jeffnles1

Hi Dave123,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
I'm assuming you are using Affinity Photo 1.7.3. If so, this is a known issue that's being looked at in Affinity Photo 1.8 Customer Beta. If you are working exclusively with RAW files it may work fine for you already (1.8 Customer Beta). If using other files types there's still a few known issues we are looking into.

I installed the Beta on my Mac and tested the integration with Photos.  Here's what I found:
PS: I have a MacBook Air:
Model Name: MacBook Air
  Model Identifier: MacBookAir6,2
  Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Core i5
  Processor Speed: 1.4 GHz
  Number of Processors: 1
  Total Number of Cores: 2
  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
  L3 Cache: 3 MB
I was, in fact, able to open files from Apple Photos.
I'm no Mac expert, but it seems kind of strange to me where Photos shows up:  In the File/Open dialog box, it's at the Bottom, under the heading Media.  Photos is the only item in that category.
When one clicks on Photos, it opens another dialog box with 2 items at the top: Photos and PhotoBooth.
It takes awhile to populate the Photos portion (that may be because I have thousands of photos stored), but it seems to work.  Once it is populated, it shows all photos under the Photos header, plus the usual groups and albums underneath.
I also have a copy of Pixelmator; the behavior of the open dialog box in both is exactly the same. In the File/Open dialog box, Photos is at the Bottom, under the heading Media.  Photos is the only item in that category.
Both programs are a little flaky in that sometimes the Photos portion fails to populate.  Maybe I'm just impatient, but if you close the open dialog and File/Open again, it then usually works.  Again, both programs work in exactly the same way.
I was able to open multiple photos, combine them, adjust them, save the result to iCloud - and then export the result to photos.  Unlike the iPad version, there isn't a Share button on the export screen - rather, there is a new Share category at the bottom of the File menu. File/Share has 5 options: Mail, Airdrop, Messages, Add to Photos, and Set Background Image.
Again, it seems odd to open images from Photos under File/Media/Photos but save them back to Photos under File/Share/Add to Photos.  Again, however, Pixelmator implements it pretty much the same way.
I tried Add to Photos and Message - and got error messages both times (see attached). However, after clicking OK, Both worked as expected.
So, still some rough edges, as one would expect from a beta, but clearly on the right track.
Thanks, guys!
 

I pretty much haven't got anything to work between with Affinity on Apple Photos. Frankly I don't want to keep putting more time in to testing it especially since they have three good stand alone apps and two good iPad apps. Other developers have made the Apple Photos extension / round trip thing work so might as well use their products in this area.

The potential fix for this is included in this beta build, However, we are still investigating some unexpected results in that it does not yet work 100% of the time and so it is not listed as "fixed"

Well, that's disappointing especially since for the past several months "1.8 will fix it" has been the mantra.  Hopefully it was just an oversight. 

Does this version fix the MacOS Photo's bugs in Catalina? (i.e. can't save in Photos when editing with Affinity?)

If you go to Apple System Preferences > All and uncheck the 'Affinity Photo' (retail) options, keeping the beta options enabled, I can successfully roundtrip. 
@R C-R - I haven't ran into any issues for the past hour but maybe work on test raw files or images you don't care too much about. At the end of the day, you're still playing with a beta so just be careful! 

Guess Santa skip this major gift.  Hope we don’t have to wait another six to eight months to use Affinity Photo with Apple Photos.

It does seem to be taking a very long time !!

this
is 
not
even
funny
anymore

@mille19
Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  
We will shortly have a beta Affinity Photo build with a candidate fix for this. Check this beta forum for an announcement or follow this thread to be notified directly

Hi Stefan,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Please hold tight. We hope to have some news regarding this issue soon.

Regrettably I have upgraded to Mac OS Catalina, this has broken my use of Affinity Photo. The problems are:
1) Any image stored in Apple Photos can not be reimported after editing via the Affinity Photo extension.
2) Any image that was edited pre Catalina and has been reimported can no longer be exported from Apple Photos, the export is a jpeg of the original image, all editing is lost.
3) The duplicate function in Apple Photos does not work for images that have been edited in Affinity Photo.
The consequences are that there is no longer an efficient workflow so continued use of Affinity Photo and Apple Photos is no longer viable.
Any edits that have been stored back to Apple Photos are no longer accessible, this is a disaster.
Duplicating edits in Apple Photos is no longer possible.
I would have expected these major problems to be highlighted by Serif with a warning to all customers not to upgrade, instead there is a recommendation that 1.7.3 is compatible with Catalina. 
Help

Hi Hi Team
We are asked not to shout, be rude and be patient. No Problem and agree
BUT
Can we get some progress with the present conflict between Apple Photo running on CATALINA (10.15.1) and Affinity 1.7.3
Can open up the photo, edit and save in Affinity OK but when its time to save that amended photo in apple photo the same old error message comes up
This issue really has been going on far to long

MEB,
I appreciate your responses and that Affinity Photo team is working on this.  However, the export, edit and import really isn't much of an answer.  That is possible with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Pixelmator Pro, Lightroom and any number of photo editing software packages.  The point of differentiation with Affinity Photos is the ability to have full Affinity launched from within Apple Photos, do all the edits, including layers and the full suite of tools and having those changes saved back to Apple Photos.  When the "save loop" is broken, it makes Affinity much less of a useful tool.  Fortunately, I have been able to revert to Mojave which worked on my Mac.  However, sooner or later, moving to Catalina or whatever comes next will become a necessity.  It seems like something that should have been caught during beta testing.
 
I really like Affinity Photo and have invested a considerable amount of time and energy learning the software and really don't want to spend an equal amount of time learning something new.  Also, "no eta" on a fix isn't really much of an answer either.  It could mean it's right around the corner or there is no intention from the Affinity Team to fix it ever.  For those of us who have invested in this software and the time to learn it, I think we deserve a better and more definitive answer from Affinity.
 
Thanks,
Jeff

Hi Jeff, HenkeJ,
The manual export/import wasn't intended as a direct answer/fix to these issues - it's not. It's just a last resort/suggestion in case some users reading this thread need access to photos stored in Apple Photos. I'm aware my answer(s) aren't much helpful for those waiting for this to get fixed but i can't really provide any more (concise) info until i get some feedback/confirmation from the dev team or a new Beta to check/test it myself. I understand this is an important feature for Mac users - it was already brought up to dev team's attention quite a few times - however it wasn't possible to fix it yet. They are doing their best to get to the bottom of the issue. My apologies for the delays and frustration this is causing. Thanks for understanding.

MEB,
I appreciate your responses and that Affinity Photo team is working on this.  However, the export, edit and import really isn't much of an answer.  That is possible with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Pixelmator Pro, Lightroom and any number of photo editing software packages.  The point of differentiation with Affinity Photos is the ability to have full Affinity launched from within Apple Photos, do all the edits, including layers and the full suite of tools and having those changes saved back to Apple Photos.  When the "save loop" is broken, it makes Affinity much less of a useful tool.  Fortunately, I have been able to revert to Mojave which worked on my Mac.  However, sooner or later, moving to Catalina or whatever comes next will become a necessity.  It seems like something that should have been caught during beta testing.
 
I really like Affinity Photo and have invested a considerable amount of time and energy learning the software and really don't want to spend an equal amount of time learning something new.  Also, "no eta" on a fix isn't really much of an answer either.  It could mean it's right around the corner or there is no intention from the Affinity Team to fix it ever.  For those of us who have invested in this software and the time to learn it, I think we deserve a better and more definitive answer from Affinity.
 
Thanks,
Jeff

Seriously, is this even being worked on? Luminar 3 have it fixed by now, and Pixelmator have no problem with it either. Im talking about editing and saving directly into Photos. I have two options, wait for your fix unless its something that might take months(?) to fix or move back to Lightroom again. Any ETA for a fix? I need this working now, preferably yesterday.