This will take you out of Develop mode into general Photo mode (Persona), where you can make any other changes that you wish to, using the many tools offering in the panels at the right. To apply these changes, click on the blue Develop button. You will now have your image looking great, and presets ready to use in the future. Affinity Photo: developed from RAW, showing Photo mode adjustments available. This makes it quick and simple to work from a basic preset for most of your images, tweaking each to optimise. Note that if you change the settings in an existing preset, those new settings will only be saved if you repeat the Add Preset process to save them as a new preset. Once you are happy with the adjustments to be made, save each panel’s settings as a Preset, by clicking on the Preset: popup menu and selecting the Add Preset command you can then use those presets as the basis for future image development. Affinity Photo: save presets for future use, then Develop. To adjust Details, you will probably want to zoom in to bring the image to 100% ( Cmd-1) and move around the image to satisfy yourself that you are not oversharpening it, but are capturing details optimally. Once you are happy, move on to the Details panel, and any further panels which you wish to use. Using the Basic panel, adjust the controls to tweak your image to look the way that you want it to. Affinity Photo: adjust Details settings for the image.

At the top left of the image is a blue button labelled Develop – that is the button which you click once you are happy with your development of the image.

By default the image should be scaled to fit the size of the window (shortcut Cmd-0), giving you a good overall view of the effects of changes made to the image. This opens your RAW image in Develop mode (Persona), with the range of tools available under five different tab headings, in the righthand panel, from Basic to Overlays. Affinity Photo: adjust Basic settings for the RAW image. Start Affinity Photo, close the introductory splash screen, and use the File/Open… command to open your RAW file.

To give you an idea how good Serif’s Affinity Photo is, I offer the following outline workflow as a basis for you to develop your own, and to show how efficient and powerful it can be.

Affinity photo preset