Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Apple Photos External Edit


Recommended Posts

I’ve just started using Affinity Photo as an external editor for RAW images stored in my Apple Photos Library(MacOS BigSur 11.2) that were taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III. Apple have still not yet implemented RAW support for this camera’s .ORF image files even though it’s been out for 12 months. However I’ve found that if I select a .ORF image file (shows as a white square) and choose Edit with Affinity Photo the image opens up in Affinity Photo and when I select Develop and Save I can now see the RAW image properly in Apple Photos. However saving the file creates an Affinity Photo Document which is 170MB whilst retaining the original 18MB .ORF file in Apple Photos Library. 
 

Can someone please explain why this is because if this happens with every image I will very quickly exceed the capacity of my hard drive. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is a bit more to my question.

So I’m using the “Edit with Affinity Photo” option from within Apple Photos and this works but when I save the image I get a notification that it has exceeded the 16MB change limit and the image has been flattened. What exactly does that mean? 

I compared the edited .ORF image with the .JPG version of the same image that was also imported from the camera, the JPG looks sharper which implies that editing in Affinity Photo and then saving back to Apple Photos has resulted in a loss of image quality which presumably is what “Image has been flattened” means.

If that’s how it’s going to work then it’s not much use or am I doing something wrong?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Within Apple Photos, instead of using “Edit with ....”, you might have better luck with either the Affinity Develop extension or the Edit in Affinity Photo extension. The extensions are usually preferable to  “Edit with ... .”
 

That said, editing with Affinity from within Apple Photos can, at times, be problematic and gets into issues like the notifications you are receiving. For more on these issues, I recommend you do a search on Apple Photos in these fora. 

Another option would be to use Olympus Workspace to develop the raw image and then export it as a jpg or TIFF to your application of choice. Olympus Workspace is free with your Olympus Camera and is actually fairly good for what it does. 

And yes, Affinity Document files can be very large. 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi rhmb, Thank you for your inputs, really appreciate the help.

Since posting I have got a slightly better understanding of what Affinity Photo is doing and sorry for using the wrong terminology but I was actually trying  Edit using the Affinity Develop Extension and Edit in Affinity Photo Extensions rather than "Edit with" as I had already sussed out that the latter was not without it's problems.

As for the file size I think I now understand what is going on;  when used as an extension to Apple Photos, only one large file gets created in a folder in the library folder and this gets overwritten each time a new image is edited so doing it this way means that the original image before it was edited in AP cannot be recovered.

I have also tried editing the image directly in Affinity Photo and then exporting to Apple Photos which does mean I can revert back to the original because an image with the .afphoto gets saved but this is not very efficient in terms of disk space.

I have had my Olympus cameras since August so I have tried Workspace over the past few months but I don't like it hence why I bought Affinity Photo which I do like and for £23.99 worth the price even if I'm not going to use it as my main edit application.

I was using Apple Aperture until it became unsupported and switched over to Apple Photos which has been fine for what I want; it's just really annoying that Apple have still not provided ORF support for the OM-D E-M1 Mark III but having said that the processed JPG that the camera saves is actually quite good so I think I will persevere with JPGs and use Affinity Photo as and when I feel I need to do something a bit more complex with layers which is something Apple Photos cannot do. Up until buying the Olympus, I was exclusively shooting Nikon NEF RAW images so never had any issues with Apple Photos, my latest Nikon is a Z7 which I use as well as the Olympus and with over 11k images stored I find Apple Photos organisation features really useful here why it will remain as my main photo application.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree that Olympus Workspace has limitations (although for a free raw editor, it’s not bad). I use it mostly for importing photos from my EM 10ii to my iMac using wifi but that is very slow compared to using a card reader so I use it only when I have just a few photos to upload. 
I also agree with you on the quality of Olympus jpgs. I play around with raw once in awhile but nine times out of ten jpg fits the bill for my needs.
I use Apple Photos for album sharing and slideshows but my main DAM and editor is On1 Photo Raw. Migrating over from Lightroom and learning On1 has kept me too occupied to do much with Affinity so far, unfortunately. 
I did try the Retroactive hack that adapts Aperture to Catalina and Big Sur and was surprised at how well Aperture performed even now .... but there’s no getting around the fact that using a hack, even a good hack, is a risky venture so that was really just a bit of playing around. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.