UKH

Seems weird asking this, as I've been shooting and editing RAW images for some years now, but here goes...

Are the alterations you make in RAW always applied to the entire image, and for localised tweaks (i.e. making a freehand selection and just editing that, like if you want to brighten or tint someone's face but keep the background darker) you work outside the RAW environment?

This is what I found in Photoshop, even including doing a manual rotate - you had to do your white balance and exposure and whatever else you can ONLY do in RAW, and then export and make a second set of tweaks. 

I am currently trying out Affinity and it seems to be similar - you load your RAW file and go into the "Develop Persona" module, and the regional selection tools disappear (although at least you can do a manual rotate). 

Using Canon's own editor (I have downloaded Digital Photo Professional 4 direct from the Canon website) it seems that there is a way of doing this (not a freehand lasso tool but something akin to "spraying" a region) but the entire interface is not to my tastes and it feels a little slow. 

Am I wrong in thinking that you lose a bit of fine control if you have to exit the RAW edit module to make localised changes, because outside of the RAW editor, the data is already compressed to 8-bit?

It all seems a bit fiddly; I sort of "put up with it" when I was running Photoshop as the vast majority of my pics were OK with a global edit in the RAW editor but it feels like I am missing part of the point of RAW editing - I thought that for example if you had too high a contrast range in your pic, you could lift the shadows and pull back the highlights with a greater amount of control. 

Having just watched a very nice 4.5 minute basic tutorial video on Affinity, it seems that you don't need localisation and you do it all with the clarity and vibrance and shadow tools. Is that about right?

When I edit RAW photos in lightroom, its possible to do filters on certain parts of the image only (e.g. gradient or spot).  Have used it for more contrast/clarity on sky only for example.  Is this what you're after?  Doesn't get any more complex than that in lightroom though, at least not that I know of.

Thanks. That sounds about right. I think I've just been stuck on old "pre-RAW" habits with lasso selections. 
Until lockdowns, most of my photos that benefitted from RAW editing were concert photos where perhaps the white balance needed tweaking. Photoshop was often very intelligent at providing a one-click global edit that sorted the levels out really well! I can't find such an auto thing in Affinity but then until tonight I didn't really know what the Clarity and Vibrance tools (I think these are standard to all packages) actually MEANT  

I'll play around some more. I am a few days into a 10 day free trial of Affinity. 

Depends on the end destination. If the resultant image is going in a book or a larger print then I want to preserve as much data as possible so will use the dodge and burn and clone tools in LR to preserve as much as possible, but it takes longer and needs more care so if it is just for the Web, I process the whole image in RAW and then convert going to PS to be able to do fine edits using photoshop selection tools. This works fine as in low res images it can't be seen. So in a nutshell your editing sounds for fine Web images but if printing then it is worth the extra effort to edit exposure etc on fine detail in something like LR before converting the raw image but it takes more work to avoid haloes, but also preserves data and avoids loss of data in burnt out or shadow areas. 

I imagine doing complex RAW edits with a lasso type tool, and then blending it successfully, would be pretty taxing for a program.  Though I'm not familiar with the more powerful ones.

Have you tried lightroom?  Plenty of, ahem, free copies about if you look   I've found it more than powerful enough for my photo edits and probably only use a fraction of its capability.  And for groups of similar photos, I find it saves a lot of time with making ones own pre-sets.  Just had to do 188 photos for a book on Kyrgyzstan, so that saved me a bit of time with 8 self made presets, requiring only minor tweaks afterwards for the majority.  Apologies if you have it and I'm trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs!

I have not tried Lightroom. I have a 2011 MacBook Pro that I got from eBay a few years ago and it had Photoshop (I forget what flavour of Photoshop but its RAW editor opened under a new window and different name). Earlier this year finally Adobe “caught” me and took Photoshop off me and I don’t want to steal any more software but also don’t want to shell out for Lightroom as my photography isn’t quite worth it. Affinity was suggested on here when I asked about alternatives. If I don’t get on with then I will get a free trial of Lightroom and think about shelling out.

Mostly just the web and the occasional smallish print for myself and friends. Nothing “serious”. I mostly shoot concerts just for the happy memories, and snapshots on holidays. No arty landscapes or macro or fine portraiture or wildlife . Just this sort of thing   

https://www.flickr.com/gp/blue-straggler/LrQ29t

I do RAW development in Light room and it looks pretty similar to Affinity in terms of the adjustment sliders. I find the gradients useful where there is a lot of contrast between foreground and background and have occasionally done 'touch ups' for example to reduce the saturation of a really bright t-shirt relative to the rest of the image. Once it's 'developed' I only use Photoshop for final tuning, of say the curves, sharpness and fine touching up. Worth exporting in a 16 bit TIFF to avoid losing information. Light room allows cropping and rotating of the RAW file, so maybe Affinity does too. From memory the camera RAW function in Photoshop was a fairly simple tool and hopefully you'll get more use from a dedicated RAW application. 

Isn't this just a case of using the adjustment brush in Camera Raw or lightroom? Or have I misunderstood?

I also seem to think there is a way of using adjustment layers within PS that are non-destructive so can act directly on RAW but I'm not sure of the details and may well be wrong.

Like others on this thread I work totally in Lightroom, for both global and local adjustments. I virtually never have the need to drop into Photoshop for normal terrestrial photography.  

I have just got Lightroom (i.e. within the last two weeks) and have done all the edits to the raw file. These are global edits (whole picture) as well as localised edits. It's seems pretty simple and intuitive.

Like yourself, I don't know what half the silders mean and it seems very easy to make one's images look very unrealistic but it has been great at turning family shots in bright sunlight and snow from being half blowout/half shadow to a lovely family photo without having to bracket or do anything fancy. The detail that can be recovered from the shadows of the RAW file is amazing! It feels like cheating but I do like the fact I can compensate for my lack of skill and end up with decent (imho of course) photos.

Even without taking into account RAW, you can do indeed a lot with curves, lights, shadows (and exposure). And more (mainly with colors) with clarity and vibrance.

But in extreme cases that might not be enough (really dark foreground plus almost blown out sky). Add a complex horizon and even gradients don't workout well enough.

Then they might be wise RAW convert two version (or even three) from the same RAW. One for highlights (sky), one for darks (foreground and shadows), plus perhaps one for midtones. And then either a HDR merge (in Affinity, naturally similar operation could be also done in PS with merging them as different layers and then masking).

 But generally speaking, should be able to do a "general" RAW development to make it nearly OK. And then use the localised tools on the "developped" image to get the highlights  and shadows into order. 

Yes, I used to do this, but these days if you have a 16 bit workflow then there's no point. I just do the bayer interpolation (and a few other camera specific bits) in RawTherapee (or dcraw) and output to 16b tiff. Everything then stays in there till print/display time.

Affinity does have local adjustments in the RAW module., called overlays.

Nowadays, nearly any RAW converter has local adjustments (via brushes, gradients, etc.). Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture 1, etc. Photoshop worked that way for many, many years.

You can do most adjustments including local ones quite well on the RAW files, not even dropping into Photoshop proper most of the time. I edit like 95% photos in Adobe Camera Raw only, not even opening them in Photoshop, unless some more complicated retouching needed.

BTW, don't use lasso for adjustments (unless you know what to do), it's mostly for other purposes. Use layers and masks.

Thanks (and thanks everyone else). Time to scale that steep learning curve. 

Aha! Penny drops at least re: Affinity. Thanks again all. This thread plus a bit more exploring the software, has clarified things. I had assumed that Affinity opening what it calls the Develop mode by default when loading a RAW file, meant the same as what you get when you flip between Adobe RAW and Photoshop CC. Now it seems that Develop essentially just declutters the dashboard, getting rid of a load of "automatic" suggestions and letting you focus on the fundamentals of exposure, shadow/highlights and white balance ONE LAYER AT A TIME (I think!). They are all there in the "standard" Affinity which also gives crop, rotate, selections etc. 

Makes sense now. 

Also with smarter use of the tools at your disposal on RAW data, as others have suggested on here, there seems to be far less need for regional tweaks, because shadow and highlight adjustments SEEM so much more sophisticated than basic Levels and Curves. 

I just need to be careful with the Clarity control as part of my day job involves applying a very smart contrast and sharpening filter to x-ray images to bring out all the detail of a 16-bit image with a single click. Perfect in the day job but on photographs it will look like childish HDR overcooking, but the overlap with my job is going to confuse me! 

... and remember you are not editing RAW files (they remain untouched), you're processing them.

You don't create a new file till you press the Export button.

(the program may create some render preview files, LR does, lots and lots of them)

You really should try Lightroom - it is a great bit of software, designed for digital photographers. Your original files sit on the disc and never get touched, it is very versatile for tweaking/adjusting images and has a great filing system.

Not sure if you can get it on its own now, I pay c£120 a year for the photography plan (Lightroom/Photoshop/Bridge) which strikes me as good value - just over two quid a week!

Chris

Good point. I was being lazy/loose with the language 

thanks, I will see about a trial. Usually when people break costs down like that, it irks me but here you do make quite a good point with it 😃