Apple Photos round-tripping

[h_d]

Probably best to ask this in a separate thread on the main Questions forum. This board (and this thread) are Affinity Photo Beta 1.8 specific. 

Cheers,

H

[MEB]

13 hours ago, Richard Liu said:

Although I import my photos to Apple Photos and develop RAW files with Affinity Photo, I have not done so directly, but export the RAW file and open it in Affinity Photo.  Can somebody who is developing a RAW file with Affinity Photo directly in Apple Photo please tell me what happens to the original RAW file when I save the developed and possibly edited photo in Affinity Photo and return to Apple Photo?  Is the RAW file still available, or do I have to somehow "undo" the work I did on it with Affinity Photo and revert back to the original RAW file?  If the latter, then I submit that this is not correct behavior.  Yes, it is exactly what happens with film, I can only develop a film once.  On the other hand, in that regard digital development has a chance to improve on analog by offering the possibility to develop the same RAW file in various different ways,

Hi Richard Liu,
Nothing happens to the RAW file, it's still there in Apple Photos. The edited version is what's displayed but it's a different file. If you want to revert to the original RAW in Apple Photos, click the Edit button on the top right of the interface, then the Revert to Original button on the top left of the interface. If you want to develop two different versions of the same RAW file you have to duplicate the RAW in Apple Photos right-clicking on it's thumbnail or single image views and selecting Duplicate 1 Photo. If you click the Get Info button on the top right of the interface in any of the RAW duplicates you created you will see that Apple Photos identify them as Version 1, 2, 3 etc. Edit them as you do usually to develop different versions of the same (duplicated) RAW.

[Richard Liu]

@MEB,

OK, thanks.  That's what I thought.  I think you can see that this is not a good way of handling RAW files.  Am I correct in assuming that, when Affinity Photo returns a developed RAW file to Apple Photos, it is identified as RAW and edited?  That, of course, would be nonsense.

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, Richard Liu said:

 Am I correct in assuming that, when Affinity Photo returns a developed RAW file to Apple Photos, it is identified as RAW and edited?

Apple Photos marks it as 'edited.' Beyond that, it is considerably more complicate than it might seem. For all the gory details you can refer to the Tidbits article The Ins and Outs of Non-destructive Editing in Photos for Mac and iOS, written by the guy who led the team that developed the engine for the Mac version of Apple Photos.

[h_d]

That's a great article @R C-R - it's worth reading to the end and absorbing the section headed Don't Edit with "Edit With".

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, h_d said:

That's a great article @R C-R - it's worth reading to the end and absorbing the section headed Don't Edit with "Edit With".

I think the single most important thing that article makes clear is that Apple Photos never alters the original file, whether stored in the Photos library in RAW or some other format. But there is a lot of other info in it that users should be aware of, like the pitfalls of using "Edit With" & the "Fly in the Ointment" about what happens when more than one app or Photos extension is used to edit an image.

[Richard Liu]

@R C-R,

Yes, thanks for the link to https://tidbits.com/2019/06/14/the-ins-and-outs-of-non-destructive-editing-in-photos-for-mac-and-ios/ .  Apple sure seems to have messed up the design of support for extensions in the OS X/macOS photos applications.  I shudder to think about the support -- or rather the lack thereof -- of color profiles when editing using a sequence of extensions.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Richard Liu said:

Apple sure seems to have messed up the design of support for extensions in the OS X/macOS photos applications.

I think (as the article says) for good reasons they have made certain design choices that make feasible 'low friction' round trip support of third party extensions, but what they failed to do is make clear to end users the compromises that involves.