PM compatibility with Affinity

[Mike Werner]

I've read the previous threads, and so far no plans to integrate the Affinity Photo native files. Affinity got an enormous boost when i got presented at the last Apple keynote speech, which triggered my interest.

It's as powerful as Photoshop at a fraction of the price, and works as good on the Mac and on the new iPad Pro. For me a good reason to switch, but for one issue: it can't be read with PM.

Any chance that you folks are working on it? If not, what will it take?

[Kirk Baker]

Mike,

It would take the Affinity developers to either document their file format or provide a library that we can use to render and embed/read metadata.

I've searched for such things more than once in the last year or so and have found nothing.

-Kirk

[Mike Werner]

How about contacting them directly? Although I heard they are planning a DAM, it still would serve their interest to have a eco system that is compatible with their software...

[mcasan]

MacOs Finder can deliver a thumbnail preview of an .afphoto document the same as for a raw, tif or other image file.   If Finder can, PM should be able also. 

[Kirk Baker]

MacOs Finder can deliver a thumbnail preview of an .afphoto document the same as for a raw, tif or other image file.   If Finder can, PM should be able also.

I suspect that Serif have written a plugin for the Finder.  We can't use Finder plugins.

Serif is quite closed about their file formats.  There is a discussion about the format on this thread:

https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?PHPSESSID=t1nqn16qac5kh6c3gsm4r71gt2&topic=6453.msg44657#msg44657

    Hopefully .afphoto will allow thumbnails to be extracted in the future.


Don't put your hopes up. They made it very clear in their forum in response to my question (and the question from several other users/programmers) that they won't document their file format or provide 3rd party access. They also plan to do their own "DAM" and so no other DAM vendor can hope to get anything from them. They will keep their formats proprietary. And as we can see, even the 3 methods IMatch now uses to extract thumbnails don't work for all their files. Another long-term compatibility problem dooming.

Until they publicly document their file format, Photo Mechanic will not provide support for .afphoto files.  We don't have time to reverse-engineer their file format and moreover if their file format does not contain a preview then we would never be able to render their files since we'd have to know how they're rendered.

Adobe's PSD file format is largely undocumented (they documented it back in the 1990s though that documentation is sorely out-of-date) but they do provide a preview (it's optional--one must save PSD files with 'Maximize Compatibility' turned on) that is easy to decode and display.  If Adobe didn't have a preview in their PSDs then PM would also be unable to support them, and there are millions of users of Photoshop that would be requesting that we support PSD files.  We would of course want to do that, but we would be unable to do so.  We'd have to know how they're rendered and that is a trade secret, just like it is with Affinity Photo.

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

All the more reason to stick with open file formats like tiff and jpg (and even dng)...

[Kirk Baker]

All the more reason to stick with open file formats like tiff and jpg (and even dng)...

Indeed.  Even DNG (which is a RAW file format) is extremely well documented and Adobe even has an open source reference implementation to render them.

I suggest that everyone who wants applications outside of the Affinity collection to be able to work with Affinity Photo images contact Serif and voice your concern.  We, as developers, do not have the numbers to make this a reality.

-Kirk

[mcasan]

Sticking with DNG is not worth giving up the capacities and featues of apps that do not same in raw or linear DNG.    So I guess the result is to use PM and Finder until Affinity and Macphun release their respective DAMs.