Window Placement when opening from macOS Photos

[Stephen Hart]

I often open images from macOS Photos into Affinity Photo: Control click > Edit With > Affinity Photo or Command Return.

Since I moved from a 24" iMac to a Mac Studio with Studio Display (27"), the window opens in the lower left.
I have reset my default workspace so that a new document opens the Affinity Photo window in the upper left, where I want it.

How can I reset so that when I open an image from Photos, the Affinity Photo window opens in the upper left?

[v_kyr]

47 minutes ago, Stephen Hart said:

How can I reset so that when I open an image from Photos, the Affinity Photo window opens in the upper left?

Usually APh itself remembers and saves/persists the last position & size of it's main window in it's settings/prefs. So if you open APh and drag it's main window to the upper left screen position and afterwards close APh, then APh next time it should open it's main window at that last time used position.

Other than that you have to check if macOS windows manager app window positioning has somehow be altered to overwrite that default/common window positioning behavior. - See also & related:

• How to use window management in macOS Monterey
• Manage app windows on Mac
• Automate Window Positioning With macOS and Apps
• Use apps in Split View on Mac
• When apps don't remember the size and position of their windows
• I'm sure this has been done before, but why doesn't The World's Most Advanced OS remember window positions?
• ... etc.

Further there are also a bunch of third party window management tools for macOS (do a Google search after that topic) ...

• The 6 Best Mac Window Management Tools
• ... etc.

[Stephen Hart]

"Usually APh itself remembers and saves/persists the last position & size of it's main window in it's settings/prefs. So if you open APh and drag it's main window to the upper left screen position and afterwards close APh, then APh next time it should open it's main window at that last time used position."

 

Thanks. Quitting Affinity Photo after moving the window seems to have done the trick. I usually don't quit Affinity Photo after editing these images.

[nickbatz]

This is when you wake the machine from sleep, right?

If so, what's going on is that the monitor is syncing after the windows are drawn, and the Mac thinks you're using a smaller monitor.

I have that problem on my new Mac Studio too. Apple is aware of the issue, but I don't know whether they're expecting to be able to provide a solution.

[Stephen Hart]

19 hours ago, nickbatz said:

This is when you wake the machine from sleep, right?

If so, what's going on is that the monitor is syncing after the windows are drawn, and the Mac thinks you're using a smaller monitor.

I have that problem on my new Mac Studio too. Apple is aware of the issue, but I don't know whether they're expecting to be able to provide a solution.

No, the problem I asked about was just opening an image from Photos: Edit With. Quitting Affinity Photo after moving the window where I want it seems to have solved the problem for me.

 

BTW, I have seen the other issue you raise on my Studio Display (and Mac Studio), of the display waking from sleep with the wrong-sized desktop on a black background. It only happened a couple of times and hasn't happened in quite a while, so I thought it had been fixed in the last Studio Display update or in a macOS update. macOS 12.6, Display Firmware Version: Version 15.5 (Build 19F80)

[nickbatz]

I'll have to try Edit With on the new Mac (as soon as I teach Photos where its library is!). It worked sporadically, and then very slowly, on my previous Mac.

Actually, I wonder whether the reason it didn't work is just that - the photo library isn't where it expects to see it.

The waking issue manifests itself differently on my setup, as I said, but it sounds like a variation of the same thing.

macOS 12.6 here too.

[Stephen Hart]

I have seen an issue where Command Return (= Edit With Last Used Application) doesn't work. Also, if Affinity Photo is shut down, it has to start up before the command takes effect. I think Affinity Photo starts up much faster now, whether that's the Mac Studio or 12.6 or an Affinity Photo update or some combination, I don't know.

Having the Photos library on the main drive seems to work much better, one of the reasons I opted for plenty of internal SSD space.

[Old Bruce]

58 minutes ago, Stephen Hart said:

I have seen an issue where Command Return (= Edit With Last Used Application) doesn't work.

Never heard of Command + Enter doing anything.

[nickbatz]

57 minutes ago, Stephen Hart said:

I have seen an issue where Command Return (= Edit With Last Used Application) doesn't work. Also, if Affinity Photo is shut down, it has to start up before the command takes effect. I think Affinity Photo starts up much faster now, whether that's the Mac Studio or 12.6 or an Affinity Photo update or some combination, I don't know.

Having the Photos library on the main drive seems to work much better, one of the reasons I opted for plenty of internal SSD space.

Yeah, I paid way too much for internal storage too (4TB).

But I don't regret it. Apart from the convenience, Apple has made virtual memory swapping way faster, and the conventional practice of keeping things off your system drive has changed. And while you still need RAM for real-time applications, this storage is ridiculously fast.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Never heard of Command + Enter doing anything.

In ADe + APh Cmd+Enter converts Objects (shapes) to curves!

 

In other apps ...

• What is Cmd + Enter keyb shortcut for?

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Never heard of Command + Enter doing anything.

It is the shortcut in the Apple Photos app for  Image > Edit With > Last Used Application. For me, that is usually AP & it works fine on my Mac running Catalina.

[Stephen Hart]

22 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Never heard of Command + Enter doing anything.

 

[Old Bruce]

Ah, I have never used any of the applications you people have listed.

[nickbatz]

9 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Ah, I have never used any of the applications you people have listed.

Well, one of them is Affinity Photo.

Photos taken on an iPhone or iPad are (or can be) sent to Apple's iCloud, and your library is synced with all your Apple devices. If you want to open a photo in an editor, this feature means you don't have to save the file first. And it means you don't have to send the file from your iPhone to your computer.

Also, you access ProRAW pictures this way.

Much as I abhor subscriptions, it's worth $3/month (if you fill up the free storage and need more) just for this.

[Stephen Hart]

Strangely, editing in Affinity Photo from Photos.app stopped working for raw files (RW2). Exporting the file and then editing in Affinity works fine. And choosing Affinity in the list in the edit window in Photos also works

But using the Command Return key combo or choosing Edit With... Affinity Photo doesn't.

Did something change in Affinity Photo 2?

[h_d]

I wish I could find the link, but I remember reading a blog by a former developer of Apple Photos which basically said 'Don't use Edit With..."  or cmd+Enter.

Instead, switch into editing mode in Apple Photos (select the image, then press return), click the three dots in the top right and choose Edit In Affinity Photo. 

On my machine running Affinity Photo v2.0 this opens the raw image in Develop Mode. If I develop, then make further modifications, then save, all changes are saved back to Apple Photos.

This works for me with .RW2 files (I shoot Panasonic) and with .DNG files from my iPhone. Can't comment on other raw formats.

Edited December 17, 2022 by h_d
typo

[h_d]

8 minutes ago, h_d said:

I wish I could find the link

Found it. Read the whole thing about how Apple Photos works with non-destructive image editors and extensions. Then re-read the bit about 'Don't Edit with "Edit With"'.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, h_d said:

Instead, switch into editing mode in Apple Photos (select the image, then press return), click the three dots in the top right and choose Edit In Affinity Photo. 

On my machine running Affinity Photo v2.0 this opens the raw image in Develop Mode. If I develop, then make further modifications, then save, all changes are saved back to Apple Photos.

I have AP 1.10.6, AP 2.0.0, & AP Beta 2.0.3.316 installed on my Mac. In Apple Photos the 3 dot menu shows 3 different "Edit in Affinity Photo" items (as well as the 6 AP V1 extensions). The first opens files in AP v1, the second in the V2 beta, & the last one )presumably for V2.0.0) doesn't do anything. Both the first & last have the same (tiny!) app icon in the popup & the middle one has a tiny little β in the corner.

There are some other oddities when using the Edit in beta option if I close the file without saving in the beta but they are not repeatable so I won't get into that until I can figure out what triggers it.

[Stephen Hart]

Quote

Found it. Read the whole thing about how Apple Photos works with non-destructive image editors and extensions. Then re-read the bit about 'Don't Edit with "Edit With"'.

I had read that article previously.

But the author is talking about round-trip non-destructive editing. For example, if Photos doesn't provide the editing features you need, you can use a Photos Extension to do the editing you want, then save back to Photos, all non-destructively.

That's not what I'm doing.

I'm merely taking an original stored in Photos and opening it in Affinity Photo. When I'm done in Affinity Photo, I export as jpg, then choose Do Not Save when closing the tab or window. If I later want to change the exported jpeg, I start over from the original in Photos.

As I described in my original post, I can select an RW2 in Photos, choose Edit With (or Command Return), then do whatever I want in Affinity Photo, choose Do Not Save, all leaving the original in Photos untouched.

Somewhere recently I get a beep and this message for some photos:

An error occurred while preparing external edit.

The operation couldn’t be completed. (PHPhotosErrorDomain error 3306.)

Other RW2 photos work normally, even some shot on the same day.

[nickbatz]

For what it's worth, Edit With [Affinity Photo 1 or 2] works perfectly on macOS Monterey and Ventura on a Mac Studio.

More than that, it opens in a couple of seconds.

It didn't work consistently on my previous machine, a 5,1 Mac Pro running Mojave. Also, it took about 25 seconds for Affinity Photo itself to open off a standard SSD on that machine - vs. literally two on the Mac Studio.

[Stephen Hart]

Quote

 

Somewhere recently I get a beep and this message for some photos:

An error occurred while preparing external edit.

The operation couldn’t be completed. (PHPhotosErrorDomain error 3306.)

Other RW2 photos work normally, even some shot on the same day.

 

Above quoting myself from yesterday.

 

Here's some more. This issue is definitely not a problem with Affinity Photo. It's something to do with editing in Photos:

I found one RW2 image, edited in Photos, where I consistently got the above error when trying to use Edit With... Affinity Photo (Command Return).

An adjacent RW2 opened normally in Affinity Photo using Edit With... Affinity Photo (Command Return).

Going back to the image that didn't work, I added one edit in Photos (reduce highlights) and then it worked fine.

 

So I think something is going wrong sometimes when clicking Done in the Photos editing mode. It's not an issue with a particular image or type of image.

(In related news, I have also seen images where clicking Done after editing leaves no image visible in the Library view. The image can still be edited, and reverting to original restores the image in the Library view.)

 

BTW, Ventura 13.1, Mac Studio Mac13,2, Affinity Photo 2.0.0, Photos 8.0, 8T internal SSD (which has tons of free space)

And yes, Affinity Photo opens in about 2 seconds from the internal SSD.