Import RAW issues on iPad

[Joel Schafer]

This seems like the most basic of questions but I couldn’t find relevant answers in the FAQ.

I’m unable to import (some) raw photos to Affinity Photo on iPad (iPadOS 13.X)   I’m not sure if this is an Affinity or Apple issue.

I began by importing photos from 2 SD cards taken with two different Fuji cameras, both configured to save both JPG and raw (RAF) files.

I imported photos from the SD card from both cameras in an identical manner into the default Apple Photos app.   However, Photos doesn’t appear to let me select whether I want the JPEG or RAW photos to be imported.  

When I use the standard Share function, I don’t have the ‘Open in (affinity) Photo’ option available, even if I open Edit to try and find and enable it.   

Most strange is the fact that if I used ‘Open from Photos’ within Affinity, then look at the Recents folder, all the RAW photos are there from one camera.   The other cameras photos are also there, but not showing as RAW.    If I try to open them, however,  I get the ‘Failed to open file’ /private…./tmp/loading.raf ‘File type is not supported error’.   

This is all really confusing and I find it impossible to construct a google search that informs me how I should be importing these files.   Almost every search leads to links about importing RAW with Lightroom.

Any suggestions on how to do this would be helpful.  I just want to import RAW from an SD card and edit in Affinity on the iPad.  Is there a better import option to use than Photos that can pull files directly from an SD card.

A few extra facts:

First, if I open any of the images in the RAW Power app first, then I can share it out normally with ‘Open in Photo’, but this is not at all efficient.

Second, the camera images that read properly are from the X100F, while the others are from the X-Pro3, a fairly new camera.   I would think the raf format is identical however, so I’m not clear why the camera model would matter.     In any case, as I said, I can read the X-Pro3 files fine if they are processed through RAW Power.

Thanks,

Joel
 

[Paul Mudditt]

Unfortunately the file extension being the same doesn’t mean that the file can always be managed since the camera designers tweak the file format as each new camera comes out. Doesn’t look as if IOS13 supports X-Pro3 yet:-

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210191

Using share in IOS always shares an optimised JPEG version of the file even when it only exists as a RAW file.

To import RAW you must use the import from photos or import from cloud options so that Affinity can request from IOS the original RAW image.
Affinity is not a Digital Asset Manager (DAM) and therefore is not a replacement for Lightroom which is designed for handling multiple files at once. Affinity is a replacement for Photoshop only so best to work with single images at a time. Hope this helps.

[Joel Schafer]

Thanks, that probably does explain this all then.   It should be OK once Apple Photos adds the X-Pro3.