Anyone using Affinity Photo for editing negatives captured in RAW

M

Mehal

Messages
12
Name
Michael
Edit My Images
No
Hi
I would be interested to know if anyone has used Affinity Photo to edit and process RAW negatives captured using a digital/mirrorless camera. I used to use PS CS5 some years ago, but have had a long period of inactivity regarding the project of converting my vast collection of negatives to digital format, and did not want to go down the subscription route for PS & LR plus paying for FLP as a plugin, hence my choice to use Affinity Photo, any comments would be greatly appreciated.
 
Mehal said:
Hi
I would be interested to know if anyone has used Affinity Photo to edit and process RAW negatives captured using a digital/mirrorless camera. I used to use PS CS5 some years ago, but have had a long period of inactivity regarding the project of converting my vast collection of negatives to digital format, and did not want to go down the subscription route for PS & LR plus paying for FLP as a plugin, hence my choice to use Affinity Photo, any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
None too sure surmise you might also try the Affinity Photo forum?

PS and welcome to TP:)
 
There is a big thread on the F&C forum about scanning, which touches on the software available in this post: https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/a-big-film-scanner-thread.709453/post-8676690

The only software I could find that would work with Affinity Photo is CNMY, listed in that post. I've been meaning to try it, as I don't have LR or PS, but have not got round to it (partly because I have 2 scanners and no suitable digital camera!).

However I believe there are a couple of stand-alone options available, one fairly recent that I'll add in this thread if I can find it again.
 
Is Raw Therapy an option? I don't use it but have seen quite a few recommendations.
 
ChrisR said:
There is a big thread on the F&C forum about scanning, which touches on the software available in this post: https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/a-big-film-scanner-thread.709453/post-8676690

The only software I could find that would work with Affinity Photo is CNMY, listed in that post. I've been meaning to try it, as I don't have LR or PS, but have not got round to it (partly because I have 2 scanners and no suitable digital camera!).

However I believe there are a couple of stand-alone options available, one fairly recent that I'll add in this thread if I can find it again.
Click to expand...
The short thread on Filmomat 's SmartConvert is here. Beware odd name, many typos! The software is at https://www.filmomat.eu/smartconvert .
 
Mehal said:
Hi
I would be interested to know if anyone has used Affinity Photo to edit and process RAW negatives captured using a digital/mirrorless camera. I used to use PS CS5 some years ago, but have had a long period of inactivity regarding the project of converting my vast collection of negatives to digital format, and did not want to go down the subscription route for PS & LR plus paying for FLP as a plugin, hence my choice to use Affinity Photo, any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
There are some yetube videos around on how to invert negatives by playing around with curves etc (which is basically what some of these add-on packages automate, I believe). If you have black and white negatives, I think it's fairly trivial in Affinity Photo, but for C41 colour negatives you have the orange mask to contend with and things can get tricky.
 
Mehal said:
to edit and process RAW negatives captured using a digital/mirrorless camera
Click to expand...
Are we talking colour or mono, because this has a bearing on procedures - colour reversal (& orange mask removal) is more tricky than just tone reversal. Also, this might (or might not) get better responses in the 'Talk Film & Conventional' forum.

As a footnote to the above, Affinity is a capable RAW processor if not the very best. But what you seem to be suggesting might be outside its daily norm.
 
Last edited:
No. I use LR for 99% of my general editing.

I have used Affinity for some things & it's pretty much a PS equivalent from my experience so it's probably worth the trial period at least. I managed to pick it up for £24 on offer a year or so ago!!
 
droj said:
Are we talking colour or mono, because this has a bearing on procedures - colour reversal (& orange mask removal) is more tricky than just tone reversal. Also, this might (or might not) get better responses in the 'Talk Film & Conventional' forum.

As a footnote to the above, Affinity is a capable RAW processor if not the very best. But what you seem to be suggesting might be outside its daily norm.
Click to expand...
Colour mainly, though I also have a large collection of colour slides too, at the moment I am just exploring the Affinity route, as I still have my original copy of PS CS5 that I had used in the past with very good results, of what I would class as exhibition standard, however I have not touched any negative copying for almost eight years now and am just getting back to revisiting the original project of digitising a very large collection of negatives that stretch back to the sixties.
 
ChrisR said:
The short thread on Filmomat 's SmartConvert is here. Beware odd name, many typos! The software is at https://www.filmomat.eu/smartconvert .
Click to expand...
I have looked at Filmomat and the Smartconvert software, and I have to say the demo version produced quite incredible results straight out of the can, but the problem is that exporting the converted image has to be in either TIFF or JPEG format, there is no option to export the RAW file so this makes it a non starter, as my intention was to process and fine tune the RAW image in Affinity before saving it as a JPEG, such a pity as it has great potential as a stand alone piece of software, unlike being tied up to a subscription to LR in order to pay again for the FLP plug in.
 
Ok, I can't add much to that, but it sounds like you're on the case. In the light of what you just said I suspect that you need to relent about your self-imposed threshold of what you're dealing with, and do the ongoing processing with a tif. Forget about jpg, it's alright as a one off product but too lossy to process & take forward. If possible, output & further process that tif as 16-bit, in as large a colour space as possible though to my mind, Adobe RGB would do. But Affinity will deal with this just as PS CS5 or later versions would do, and is currently a bargain - you just have to learn the somewhat different user interface.

You must have very specialised requirements if this isn't going to be satisfactory.

Sorry if I'm shouting into the wind.
 
droj said:
Ok, I can't add much to that, but it sounds like you're on the case. In the light of what you just said I suspect that you need to relent about your self-imposed threshold of what you're dealing with, and do the ongoing processing with a tif. Forget about jpg, it's alright as a one off product but too lossy to process & take forward. If possible, output & further process that tif as 16-bit, in as large a colour space as possible though to my mind, Adobe RGB would do. But Affinity will deal with this just as PS CS5 or later versions would do, and is currently a bargain - you just have to learn the somewhat different user interface.

You must have very specialised requirements if this isn't going to be satisfactory.

Sorry if I'm shouting into the wind.
Click to expand...
Yes, that is fair comment, and you are certainly not shouting in the wind, I think that the TIFF option would be the only way forward with the Smartconvert software, and after processing in Affinity, convert to JPEG. You are quite correct with the JPEG route you lose far too much for it to be worth it, I learned that lesson long ago when I first dipped my toes into photographing negatives with as DSLR, these days it is always RAW.
My requirements are really quite simply that I wish to get the best possible copy from my negatives, some of which date back to the late sixties, and have immense sentimental value, but this is certainly not what I would term a specialised requirement, thanks for the comments, they are much appreciated.
 
Mehal said:
Yes, that is fair comment, and you are certainly not shouting in the wind, I think that the TIFF option would be the only way forward with the Smartconvert software, and after processing in Affinity, convert to JPEG. You are quite correct with the JPEG route you lose far too much for it to be worth it, I learned that lesson long ago when I first dipped my toes into photographing negatives with as DSLR, these days it is always RAW.
My requirements are really quite simply that I wish to get the best possible copy from my negatives, some of which date back to the late sixties, and have immense sentimental value, but this is certainly not what I would term a specialised requirement, thanks for the comments, they are much appreciated.
Click to expand...
If you have some results from using Filmomat SmartConvert I would very much like to see them over on the Film & Conventional forum, could well do with some examples of results frommthe various different software packages for the big scanner thread.

I'm thinking of scanning a couple of colour negs as RAW and TIFF, putting them in my Dropbox and publishinh the links, asking different folk to try conversions with their favourite software! The results could be interesting (we already have a thread from @FishyFish comparing results from Negative Lab Pro and Grain2Pixel with his photos).
 
Yes I use Affinity regularly; as good as Photoshop. Ask specific questions and I'll try to answer them.
 
ChrisR said:
If you have some results from using Filmomat SmartConvert I would very much like to see them over on the Film & Conventional forum, could well do with some examples of results frommthe various different software packages for the big scanner thread.

I'm thinking of scanning a couple of colour negs as RAW and TIFF, putting them in my Dropbox and publishinh the links, asking different folk to try conversions with their favourite software! The results could be interesting (we already have a thread from @FishyFish comparing results from Negative Lab Pro and Grain2Pixel with his photos).
Click to expand...
Apologies for the delayed response, much as I would like to share some images of my work using the SmartConvert software, which I have to say remains very impressive for a standalone product not requiring a tied in subscription, and I am more than happy with the results.
I am unable to share any of the images with the forum as I have not got enough posts to qualify me to upload due to the Forum rules.
 
Mehal said:
Apologies for the delayed response, much as I would like to share some images of my work using the SmartConvert software, which I have to say remains very impressive for a standalone product not requiring a tied in subscription, and I am more than happy with the results.
I am unable to share any of the images with the forum as I have not got enough posts to qualify me to upload due to the Forum rules.
Click to expand...
Well as it happens, I did put up a thread asking people to convert my RAW scans with various software packages. The thread is at https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/t...-negative-scan-conversion-comparisons.756230/ and is quite interesting (to me, at least). However, as usual in such things, the longer the thread went on, the more the weaknesses in my "experimental" approach were exposed. So, nothing definitive, but a lot of quite different results from all but one (CNMY, mentioned above in post #4) of my target conversion packages (and including some I'd never heard of, including an option in DarkTable). Filmomat SmartConvert was one that was used and gave pretty nice results, IIRC.

At the moment, I can get the results I need with C41 colour film by asking Filmdev to do a dev/scan with their Noritsu scanner and sending me a JPEG (and possibly a TIFF??) through WeTransfer. I don't often use colour, so the cost is bearable. If they went away, most other lab scans are much more expensive, so I might well invest in SmartConvert!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top