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How to make "Round-trip" edits from Apple Photos to Affinity Photo and back again:


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This is a repost - I posted earlier in bugs, but this forum seems more appropriate...

 

How to make "Round-trip" edits from Apple Photos to Affinity Photo and back again:

 

In AP, open the desired Apple Photos image via the media browser (scroll down left hand side bar in "open..." dialogue until you see the Photos "Camera" icon, then select that, then navigate to your image for editing)

 

Note 1: if you double click here to select a photo for editing, it will not open in AP! - this may be a bug. But if you single-click (select) the desired photo then click the "open..." button, it will open in AP, ready for editing. 

 

Edit away in AP.

 

When done editing, to save back into Apple Photos, just hit "Save...". The photo will be saved in its original file type on top of (overwriting) the original in the Apple Photos Library. You may also want to save a copy in Affinity Photo format to your desktop, just for safety.

 

BUT! Apple Photos will not yet know the photo has been edited, and will display a proxy image of the unedited original. Don't despair. 

 

To quickly rectify this, find and select the image within Apple Photos that you just edited in Affinity, now click the "Edit..."  button.

 

Suddenly your Affinity edits will appear, and you can now cancel out of the edit mode in Apple Photos.

 

Ta Da. There is the edited image in Apple Photos.

 

Note 2: If you try to "Save As..." from Affinity then you cannot navigate to the media browser. So you must "Save...".

 

Note 3: You may want to duplicate your photo first in Apple Photos before editing in Affinity, in case you want to save the original. Not sure if this will always work as sometime duplicates are only proxies of the original in Apple Photos. 

 

Note 4: Affinity lets you "Save Editing History" but haven't tested if this works via the round trip method above.

 

You're welcome. 

 
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  • Staff

Hi bjuraz,

In Aperture you can either right-click on an image then select Export ▸ Original... to export the RAW file to the Finder and then import to Affinity Photo manually or set an External Photo Editor in Aperture ▸ Preferences..., Export tab (on top). This last option lets you send the images in PSD or TIFF (both 8 and 16 bits) but it doesn't work quite well with Affinity Photo yet since we don't support layered Tiff's (coming later), and we don't overwrite PSD's by design (meaning Aperture can't keep track of the edited image after you save it since Photo will only allow you to save it in Photo's native format .afphoto).

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  • 7 months later...

The trick to get Apple Photos to show the edits from Affinity Photo is not working for me. I still see the original image even after editing it in Affinity, saving back to Apple, and editing the photo in Apple. When I export the photo from Apple, the exported photo shows the edits.

 

If it matters, I was importing .raf files (Fuji's RAW format) into Apple Photos at the start, not JPEGs.

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That seems to work sporadically for me. Some of my edits are now showing up (after opening the images in Edit mode in Apple Photos several hours ago). Some of the images are still not showing my changes, so either that trick doesn't work consistently, or Photos has discarded some of my changes.

 

I thought I was seeing an issue previously where if I edited an image in Photos after making changes in Affinity, Photos would overwrite my changes. Although that may have just been lag that I seem to be experiencing when opening the image in Edit mode in Apple Photos.

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Hi darth_mall,

Yes, there's an issue with the way photos are saved back to Apple Photos. The thumbnail doesn't reflect the changes but loading the full image will show the edits.

I believe this is already logged but i will check it/update the log.

As I understand it, no other app besides Apple Photos itself should ever alter the original photo file stored in the date organized Photos Library.photoslibrary/Masters folders or touch the thumbnail images stored in Photos Library.photoslibrary/Thumbnails ones.

 

The first breaks the non-destructive ability to remove all edits that is a primary design feature of the app & the second can (among other things) lead to "orphaned" thumbnails that bloat the size of the Photos Library.

 

Basically, Affinity should not "save back" anything to the original file; it should either force the edited file to be saved as a new (imported) photo file or save the edits in some way compatible with the Modified (alias to Previews) folder & database folder structures managed by Apple Photos.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 1 year later...

... so as it's now September 2017, has theis 'issue' been resolved?

 

I ask because I sent a RAW (NEF) file to the full Affinity Photo from Apple Photos...

59ac2b1dcb49c_InApplePhotos.jpg.f0668768ed67a90539d074a4378a71e8.jpg

...made some changes in Affinity Photo (Perspective correction and crop)...

59ac2b396ceb3_InAffinityPhoto.jpg.38d0b7d13f5119e485659f209e7f4a45.jpg

... File/Save in Affinity Photo.

 

And back in Photos I do not see the changes that I made!!!

Am I missing something here?  Any help most welcome please.

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  • Staff

Hi FrankL0,
I assume you have sent the image to Affinity Photo using the Edit in Affinity Photo extension. If so hitting File ▸ Save in Affinity Photo is not enough to send the image back to Apple Photos with the changes. You have to close the document, going to menu File ▸ Close (or pressing the X in the respective document tab if you have more than one document open). It's the Close action that will send the image back to Apple Photos, then you still have to click the Save Changes button on the top right of the Apple Photos interface to accept the changes and save the file.

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