The raw converter in AP has several options and features that may provide you a tool for your workflow. One of the often overlooked aspects of configuring the raw converter is the Develop Assistant. In the main editing window (not the Develop module) click on the Assistant icon in the upper toolbar (the tuxedo looking icon) - in the resulting dialog that opens, click on the Developer assistant button in the lower left corner. This will bring up several options to configure the raw conversion. For example, you can choose to use Serif's raw converter or Apple's Core raw conversion (if on a Mac), you can choose to apply lens correction and noise reduction by default, and you can even configure the resulting bit depth of the conversion (16bit per channel or 32 bit per channel). You can also choose to remove tone curve and exposure bias from the conversion (i.e., things that converters like ACR/LR add in their profiles to make the images "look better" out of the box). The default conversion may look flat because the tone curve and exposure bias settings are turned off. See if enabling them makes your images look "better."
The raw converter also has robust white balance tools (single point, area, average of multiple points) and local adjustments (called "Overlays" - gradient, brush), lens corrections, etc. There is also the ability to save a preset, step through a history of raw edit settings and take snapshots, and set the output color space.
One huge problem is lack of batch processing. There is a Batch processing facility in AP, but there is no way to store raw conversion settings (like a database or sidecar file) with which to instruct the Batch process on how to convert the raw files. This also goes for single file conversion - once you hit the Develop button, the settings you used for that conversion/file are gone. If you open the raw file again, you will have to start over at the default conversion. The only way to save a set of conversion settings is with a preset, and that is super inefficient.
I do not use the raw converter in AP and have not really used AP in a while - the development of the application appears, more or less, to have stalled as the developers have been concentrating on the iPad version of their applications. There has been no beta available for testing for quite a while now, so who knows when development will restart.
If you head on over to the AP forum, you will find a whole section of video tutorials about raw conversion:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10119-official-affinity-photo-desktop-video-tutorials-200/scroll down that list to the Raw Development section.
kirk
