spaces is fine, but at this point, I am stuck using Camera Raw to produce native CMYK or L*a*b* output.

[dje]

IMO the main limitation with the Affinity Photo RAW Develop mode is that it's not parametric. You make all the adjustments you want and then hit the Develop button. After that, you can't work on the RAW file adjustments anymore (unless you start from scratch), they are locked in. Once you hit the Develop button, the image opens in the so called "Photo Persona" mode which is similar to Photoshop. You can save your project at this point. In the "Photo Persona" mode, you can change the color space of the "Document" to CMYK or LAB if you wish. I've had no experience with this though.

Dave

[AaronRoberts]

I readily admit to being an Affinity Photo fanboy. I so object to Adobe’s subscription plan that working around Affinity’s shortcomings is well worth it. It can do almost everything I want to do. However, I agree that Affinity Photo’s weak link is its current Raw development module. It is not parametric, and it cannot handle batches of photos. It is a once-and-done model, and a one-at-a-time model, as well. Rumors abound that this will change soon, but they are only rumors.

Although I really enjoy Affinity Photo, I do my Raw processing in DxO PhotoLab, using 16 bit TIFF files as intermediaries. This has two benefits for me: 1) it keeps the SAAS model far away, and 2) rarely is a Swiss Army Knife approach best at all operations - I am able to choose the best tool for each step of my work.

As an aside, Manfred, you are correct that the Develop persona will only output into RGB (16 or 32 bit), but the conversion to CMYK, Lab, or Greyscale can take place at any time thereafter.

[Manfred M]

As an aside, Manfred, you are correct that the Develop persona will only output into RGB (16 or 32 bit), but the conversion to CMYK, Lab, or Greyscale can take place at any time thereafter.

After the postings here, I went back and did figure out how to do this, as I use L*a*b* in my own work fairly often. It seems that the process is to export the raw image in the ROMM colourspace (i.e. ProPhoto) and then convert it to L*a*b* in Affinity. In theory we cannot use the true breadth of L*a*b* as ROMM only covers around 90% of that colour space.

Practically, it probably makes no real difference as we are looking at some highly saturated colours that cannot be reproduced by our screens or even the high end photo printer and I suspect that Adobe does the same thing with Adobe Camera Raw which uses a ROMM colour space (i.e. Melissa). Neither DxO PhotoLab nor Capture One support L*a*b* or CMYK output either, so not really much one can do about it.

I end up doing work in CMYK once every year or two and as the output tends to be to SWOP for print publishers, this is not too much of a constraint. I've never worked in grayscale, so not an issue at all for me.

I mainly use Affinity so that I can teach the basics to people who are trying to avoid Adobe. My main complaint is the user interface design, but that is something that is common to a lot of software, especially when we are looking an most software that does not come from Adobe, Microsoft or Apple. Love them or hate them. the one thing they have done is to have reasonably well thought out user interfaces that are consistent across the products that they offer.

[dje]

Practically, it probably makes no real difference as we are looking at some highly saturated colours that cannot be reproduced by our screens or even the high end photo printer and I suspect that Adobe does the same thing with Adobe Camera Raw which uses a ROMM colour space (i.e. Melissa). Neither DxO PhotoLab nor Capture One support L*a*b* or CMYK output either, so not really much one can do about it.

Furthermore, my research indicates that a typical RGB digital camera using a typical camera profile can't produce colors outside the ProPhoto color space. The colors in the upper left hand extreme of the xy chromaticity spectral locus would require negative R values.

Dave

[Manfred M]

Furthermore, my research indicates that a typical RGB digital camera using a typical camera profile can't produce colors outside the ProPhoto color space. The colors in the upper left hand extreme of the xy chromaticity spectral locus would require negative R values.

Dave

I suspect you are right Dave, but have not found anything to confirm that.

[dje]

I suspect you are right Dave, but have not found anything to confirm that.

Manfred there isn't a lot of literature about on the subject but this article,albeit a llttle old now, by a chap from HP covers the subject

http://www.color.org/documents/Captu...ysisGamuts.pdf

Jim Kasson has produced similar data more recently (shown on uv chart rather than xy)

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/60288960

Dave