How to process RAW files in Affinity Photo

Boats in a harbour with no water, cloudy sky and town

(Image credit: Wendy Evans)

When thinking about processing your Raw files you might automatically go for the one supplied by your camera manufacturer, or Adobe Camera Raw, DxO Labs PureRAW and so on, but you can actually do it all in Affinity. Simply drop your Raw file into the interface (or use File> Open if you want to be traditional) and it will switch to the Develop persona. Don’t click on Develop in the top left until you’ve made all your adjustments, which is what we’re going to look at here. The palette to the right has everything you need from lens corrections to noise reduction and exposure/colour enhancement.

Harbour, no water, fishing boats, cloudy sky — This is the JPEG version, straight from the camera (Image credit: Wendy Evans)

1 Correct lens distortion

Step 1, correct the lens distortion — First step is to correct the lens distortion (Image credit: Future)

It’s tempting to start with the Basic tab, but resist that and click on the Lens tab instead and then put a tick in Lens Correction. If Affinity can’t automatically find the right profile it will say so and in that case, click on the drop down list and find the nearest one. There are options to manually make distortion corrections as well. If shooting against a white sky you’ll want to put a tick in Chromatic Aberration Reductions and also consider Remove Lens Vignette.

2 Light and contrast

Correcting the light and contrast (Image credit: Future)

Click on the Basic tab now. There’s a lot to tweak here at once, as the Exposure and Shadows & Highlights palettes affect each other. In this photo the highlights are being lost, so reduce Highlights to bring detail back into the sky. The Shadows need lifting a little as well. Under Enhance, increase the Clarity for more micro-sharpness. Now move the Exposure slider to the right so that the Histogram data is in the middle.

3 Color options

Adjusting the color and temperature (Image credit: Future)

Whilst on the Basic tab, open the White Balance palette and tweak the setting if required. Here the Temperature was increased to 5600K to represent mid-day. In the Enhance palette increase the Vibrance – these are the colors that are most muted. Then increase the Saturation, but no more than 20% as it may start to introduce noise. At this point there’s not enough contrast, but don’t use the Contrast slider in the Enhance palette.

4 More contrast please

Adding enough contrast and tweaking the shadows (Image credit: Future)

Click on the Tones tab and then on the Curves palette. Add control points to that you can create an S-shape which adds enough contrast. However, while the mid-tones look okay, the shadows are a little too dark under the boats so jump back to the Basic tab and increase the Shadows there. There are also options in Tones for Split-Toning and mono conversion. Once happy, click on Develop, top left, to apply and move into the Photo persona.

You can now do any final editing and save the image.

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Wendy was the Editor of Digital Photo User for nearly five years, charting the rise of digital cameras and photography from expensive fad to mass market technology. She is a member of the Royal Photographic Society (LRPS) and while originally a Canon film user in the '80s and '90s, went over to the dark side and Nikon with the digital revolution. A second stint in the photography market was at ePHOTOzine, the online photography magazine, and now she's back again as Technique Editor of Digital Camera magazine, the UK's best-selling photography title. She is the author of 13 photography/CGI/Photoshop books, across a range of genres.

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