[aitrus3]

Curious to know if anyone else experiences gray images in Affinity Photo's develop persona when developing extreme cases.
The above three images show three versions of the same photo: SOOC, one developed in LR, one developed in AP. AP comes out gray, flat, and extremely noisy.
This is an extreme case, but still, if LR can do it, AP should be able to as well.
PS Developed in the same way. There was no NR applied to the LR version. I think the only difference is that in LR I applied sharpening, in AP I did not because the noise was so bad.

[bwgv001]

I do not see the gray. sure there is a different color saturation; may be this can be tweeked, but no not grey.

[stevebrot]

This is an extreme case, but still, if LR can do it, AP should be able to as well.
PS Developed in the same way. There was no NR applied to the LR version. I think the only difference is that in LR I applied sharpening, in AP I did not because the noise was so bad.

The short answer is that the RAW processing engines for both products are proprietary and not strictly equivalent. Adding 4 stops exposure increase in one will be handled differently that a similar pull in the other. The same is true with PDCU/Silkypix that ships with Pentax dSLRs. In some cases, it may be virtually impossible to replicate the processing from one RAW converter with a competitors product. In this case, it is apparent that Affinity is not good at creating tone curves from minimal data. HDR using at four or more exposures would have been preferable and would allowed for greater flexibility.

I own both Lightroom 6.x and Affinity Photo and limit my use of Affinity to raster editing. I am a fan of Affinity Photo but have found its RAW processor to not mesh well with my style of shooting and don't recommend that feature if asked.


Steve

[LensBeginner]

I think stevebrot is correct: there's not only less saturation but less contrast and microcontrast as well.
See if juggling all those three controls (whatever they're called on AP) yields a better result.

[aitrus3]

The short answer is that the RAW processing engines for both products are proprietary and not strictly equivalent. Adding 4 stops exposure increase in one will be handled differently that a similar pull in the other. The same is true with PDCU/Silkypix that ships with Pentax dSLRs. In some cases, it may be virtually impossible to replicate the processing from one RAW converter with a competitors product. In this case, it is apparent that Affinity is not good at creating tone curves from minimal data. HDR using at four or more exposures would have been preferable and would allowed for greater flexibility.

I own both Lightroom 6.x and Affinity Photo and limit my use of Affinity to raster editing. I am a fan of Affinity Photo but have found its RAW processor to not mesh well with my style of shooting and don't recommend that feature if asked.


Steve

Thanks steve. I was just curious if anyone else found as I did, not really enjoying the RAW develop module in AP. If you look under "share your work" I have the same image, but done with fusing 2 sets of 5 LR developed exposures in Photomatix Pro and then taking them into AP to do a focus merge and other work. This was just a trial of AP to see how it stacked 1:1 with LR in developing.

[stevebrot]

This was just a trial of AP to see how it stacked 1:1 with LR in developing.

I should have included a note above thanking you for the comparison. There have been a number of favorable reviews on the Web comparing Affinity Photo's Develop Persona to Lightroom (ACR) and other RAW processors, but I don't recall any seeing results for a significant "pull" of low values such as your examples. This one of several tasks at which LR (ACR) excels and one of several that the Develop Persona falls a little "flat" with.

Again, I am a big fan of Affinity Photo as a high feature raster editor at a price point competitive to a year's subscription to Photoshop. AP is superior to PS Elements and a very competent rival to Corel PaintShop Pro for core layering and merge tasks with high bit-depth images in a wide-gamut environment.


Steve

(No relationship with Serif software other than as a satisfied customer...)

[aitrus3]

I should have included a note above thanking you for the comparison. There have been a number of favorable reviews on the Web comparing Affinity Photo's Develop Persona to Lightroom (ACR) and other RAW processors, but I don't recall any seeing results for a significant "pull" of low values such as your examples. This one of several tasks at which LR (ACR) excels and one of several that the Develop Persona falls a little "flat" with.

Again, I am a big fan of Affinity Photo as a high feature raster editor at a price point competitive to a year's subscription to Photoshop. AP is superior to PS Elements and a very competent rival to Corel PaintShop Pro for core layering and merge tasks with high bit-depth images in a wide-gamut environment.


Steve

(No relationship with Serif software other than as a satisfied customer...)

Very satisfied customer of Serif as well. I love Affinity photo but like any program, it does have it's limitations. I am more generous in my appraisal though in that I think it competes with Photoshop CC on the same field and does really well at it. Develop persona just needs some work, mind you it did work better since updating my Mac to High Sierra. Definitely less gray than I remember from my very first test a couple years ago.