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.