Skip to main content

⚠️ Please note that this topic or post has been archived. The information contained here may no longer be accurate or up-to-date. ⚠️

Black preview with round trip 'edit with'

Permanently deleted user
Hello,

I try do do a round trip with affinity photo (TIFF format)
But after modification, i get a black preview with an exclamation point.
For test, i try with preview, same problem.
And whatever ICC (SRGB, Adobe RGB, camera profile).
Have you the same problem ?

Thanks.

PS : With 9.0.1, no changes.
0

Comments

14 comments

Date Votes
  • Michael Sonshine
    [quote="Thierry C" wrote:
    Hello,

    I try do do a round trip with affinity photo (TIFF format)
    But after modification, i get a black preview with an exclamation point.
    For test, i try with preview, same problem.
    And whatever ICC (SRGB, Adobe RGB, camera profile).
    Have you the same problem ?

    Thanks.

    PS : With 9.0.1, no changes.

    I also use Affinity Photo and have found that C1 is unable to handle either the layers or the alpha channel(s) AP sometimes adds to a tiff file. The solution for this is to make sure that you (1) flatten the image before returning (Document -> Flatten) and (2) remove the alpha channel(s) (Edit -> Matte). This solved the problem for me.
    0
  • Andriy.Okhrimets
    Yes, C1 is not handling any Tiff with Alpha channels, which is pity.
    Hope that will resolve it soon
    0
  • Permanently deleted user
    Thanks for the help.
    0
  • kennethlcrow
    Is this the expected behavior? Flattening the image kinda ruins the whole non-destructive editing thing. Sure, I can save my TIFF or PSD files (with layers and alpha channels) off to another location but that is a lot of data duplication. Will this be addressed?
    0
  • Michael Sonshine
    [quote="kennethlcrow" wrote:
    Is this the expected behavior? Flattening the image kinda ruins the whole non-destructive editing thing. Sure, I can save my TIFF or PSD files (with layers and alpha channels) off to another location but that is a lot of data duplication. Will this be addressed?

    C1 does not support layered files of any format, so if you use an external editor and expect C1 to edit the result you have to flatten the image.

    If you mean by your question (Will this be addressed?) will C1 start supporting layered files I am reasonably sure the answer is no. C1 does not advertise that it is "non-destructive" in its editing.
    0
  • dredlew
    Yes, C1 is not handling any Tiff with Alpha channels, which is pity.


    C1 does not support layered files of any format, so if you use an external editor and expect C1 to edit the result you have to flatten the image.


    Well, that's a bit of incomplete and mis-information right there... of course C1 handles layered TIFF files and even TIFF files with alpha channels. However, the way C1 does handle these things are a bit buggy it seems.

    Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with Affinity Photo. I only get as far as creating a masked layer and when I want to save it, it asks me to either flatten the document or save it as a new file because it contains a non-pixel element. Obviously neither of those options are acceptable in a roundtrip. If anyone knows a way around this, please let me know. - So I'm gonna comment in regards to a Photoshop roundtrip:

    Here is what DOES work

  • Select a RAW file and "Edit with" to open the conversion dialog.[/*:3gb68jol]
  • Pick TIFF 16bit, ZIP compressed (this is lossless), "No thumbnail" deactivated (according to docs http://help.phaseone.com/en/CO8/Optimiz ... spx#item10 this is supposed to be set by default but it is not. Bug? Anyway, leave it that way.), color profile (I personally use ProPhoto but should work with any), your resolution and Photoshop as the editor.[/*:3gb68jol]
  • Click "Edit Variant".

  • New TIFF opens in Photoshop.

  • Add in a couple layers with masks, you can even draw a work path with the pen tool if you want to get testy.

  • Make sure that your BACKGROUND layer does not have any masks! Hence, no transparency/alpha channel for the document.

  • Save the file and head back over to C1.

  • C1 is now refreshing the thumbnail/preview, this takes a couple of seconds.

  • You can now continue making edits to it in C1 as this is all non-destructive editing that gets applied to the preview.

  • At any point you can make additional fixes to your layers by choosing "Open With" instead of "Edit With".

  • The TIFF file opens in Photoshop again with all layers intact. Repeat from step 5.

  • Note: if you make several "Open With" edits to the file, it seems that at some point, C1 just stops updating the preview after the roundtrip. It's a bit annoying but you can just regenerate the preview when in the "Viewer" mode. The grid mode only allows for regenerating all previews, which is unnecessary.


    • Here is what DOES NOT work
    Scenario 1

    • Technically, what I mentioned in step 6 SHOULD work and it does to a certain extent. That's why I believe this is a bug.

    • If you add a mask to the last layer, i.e. you create an alpha channel for the document, it will save back into C1 like normal, it just won't display the transparency. Instead, it shows a white background where the transparency would be. This is to be expected as the OS itself displays it that way in the Finder.

    • Up to this point, everything works as expected, however the issue arises once you quit and relaunch C1.

    • The next time you open the catalog, your TIFF file seems to have vanished from the catalog. If you drill down into the catalog folder in the Finder, the file is still there but the catalog DB for some reason just does not recognize it anymore. So yeah, pretty sure this is a bug.


    Scenario 2

    • The same "vanishing" issue happens when you have images that are "referenced", meaning they don't reside inside C1's catalog folder. The catalog just keeps a reference to where the original file lives.

    • In this instance, round tripping works as normal but despite not having an alpha on the document (as mentioned in step 6), relaunching C1 will cause the catalog to lose the reference to the TIFF file. Again, it's still physically there in the referenced folder in the Finder but the catalog does not know about it.

    • This is also a bug, since this whole procedure works if the TIFFs are internally saved to the catalog folder.

    • Further proof for this being a bug, is that I had an earlier catalog created with CO8 that I then opened in CO9 and imported referenced images. Lo' and behold, the round tripping there works just fine (as long as you follow step 6). The TIFF remains in the catalog on relaunch. So there's seems to be an issue specifically to new CO9 catalogs.


    I will log a ticket and update if any more information becomes available.
    0
  • Michael Sonshine
    [quote="dredlew" wrote:
    Yes, C1 is not handling any Tiff with Alpha channels, which is pity.


    C1 does not support layered files of any format, so if you use an external editor and expect C1 to edit the result you have to flatten the image.


    Well, that's a bit of incomplete and mis-information right there... of course C1 handles layered TIFF files and even TIFF files with alpha channels. However, the way C1 does handle these things are a bit buggy it seems.

    Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with Affinity Photo. I only get as far as creating a masked layer and when I want to save it, it asks me to either flatten the document or save it as a new file because it contains a non-pixel element. Obviously neither of those options are acceptable in a roundtrip. If anyone knows a way around this, please let me know. - So I'm gonna comment in regards to a Photoshop roundtrip:

    Here is what DOES work

  • Select a RAW file and "Edit with" to open the conversion dialog.[/*:u25h5gm0]
  • Pick TIFF 16bit, ZIP compressed (this is lossless), "No thumbnail" deactivated (according to docs http://help.phaseone.com/en/CO8/Optimiz ... spx#item10 this is supposed to be set by default but it is not. Bug? Anyway, leave it that way.), color profile (I personally use ProPhoto but should work with any), your resolution and Photoshop as the editor.[/*:u25h5gm0]
  • Click "Edit Variant".

  • New TIFF opens in Photoshop.

  • Add in a couple layers with masks, you can even draw a work path with the pen tool if you want to get testy.

  • Make sure that your BACKGROUND layer does not have any masks! Hence, no transparency/alpha channel for the document.

  • Save the file and head back over to C1.

  • C1 is now refreshing the thumbnail/preview, this takes a couple of seconds.

  • You can now continue making edits to it in C1 as this is all non-destructive editing that gets applied to the preview.

  • At any point you can make additional fixes to your layers by choosing "Open With" instead of "Edit With".

  • The TIFF file opens in Photoshop again with all layers intact. Repeat from step 5.

  • Note: if you make several "Open With" edits to the file, it seems that at some point, C1 just stops updating the preview after the roundtrip. It's a bit annoying but you can just regenerate the preview when in the "Viewer" mode. The grid mode only allows for regenerating all previews, which is unnecessary.


    • Here is what DOES NOT work
    Scenario 1

    • Technically, what I mentioned in step 6 SHOULD work and it does to a certain extent. That's why I believe this is a bug.

    • If you add a mask to the last layer, i.e. you create an alpha channel for the document, it will save back into C1 like normal, it just won't display the transparency. Instead, it shows a white background where the transparency would be. This is to be expected as the OS itself displays it that way in the Finder.

    • Up to this point, everything works as expected, however the issue arises once you quit and relaunch C1.

    • The next time you open the catalog, your TIFF file seems to have vanished from the catalog. If you drill down into the catalog folder in the Finder, the file is still there but the catalog DB for some reason just does not recognize it anymore. So yeah, pretty sure this is a bug.


    Scenario 2


    • The same "vanishing" issue happens when you have images that are "referenced", meaning they don't reside inside C1's catalog folder. The catalog just keeps a reference to where the original file lives.

    • In this instance, round tripping works as normal but despite not having an alpha on the document (as mentioned in step 6), relaunching C1 will cause the catalog to lose the reference to the TIFF file. Again, it's still physically there in the referenced folder in the Finder but the catalog does not know about it.

    • This is also a bug, since this whole procedure works if the TIFFs are internally saved to the catalog folder.

    • Further proof for this being a bug, is that I had an earlier catalog created with CO8 that I then opened in CO9 and imported referenced images. Lo' and behold, the round tripping there works just fine (as long as you follow step 6). The TIFF remains in the catalog on relaunch. So there's seems to be an issue specifically to new CO9 catalogs.


    I use Affinity Photo and I have found no way to return a layered tiff file to C1 from it and have it be usable just as I can not find a way to return a file from it with an alpha channel and have it usable in C1.

    I was not aware that this was possible with Photoshop as I do not have it on my system. If my information was wrong, I apologize and stand corrected.
    0
  • dredlew
    I use Affinity Photo and I have found no way to return a layered tiff file to C1 from it and have it be usable just as I can not find a way to return a file from it with an alpha channel and have it usable in C1.

    I was not aware that this was possible with Photoshop as I do not have it on my system. If my information was wrong, I apologize and stand corrected.


    I just checked Affinity's site, and apparently layered TIFFs is a limitation of AP at the moment. They have it on their radar (https://affinity.serif.com/forum/index. ... sts-index/) though, just not necessarily on the immediate roadmap. Once they are able to implement this, I think a lot of users could really use AP as an alternative to PS.
    0
  • Michael Sonshine
    [quote="dredlew" wrote:
    I use Affinity Photo and I have found no way to return a layered tiff file to C1 from it and have it be usable just as I can not find a way to return a file from it with an alpha channel and have it usable in C1.

    I was not aware that this was possible with Photoshop as I do not have it on my system. If my information was wrong, I apologize and stand corrected.


    I just checked Affinity's site, and apparently layered TIFFs is a limitation of AP at the moment. They have it on their radar (https://affinity.serif.com/forum/index. ... sts-index/) though, just not necessarily on the immediate roadmap. Once they are able to implement this, I think a lot of users could really use AP as an alternative to PS.

    I do not have Photoshop on my system (as I said previously) but I do have an old copy of PhotoLine. One of the things about it is that it seems to understand just about everyone's file format and I have verified that you are correct. I can send a raw image to PhotoLine using C1's Edit With, add adjustment layers and save the tiff back to C1 and it will display the image. I can then send it back to PhotoLine using Open In and the layers are still intact. Hence I was wrong assuming that what was happening with Affinity Photo was indicative of how C1 handled layers.

    However one of the things I noticed when testing the C1 - PhotoLine interaction is that C1 did not really seem to understand some of the changes made using PhotoLine's layers. That is, the image, when it got back to C1, did not always display as though it (C1) was using the layer information. I could make multiple layer-based changes in PL and the image (generally) did not display any of those changes when it got back to C1. I could then make some C1 changes and resend the image to PL and it (PL) did not understand those changes, so the changes made in each editor were, often, unusable in the other. This did not seem to apply to some of the changes made with the tools rather than with layers.

    This raised two questions in my mind. The first is simple. Is the C1 - Photoshop interactions the same as with PhotoLine? That is, if you make changes in PS using layers, does C1 understand those changes and display the image accordingly?

    The second question depends upon the answer to the first. If C1 does not understand the layers in PS, what real reason is there to use layer-based changes when going back and forth between the two? Or do you then save your PS image files someplace else rather than C1?

    These questions are based on the assumption that you are using the Open In call to pass an image from C1 to Photoshop. Edit With, of course, creates a new tiff file and any existing layer information in C1 would be lost.
    0
  • dredlew
    This raised two questions in my mind. The first is simple. Is the C1 - Photoshop interactions the same as with PhotoLine? That is, if you make changes in PS using layers, does C1 understand those changes and display the image accordingly?

    The second question depends upon the answer to the first. If C1 does not understand the layers in PS, what real reason is there to use layer-based changes when going back and forth between the two? Or do you then save your PS image files someplace else rather than C1?


    Question 1)
    Yes the interaction is the same as with Photoshop and yes, C1 is meant to understand the changes happening to the TIFF. What you are seeing with the non-updated layers, is what I was mentioning under step 12. It's sloppy updating on C1's part, so you have to regenerate the preview in the viewer mode. That will fix it.

    Question 2)
    C1 does not understand layers per se, it just looks at the TIFF file as if it were flattened and generates a preview for that. But as mentioned, it doesn't always recognize that the TIFF file changed, so it doesn't generate a new preview and you have to do that yourself.

    As for:
    I could then make some C1 changes and resend the image to PL and it (PL) did not understand those changes, so the changes made in each editor were, often, unusable in the other.

    Photoshop/PhotoLine will never see the changes that you make in C1, since you are editing on top of the preview, not the actual TIFF file. And that's good that way, that's non-destructive editing. But generally, you wouldn't want to do much editing in C1 anyway once you've edited it in PS/PL. This is more meant for final touches, like cropping it for export.
    0
  • dredlew
    Sad to report that Scenario 2 (cannot comment on Scenario 1 as I don't use catalog files anymore) of "Here is what DOES NOT work" in my post is still broken in version 9.1, which now has "official" TIFF support. Case ID 208004 filed 2015-12-21 was closed as "Solved" without a reply.

    Going to reopen another case for the same issue. This time I hope someone at PhaseOne actually takes this seriously.
    0
  • Michael Sonshine
    [quote="dredlew" wrote:
    Sad to report that Scenario 2 (cannot comment on Scenario 1 as I don't use catalog files anymore) of "Here is what DOES NOT work" in my post is still broken in version 9.1, which now has "official" TIFF support. Case ID 208004 filed 2015-12-21 was closed as "Solved" without a reply.

    Going to reopen another case for the same issue. This time I hope someone at PhaseOne actually takes this seriously.

    I am one of those who had this problem when using Affinity Photo up until the release of 9.1, but no longer have it, so I understand what your issue is, if not why it has not been fixed by 9.1 for you,.

    I am posting for two reasons. The first is to give you a possible "workaround" that solved the problem for me prior to the 9.1 release. I found that if I flattened the file (Document -> Flatten) and used the Matte Functionality (Edit -> Matte -> Apply) before I saved the image it fixed the issue for C1. No. It is not a solution, but it gave me the breathing space to continue working without throwing up my hands in despair.

    I created shortcuts for both actions so it did not take any real time and just automatically did both prior to a save (although I found that mostly I only needed to do the Matte functionality as flattening was not so important).

    The second reason for the post is to ask if you could post an image that has this problem so those of us using 9.1 can see if we also have the same problem or if it is unique to your system. Perhaps if you could put a file in dropbox so others could download it and give it a try, we might learn something.
    0
  • dredlew
    Affinity Photo is a bit a different story, since you're not able to save layered TIFF files to begin with. Not yet at least, it's planned for a future release. Until then though, I guess flattening the file is your only option. - To me, that's not acceptable if I spend several hours or even days editing a file in Photoshop, with potentially dozens of layers. The last thing I want to do is flatten the file and lose the ability to make corrections later. This is one of the main reasons I haven't ditched Photoshop for Affinity yet. Some day...

    Anyways, the main point is that layered TIFF files don't work properly in C1, anymore. At least it did with v8, even though official layered TIFF support only arrived in 9.1.

    I highly doubt that this is limited to my system, I just had my HD replaced and had to reinstall everything from scratch again. New C1 & PS, brand new catalog, same old issue. I'm almost certain that you could easily reproduce this (given you have PS). In the unlikely event that you should not be able to reproduce it, I could definitely provide a sample image.

    So on to the steps, which are basically the ones I outlined above under "Here is what DOES work". Note that the Scenario (2) here applies to a catalog with referenced images. In-catalog images (Scenario 1) seem to have been fixed in 9.1:
    - To simplify, just go through step 1-8.
    - In step 5, don't even bother with masks or any of that. Just duplicate the background layer a few times to get some layers.
    - Once everything's saved back into C1, give the TIFF a color label so that it can be easily tracked.
    - Quit C1
    - Relaunch C1
    - The TIFF file is now missing.
    - Manually re-import the TIFF into the catalog again. Magically, the file now has the same color label that we gave it before it vanished.


    Of course my workaround so far has been, re-importing the missing TIFFs again the next time I open C1. Needless to say that this gets old VERY quickly and the fact that I reported this back in 2015 and they flat out ignored this is beyond aggravating. Even more so, if you think that Aperture launched in 2005 with this round-tripping feature in version 1.0 and it was flawless. It is 2016 now and C1 still can't get it right...
    0
  • Michael Sonshine
    > I'm almost certain that you could easily reproduce this (given you have PS). In the unlikely event that you should not be able to reproduce it, I could definitely provide a sample image.

    I do not have PS on my Mac. My 5.1 version (prior to CC) was Windows and I no longer have Parallels on my Mac so I can not use it.

    I would be interested in getting one of these tiffs if you can put one in dropbox. I am curious to see if something like PhotoLine might solve the problem. Quitting and restarting C1 does not seem like much of a solution to me.

    I also have Dxo Optics Pro and it has a problem with externally edited images. That is, if you send an image to an external editor, edit it and save it back there is an even chance that you will not see any of the changes in the image unless you exit and restart Optics Pro. Dxo's response to this problem was to tell me that I should not use their Export To Application if I intend to return the image to Optics Pro, but I could exit and restart, and I found that suggestion completely unacceptable. Fortunately I found a decent workaround for that issue. Perhaps there is one here as well?
    0

Post is closed for comments.