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Opening images in Affinity Photo from Apple Photos on the MAC


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  • Staff

Hi abjwsm,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

You can access Apple Photos library trough menu View ▸ Media Browser... in Affinity Photo. You can also access them going to menu File ▸ Open and clicking on Photos (Media section) on the left. In both cases the images will be imported as JPG's.

 

If you want to access the RAW files instead you will have to export them manually from Photos and import into Affinity Photo. To export a RAW file from Apple Photos go to menu File ▸ Export ▸ Export Unmodified Original.... Then open it in Affinity Photo, edit the image and save in your preferred format. To import it back to Apple Photos go to menu File ▸ Import... and select the file or drag it from the Finder to Apple Photos.

 

There's a third-party Apple Photos extension, called External Editors that lets you send images from Apple Photos as RAW, TIFF or JPG´s  directly to Affinity Photo. You may want to take a look at it.

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  • Staff

Hi davebel73,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Can you give us more details please?

Is this happening with any file or it's just with a specific one?

To which format are you trying to export? Can you upload the afphoto file somewhere for us to check it out please?

 

You can also try to press and hold ⌃(ctrl) while launching Affinity Photo from the Launchpad then select Clear from the dialog that will open to reset the app. Does it still crash after the reset?

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Thanks for reply, problem seemed to stem from install of El Capitan, a work through with apple help and a reinstall seemed to fix it. Very disappointed that I can't directly access photos, thats where all my images are. Whats the point of an editing programme for Mac that can't directly access photos, I'm using an SD card via pictures in finder, the images are so small its driving me mad.

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My Photos library is stored on an external thunderbolt hard drive on my MAC.   When I click on Photos it takes a while but selections finally come up however when I select the date file that I want, the pictures never show up.  I do have roughly 75,000 pictures in my library but they are all divided up by year and then sectioned into specific events by date.   I did click on just a one picture file and the picture is grayed out and never shows up.  Please see the attachment below.   

 

Thanks for any help or explanation that you can give me.

post-30739-0-91416400-1463622919_thumb.png

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Very disappointed that I can't directly access photos, thats where all my images are. Whats the point of an editing programme for Mac that can't directly access photos ...

That is a consequence of how the Apple Photos app is designed -- no other app is supposed to directly alter anything stored in a Photos Library.photoslibrary package because this can corrupt the internal support files the app uses to manage the library content and/or defeat one of its primary features, that being to always retain the unmodified original version (so you can undo all edits or use the 'export unmodified original' menu command).

 

That is why there is no "Show in Finder" File menu command like there was for iPhoto, just the "Show Referenced File in Finder" one for items not stored in the library.

 

Apple intends for you to use the Media item in the File > Open menu sidebar to access any media stored in the Library packages with other apps that support that feature, & to save any edited versions as new files, optionally along side the original version in Photos.

 

Affinity doesn't quite handle this as Apple intends: under some conditions saving an edited file opened from the library just overwrites the original instead of offering to save it as a new file. This is considered to be a bug in Affinity & something you should be aware of if you rely on Apple Photos to safely store original versions of its library items.

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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Thanks R C-R. My difficulties, all seem to come from the install of El Cap'. whilst rearranging images and deleting some unwanted in Photos everything froze (never happened in iPhoto), left for 10mins. no change, no response anywhere. Power down disconnect all, leave 10 mins, reconnect and power up, its working again.

 

Go to Affinity. Try scroll down finder to Photos again. and instead of just not loading as before, it loads and I can access my album of 'Photos for Edit' No problem getting images for editing (Done this process 2 or 3 times now).

I have images taken using  JPEG+RAW both seem to open ok in Affinity and I can edit-develop-tweak then export to Pictures as JPEG (don't seem to be able to export directly to Photos). Have to then move images into the Photos albums I want to use. Only concern at the moment is about originals being overwritten, I always click don't save altered image in the box after I close the file after export. Don't properly understand how all this works just want to use it.  Really don't want to lose the originals, it seems ok at the moment. Guess keeping SD Cards is a good habit.

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I don't remember the exact conditions in which Affinity will overwrite the original Apple Photos file -- maybe MEB or one of the other staff members can post more about that here -- but as long as you always click 'don't save' I think you should be OK.

 

Personally, as an extra safety measure I maintain two Time Machine backups of everything on my startup drive. That way, if I somehow lose an original (whether stored in a Photos library or elsewhere) I can retrieve the original from one of the backups. To do this for files not stored in the library is trivial but for those that are, it is necessary to restore the entire library (using the 'keep both' option) & then opening Apple Photos with that library instead of the 'system' one. (You do that by holding down the option key when launching Photos.) Once the restored library opens, the old file can be exported to some convenient location, quitting Photos & reopening it with the default system library & importing the file back into it.

 

It is a convoluted process & can require a lot of free file space but having a 'Plan B' to fall back on when all else fails never hurts.

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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  • 2 months later...

To whom, Thank you in advance for help with this detail. 

 

I just want to drag and drop a photo from Photos on a mac to Afinity and no matter what key I hold down, shift, option, command, nothing works.  I've had success before, dragging from photos into Affinity, or so I thought, but now it refuses. 

 

 I don't want to scroll through all the photos again to find the one I want on the tiny pop up window, as per directions above. 

 

There must be a better way to just simply drag and drop! One must be able to be in Photos, looking at image in larger thumb size, and then, as with Photoshop, say, "I'd like to edit this one!" and then drag it over the icon and in it goes for editing. 

 

No such luck and highly frustrating. Hopefully you can guide me!
 

Thank you 

 

hifire

 

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  • Staff

Hi all,

Affinity Photo 1.5 (currently in Beta) adds an additional extension for Apple Photos (called Edit in Affinity Photo) that lets you send a file/image (including RAW) from Apple Photos directly to Affinity Photo and then back to Apple Photos after editing turning this process a lot more simpler than it is now.

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Hi all,

Affinity Photo 1.5 (currently in Beta) adds an additional extension for Apple Photos (called Edit in Affinity Photo) that lets you send a file/image (including RAW) from Apple Photos directly to Affinity Photo and then back to Apple Photos after editing turning this process a lot more simpler than it is now.

 

MEB I have the 1.5 Beta but no such extension appears in Apple Photo?

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Extension has now shown up. It does not appear to load up the pic (raw in my case) in AP 5 beta cleanly, it is very dark, but clicking on the develop persona rectifies this. Procedure seems to be that file is edited in AP following which one just closes AP and it returns the file to Apple Photos as a JPG. It returns the file to the correct location and does not over-write the original so all in all it works well. But is there a way to get something other than a JPG back to Apple Photos?

 

I like the idea of Apple Photos keeping the original safe but would prefer having a tiff returned rather than a JPG. This all represents tremendous progress and brings Apple Photos close to being a companion DAM to AP. Well done gang!

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  • Staff

@hifire

I'm referring to applications developed by Apple themselves, for example between Apple Pages and Apple Photos.

 

@Travelling Man,

Yes, there's still a few issues with the extension but it's still part of the 1.5 Beta so it should be improved as we move forward.

Regarding the JPG that's sent back to Apple Photos I believe this is an Apple Photos restriction, not an Affinity Photo issue.

I will check this nonetheless.

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  • 8 months later...

I have imported a nef file (i.e Raw Nikon file) into Photos. Under extensions, "edit in Affinity Photo" is listed. When I click on it, the error message reads:

"Affinity Photo could not be launched. Please press Cancel."

 

I can open Affinity Develop in extensions, however. But I have noticed that it is a reduced version of Develop compared to the standalone Affinity Photo app.

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  • 2 months later...
On 6/5/2017 at 0:24 PM, Mike Scott said:

I have imported a nef file (i.e Raw Nikon file) into Photos. Under extensions, "edit in Affinity Photo" is listed. When I click on it, the error message reads:

"Affinity Photo could not be launched. Please press Cancel."

 

I can open Affinity Develop in extensions, however. But I have noticed that it is a reduced version of Develop compared to the standalone Affinity Photo app.

Same here, any help on how to fix that issue ?

Mac OS 10.12.6 and last beta Affinity Photo for Mac.

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  • 1 month later...
  • Staff

Hi Mike Scott, Fabrizio, ARichard,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

I'm sorry for the delay getting back to you. I've just tried sending two .nef files (Nikon D500) from Apple Photos to Affinity Photo using the Edit in Affinity Photo extension and everything worked as expected, no error messages. Can you please press and hold ⌥ (option/alt) while launching the app then press Clear from the dialog that will open (keeping the default three first checboxes ticked) and try sending the file from Apple Photos again? Note this action will reset some user preferences, ui layout etc to their defaults.

Does it still display the same error after the reset?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi All,

Newbie to Affinity and newly upgraded to macOS High Sierra.

I've added the Affinity extensions, restarted everything, see all the other extension, but not those for Affinity when I choose "Edit With" in the Photos alt menu

What am I missing?

Thx!

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