Yeah the whole thing (CamRaw) is crafty, which is why I lament every time why Adobe just couldn't make it fully functional. It would be blessing to have it work on linear files without any hassle as that would make the post-pro workflow absolutely identical to photography, one smooth process without unnecessary division between "big" changes in linear 32bit, and "small" changes after.
Now you originally mentioned the Affinity and I have to contend that it isn't as good as it appears.. we bought two licences but almost kinda regret it as while it is lot more ambitious (much better 32bit support, simultanenous layer adjustments (super good for textures),...) it's just not even stable. At the moment I am fully back at Photoshop for almost anything. It's not just habit...it's the same stuff as 3dsMax, might not be ideal, but still the best choice.
Cheers for the info on Affinity, stability is a concern I might wait it out. Another thing that concerns me is I use lightroom for my photography so the Adobe suite suits my pipeline, as well as the terrific catagorizing/tagging etc and similarities between adobe tools.
Regarding what you said about not being ideal but the best choice, I see you did a test on the ACES workflow using Davinci with dubcat - out of curiosity did you implement this workflow? Are you working in a higher gamut space or just sRGB in post? I ask because I have read the tech papers, did some tests on my own, I also work in Adobe 98 space for my photography on a wide gamut monitor for print (output to sRGB for screen), however for 3D archviz I just dont see any major advantage currently - mostly because Photoshop is the main post production tool (with the limitations we spoke about), easy to swap PSD files with other studios and if its kept in sRGB (even if its a low gamut space - which still looks great even with photography) theres no confusion along the way for input, output, space conversion, color matching, etc. I wont go into print for now, just curious about your view on the topic currently.
edit: Not to mention I wont be remastering any of my old work, which I doubt many people do in archviz.
The stability might be fine for most but I tried it mainly for 32bit (HDR editing of large files) and that was where it wasn't that great.
No I never even tried Davinci Resolve, I simply can't force myself to adopt node based approach to post-pro.
I use sRGB clamped monitor because neither 3dsMax nor Corona are color managed and I can't wait to setup correct colors in Photoshop, I spend 99perc. of my time in 3dsMax. I might switch to wide-gamut when at least Corona becomes color managed, without it...it's insanity to do so imho.
I also edit my photos in AdobeRGB via CameraRaw in either PS or Lightroom and only clamp when saving for web, but I do this while still being in sRGB clamp on my display so I only get advantage of some mixing not really exposed to the wider spectrum. Switching and managing wide-gamut pipeline my stressing me so I gave preference to lowest common denominator, sRGB because of my CGI work.
(I've been advocating for color management of 3dsMax and/or Corona for years here, but that is rather slow to get traction. I see it was potentially moved into 5.0 version, so maybe next year ? If 3dsMax doesn't come with it sooner. Honestly they have to, soon everyone will be using DCI-P3 since AdobeRGB is dead and HDR will become common space, color management must come.)
Juraj Talcik
You can still apply camera raw to 32bit, via dialog merge to HDR, but it will convert in 16bit, and you need to enable this feature in preference
They remove old behavior as they said it's was too different result between Camera raw window and ending image.
Oh I know there are few workarounds, but...it's not ideal :- ). The one I mentioned is "Open As" and then it will preserve dynamic range without clamping it. But both are shit solutions.