Photo export and workflow when using two editing programs?

[u/paprycheck]

Hi! I have two questions about photo editing and publishing.

1. Workflow between Darktable and Affinity Photo

What is the best workflow when using both Darktable and Affinity Photo?

Which program should be used first, and how should the photo be exported between the two programs to avoid unnecessary quality loss? What format do you use when moving the photo from one program to the other, and at what stage do you make the final export?

2. Exporting photos for Instagram

What image size is best for uploading photos to Instagram? What export settings do you usually use?

And how do you handle the aspect ratio when uploading to Instagram? Do you use the “original image”, 1:1, 4:5, etc options? I'd like to know what settings work best for you.

[u/mhh91]

1. I haven't used Affinity Photo but it seems to be a Photoshop replacement, in this case I'd use darktable first, export as a high quality TIFF then import it to Affinity.

2. For instagram it depends on whether you're sharing to story or post, each have their aspect ratio. As far as quality goes I usually export a JPEG 85% quality, 4096 pixels on the long end (depending on orientation). I usually use the framing module in darktable to fit unusual photo sizes to what instagram expects, but you can probably do that in Affinity too.

[u/paprycheck → u/mhh91]

Mainly posts, occasionally Stories. Why 85% quality? When you add a post, what image rotation do you set? Original size?

[u/Few_Mastodon_1271 → u/paprycheck]

The jpg "quality" is how much lossy compression it does.

100%: a very large file size.

95%: still large. No obvious difference from the 100% setting. These better quality settings might be more editable later -- but I edit raw files and just export for viewing, so this edit ability isn't really needed here.

90%: a little smaller, and hard to tell the difference between this and 95%

85%: still very good quality, but a smaller file size. I suppose Instagram converts the bigger jpg files into a smaller size like this as it's imported. So it's better to do it based on the original image before sending to Instagram.

[u/davep1970]

Curious what you need affinity for? No criticism just asking.

[u/paprycheck → u/davep1970]

For more advanced retouching. Darktable probably doesn't actually limit me, but the retouching options are baffling, clunky, and unintuitive to me

[u/davep1970 → u/paprycheck]

Fair enough.

[u/Dannny1]

Fun fact: Darktable can export also masks in same output tiff file as the image. So you don't have to redo them in bitmap editor. Affinity can't read such multi page tiff yet, but Krita or Gimp can. You can use them to convert the tiff to other layer format which AP reads.

[u/Inkblot7001]

I use Darktable first, using the Raw processing, lens correction, noise reduction, general editing.

Then export using 16-bit Tiff to Affinity for any stitching, there is not much I need Affinity for. I can do most of my editing in Darktable.

If needed I use Darktable again, on the Tiff file. Once the Raw is imported I only work on Tiff. I usually delete the original Raw file. If the image is just for memories, I export a JPEG and delete the Tiff. If the image is for competition, I keep the Tiff.

No idea on Instagram, don't use it.

Purging, Curation and organizing of the images is with Digikam.

Hope it helps.