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Variants and external Editor

Vertex
I am using Affinity Photo as an external editor of CO 8. In this context I got some unexpected results.
I try to explain, what I have done:

I made a clone variant of a picture and then I selected the variant for external editing "Open with..."
I did some editing in Affinity Photo and saved the result and closed AP. The preview of the variant was
updated at once in CO 8 - so far so good - but then the preview of the original image was changed too.
Is this a bug or did I something wrong?

After that did my edit in a slightly different way. I selected a picture (without variants), chose "edit with.." (8bit Tiff) and clicked the button "Edit variant" - I did my editing in AP, saved it and instantly a new preview picture of my edited picture appeared in CO 8 - but I was surprised that it was not linked with the original as variant (no number in the upper right corner). If you do a lot of editing like that, i am sure you will get lost with all these "unlinked" processed pictures.
I think it would be a nice if CO 8 would automatically create a variant after external editing.

cu
Erik
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Comments

4 comments

Date Votes
  • PhaseoneUser55657
    When you do an "Open With..." it sends the File as is with no adjustments, to the program. You are editing the original file, any changes will reflect in all variants made by the external application.

    When you do an "Edit With..." it creates a TIFF or what every you have selected, with any adjustments applied, to the external program, adds the file to the Catalog (If using a catalog), then if the file is modified, (i.e. you saved it in the external program), CO will update the preview.

    I am going to take a guess, you created a TIFF file, and that was then in CO. You then did an new Veriant. So you had 1 Tiff file, with 2 adjustments assigned to it. (At this point CO is treating the TIFF as a Raw file). At this point you said "Open With.." the external program. As stated above, CO did not create a new TIFF file, as you did an "Edit With..", but sent the original TIFF to the External program. You then modified it and saved the file. You just saved the "RAW" file that CO uses to generate the Previews with. So both Variants changed.

    I don't think with their current method they can link the TIFF and the Raw that it came from. To CO a variant is adjustments to the same RAW file. They do not even allow stacking of different images, only stacking of variants, (i.e. different versions of the same RAW file.)

    Robert
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  • SFA
    [quote="PhaseoneUser55657" wrote:

    I don't think with their current method they can link the TIFF and the Raw that it came from. To CO a variant is adjustments to the same RAW file. They do not even allow stacking of different images, only stacking of variants, (i.e. different versions of the same RAW file.)

    Robert


    The variants are edit instruction sets held in a single file that is associated with the original file (RAW, TIFF, DNG or JPG ....)

    So, in effect, the variant edits are always "stacked" in the edit file but can be "unstacked" for display purposes.

    To "stack" a number of originals (and their edit files) would require an entirely different type of functionality. That said I suppose for operational purposes an Album provides the grouping requirements although not the display requirements. (There may be other options in Catalogs but I am not familiar with that functionality.)

    There would probably be a question about whether the "Stack" is an exclusive grouping of the images or a virtual grouping where the same images might exist in other stacks, including a stack of an individual image as stand alone image.

    But then if one starts to consider the concept of a "stack" of images for merging ... things start to get more complicated still.

    I think this is a weekday discussion rather than something for a chill out Sunday!

    Grant
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  • Vertex
    [quote="robert" wrote:
    I don't think with their current method they can link the TIFF and the Raw that it came from. To CO a variant is adjustments to the same RAW file. They do not even allow stacking of different images, only stacking of variants, (i.e. different versions of the same RAW file.)
    I agree with you. When I wrote my post, I did not remember that OC 8 uses its own format to store the modifications of a variant. As you said, it needs a different method to link/group pictures which were modified by an external editor.

    [quote="SFA" wrote:

    The variants are edit instruction sets held in a single file that is associated with the original file (RAW, TIFF, DNG or JPG ....)
    So, in effect, the variant edits are always "stacked" in the edit file but can be "unstacked" for display purposes.
    That's the point. In my understanding any changes I make in the variant, should be only visible in this variant and not in the original - that's the sense of an variant IMHO. It works that way if you edit the variant in OC 8, but if you use an external editor the original will be modified too.
    To "stack" a number of originals (and their edit files) would require an entirely different type of functionality. That said I suppose for operational purposes an Album provides the grouping requirements although not the display requirements. (There may be other options in Catalogs but I am not familiar with that functionality.)
    I think the problem is, that OC 8 is not able to "understand" and "transfer" the modifications of an external editor into its variant format. IMHO it would be a good idea to disable "Open with.."/"Edit with.." if the user selects a variant to prevent a unexpected damage of the original.
    There would probably be a question about whether the "Stack" is an exclusive grouping of the images or a virtual grouping where the same images might exist in other stacks, including a stack of an individual image as stand alone image.
    But then if one starts to consider the concept of a "stack" of images for merging ... things start to get more complicated still.
    When I wrote my post I did not remember the way variants work. Now i think, it would be a great benefit, if OC 8 would automatically (virtually) group pictures which are modified by an external editor - that would be an alternative for variants which only works inside OC 8. Perhaps an suggestion for one of the next OC versions 😄
    I think this is a weekday discussion rather than something for a chill out Sunday!
    Hehe, I guess you are right 😁 - have a nice weekend.

    Erik
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  • Paul Steunebrink
    Hi Erik,

    Cutting a long story short, what you described is as intended. In other words, by design. What you expected was something else, hence your (of course valid) question.

    Please allow me to offer you suggested reading on variants. It will help to understand the concept of it.
    http://imagealchemist.net/variants-explained/

    About the difference between the "Edit with" and "Open with" command suggested reading is:
    http://imagealchemist.net/what-is-new-c ... e-pro-8-1/

    Please let us know it you still have questions afterwards.
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