Affinity Photo...

[Mario]

Yesterday I've purchased a copy of Affinity Photo (AP) for testing.

It seems that the Affinity "thumbnail provider" for Windows has some issues. But I was able to produce thumbnails for all .afphoto files I created from scratch or by importing RAW and other image files.

+ Windows Explorer mut be set to show very large thumbnails or, more reliable, the preview pane must be visible.
+ Affinity Photo must be closed. Very important, it holds locks files otherwise.
+ When the files show up once in the preview in Windows Explorer, IMatch can also extract the full preview.
+ If the AP files only show as small icons, IMatch only gets an image with the Affinity Logo back from Windows when it asks for a thumbnail/preview.

This behavior is unique to Affinity Photo/Designer. I have never seen this with other thumbnail handlers (e.g. PDF or Office / Open Office).

Metadata support in Affinity Photo is bad.

- They only show a small subset of the metadata embedded in the file in the AP Exif Panel.
- Apparently they don't support XMP files, neither for reading nor writing.
- Metadata can only be displayed and deleted, but not edited.
- Importing a NEF file (with a full set of embedded EXIF and IPTC data and XMP in a sidecar file) and saving the file as a JPEG or TIFF loses most of the metadata.

No documentation about how Affinity Photo or Designer store metadata or thumbnails is available, and Serif is unwilling t change that (probably in hindsight of their own DAM product). This makes it very unlikely that Affinity Photo or Designer files will be supported by ExifTool or other software. Which is a shame. Even Adobe does the right thing and documents how metadata is stored in their files...

[Tallpics]

Thanks for the info Mario

I have just purchased the iPad version of Affinity to have a play with but from the comments you have made about compatibility with IMatch and other general standards Affinity is unlikely to feature in my workflow.

I think Serif needs to understand that files/formats have to work to a 'universal' standard which means a user isn't 'tied' to any one program.... something that you have always built into IMatch. Thanks :-)