Can I send a Photo from the Apple Photos app (on Mac) to Affinity Photo like I can with LR?

[KipV]

I have been searching all over Apple's Photo app for how to do this but I can't see where I go to edit a photo in Affinity. Since Affinity doesn't really have file navigation tools I will need to rely on other apps to do this.

[billtils]

KipV, I don't know because I haven't used Photos (and do not intend to), but your post implies that you have been able to set it up to identify LR as an external editor ("... like I can with LR ..."), in which case all you need to do is identify AP as your external editor.

 

Another (cumbersome) option is to export the images and then open with AP.

[KipV]

I am sorry I don't know if my question came out right. What I meant to say was that I store photos in LR and edit them in external programs. What I was wondering is if I can also store images in Apple Photos and then export it to Affinity Photo. Hope my question makes sense now.

[MattP]

Apple haven't yet completed their 'Edit in...' functionality for Photos, so at present you are not able to edit any images in external editors - this will come in time though. When it arrives we will make sure that the experience is as good as it can possibly be :)

[billtils]

KipV, if you are using LR for photo management it's hard to see why you'd want to use Apple's photos for that.   Why not stay with LR and using its external editor pointing to AP?

 

(To be fair about Apple's Photos app, I did look at it as a possible Aperture replacement when it was released as a public beta a few months back.  But it was a very quick look - I took an immediate dislike to it and, along with the comments from other users, decided it was not for me. As a result I did not give it a serious try out, and it may have features that would be of value to you).

[KipV]

Ok so this is still a very 1.0 product if it doesn't have the "edit in" feature yet. I guessed that that might have been the issue.

 

billtils, Photos is basically more of an iPhoto replacement then an Aperture replacement. I switched from iPhoto to LR a long time ago but with the new Photos it makes it difficult for me to decide where to land. Here is a quick pro and con list between the two just off the top of my head:

 

1. I am intrigued by the Photos search box which works much better then the iPhoto search box and is a little bit like the Finders search box which has improved a lot recently.

 

2. I like how Photos lets you easily view images by the time they were taken.

 

3. It's tied in with iCloud as it should be. I have always believed that it is better for operating system manufactures to manage the cloud then to have 3rd party developers work with the cloud since I think that is a more natural fit.

 

4. Adobe has no reason to make products like Affinity work well with their own products. This means that PS will always work better with LR then 3rd party products ever will. I believe that is the main reason that LR crushed Aperture. I know the reason I went with LR was for it's PS integration. Now with Photos I can see Apple actually working with third party products.

 

5. I don't like how LR creates copies of a photo each time it gets sent to another app. Why can't I make an adjustment in one app and have that adjustment still be available to me when I move to the next app? In other words why can't I set the brightness to 12 in Apple Photos and still have that same 12 brightness setting at the same level when it moves over to the exported app? Why do all the settings all go back to zero with a copy that was created of the file? This doesn't seem like a very seamless experience to me.

 

6. As I have heard the experience of LR on iOS is not terribly great yet.

 

7. Photos will take advantage of Mac technology where LR and Adobe in general doesn't seem to want to put much effort into making their software work like Mac programs. I guess that is one reason I go against the majority of people who are wanting a Windows version of Affinity, after having to deal with Adobe ignoring Mac features I would like for a company to really spend all their time taking advantage of Mac features. That is one of the most appealing parts of Affinity to me.

 

All that to say I am not exactly sure which product is better, it sort of depends what point of view you approach it from. Also as a new 1.0 product we haven't had a chance to see where Apple is headed with this product yet.

[billtils]

You have to try Apple photos out for yourself and see if it meets your needs or if you are confident that it will get there.  However, as you say is not an Aperture replacement, but firmly in the iPhone / iPad casual user market place.  Also there are many reports of very unhappy users re the iCloud library aspects - take up lots of space that you have to pay for ...  

 

However, our primary concern here is beta testing of Affinity Photo, not Apply Photo  :) and AP is a very good editor that is getting better as our experiences are factored in to its development.  Whether or not Apple's Photo uses it as an external editor is up to Apple, they did it with Aperture but that was in the "good old days", so it will be whether they want to rather than whether they are able to.

[KipV]

The main reason I brought up Photos here is that AP doesn't currently have much of a way to navigate photos so it needs to rely on another program in order for the workflow to function better. Unless Affinity adds some kind of built in photo browser (which might make sense) we will have to find some other program to do this.

 

I don't think the iCloud pricing is bad I can fit my library on there for $4 a month with plenty of space left over for other types of files. As iOS devices get store that is larger then 128GB this offering could be very appealing to many users. The pricing is competitive with other cloud services. Also I should point out Apple doesn't make you back up all your photos to iCloud it's just an option so I don't understand why anyone would complain about pricing. Photos is a free app available on a free operating system.

[MelG]

The main reason I brought up Photos here is that AP doesn't currently have much of a way to navigate photos so it needs to rely on another program in order for the workflow to function better. Unless Affinity adds some kind of built in photo browser (which might make sense) we will have to find some other program to do this.

 

Hey @KipV – Does the Media Browser (View Menu) in AP not meet your needs? How would you like to see it work?

[KipV]

No, I need a more powerful way to search and both Photos and LR do a far better job at navigating images. Also a good navigation tool is extremely helpful for editing images as well. Anyone who has done much batch editing in LR knows how powerful that can be. This might be a good direction for AP to go as well.

[billtils]

AP is a photo editor, not a photo library manager (or Digital Asset Manager).  It is in beta and several features are still being worked on, including batch processing using the Macro persona**.  It is up to the user to choose which DAM to use, and any of the ones that you mention will do the job.  Another free-to-Apple option is to custom build your own using Pictures in OS X.  However, if you want iThingy and OS X integration, as of a few days ago it will have to be Apple's Photos.

 

What you do about Cloud storage is another personal decision - as far as our household is concerned my wife uses iCloud from her iPod but I store all my images locally (with double backups) and use Dropbox for cloud-based work.

 

** This statement is from memory.  I have a recollection from some time back that the beta about 3 or 4 releases ago had a non-functioning Macro persona button that was removed until the macro suite was ready to release; if any staff are reading this and it is not correct, please let us know!

[Achim63]

 

5. I don't like how LR creates copies of a photo each time it gets sent to another app. Why can't I make an adjustment in one app and have that adjustment still be available to me when I move to the next app? In other words why can't I set the brightness to 12 in Apple Photos and still have that same 12 brightness setting at the same level when it moves over to the exported app? Why do all the settings all go back to zero with a copy that was created of the file? This doesn't seem like a very seamless experience to me.

 

 

I would also like if LR could just let me send a DNG to AP without having to convert it to a TIFF before. But I know why it has to be that way - LR doesn't change the DNG itself, instead it only remembers the changes you made. So there shouldn't be another app that interferes in this process and this makes it necessary to first include the necessary pixel calculations into another file. This is even necessary to work with PS - it first exports a PSD file. The advantage being that you'll never loose your original image.

 

As to keeping the brightness "12": this value might have a different meaning in different apps (one might have brightness go from 1 to 100, another from 1 to 256 or from 1 to 15) - as some guitar amps have a max. volume of 12, but still aren't louder than amplifiers that "only" go to 10.

[KipV]

billtils, I would like to know more about AP batch processing. I didn't realize that was in the works. How could they do a feature like that if there currently isn't much of a way to navigate files yet? Will the solution be more like in Adobe Camera Raw where you select a series of photos first and then bring it into AP for batch processing?

[KipV]

Achim63, I think Affinity needs to agree on a standard image setting when moving between a navigation program and AP. In other words both programs should have a setting of 100 or 256 or whatever they decide it should be. To me it seems like Affinity should be able to exchange files with a raw navigation program since AP is a raw program itself. That is one advantage Affinity seems to have over PS. PS doesn't DIRECTLY open raw files. It can open it's files through a plugin but not in the actual program. Adobe is at a disadvantage in that PS came out way before raw so it couldn't be integrated into the program as fluidly as it should have been.

[Tiger Richards]

Hey @KipV – Does the Media Browser (View Menu) in AP not meet your needs? How would you like to see it work?

 

Wow.  This is not intuitive.  I've just downloaded Affinity, and have spent about 30 minutes attempting to understand how to import an image, other than to print it out and slap it on my scanner ("acquire image").  I'v had to resort to Google search to find this answer, and voila! there it is, including a means to access Apple Photos.  Just like that, I have acquired a hitherto unrealized appreciation of the role of Adobe Bridge.  

 

This has GOT to be in the "Affinity for absolute beginners" tutorial.

[coranda]

 

5. I don't like how LR creates copies of a photo each time it gets sent to another app. Why can't I make an adjustment in one app and have that adjustment still be available to me when I move to the next app? In other words why can't I set the brightness to 12 in Apple Photos and still have that same 12 brightness setting at the same level when it moves over to the exported app? Why do all the settings all go back to zero with a copy that was created of the file? This doesn't seem like a very seamless experience to me.

 

 

 

Creating a copy is necessary so I doubt you'll find a decent DAM system that doesn't do that.  It's because it is designed to work with RAW files and these need to be edited non-destructively.  The RAW convertor reads the data from the file and constructs the image but there is no one-to-one correspondence between an RBG pixel in the final image and the data from one of the camera's photo sites.  When Lightroom (or Aperture...) is used to edit an image it doesn't actually change the file it just changes the parameters for the RAW conversion and stores them in a database.  The original RAW image data is never changed.

 

So, when you want to edit that image in other software you have the choice of either sending the original RAW file, which contains none of the changes made in LR, or, if you want the LR changes included, it must create a new pixel based file with those changes already implemented.  Remember, a RAW file is not pixel based, it has no RGB pixels in it.

 

Photoshop can't edit a RAW file, it first has to pass it to ACR for conversion to a pixel image.  Similarly, AP can't edit a RAW file, it must first be passed to the Develop persona for conversion to a pixel image.

 

Of course, it would be possible to do what you want if you are shooting jpeg but these days most photography software is going to cater for RAW files and so may not necessarily give you a separate destructive jpeg edit route.  It's why programmes like LR don't require you to save individual photos as you edit them.  They aren't changing the image file just updating their database on the fly.

 

It's not something I've investigated so I can't say which software does or doesn't offer that option.

[billtils]

@Tiger Richards

 

There are lots of ways, but the most straightforward it File > Open and then select the image from the window that pops up.  If the issue is that dong it this way does not find the image you want (e.g. it is in an Aperture library), you can try using Media Browser (which works for some people but not others) or go in the opposite direction and specify AP as an external editor in your library program.

[acapstick]

Tiger Richards,

Following on from BillTills comment, you can see this in this tutorial. It's the first featured Photo tutorial we offer new customers on the Affinity Photo website.

Alternatively, a search for "Open" in Affinity Photo help (accessed from the Help menu) would give you the answer.

Also, the Get Started book might be useful to you in the same help.

 

\Andy

[Uvinnie]

Hey @KipV – Does the Media Browser (View Menu) in AP not meet your needs? How would you like to see it work?

How would this work? When I click on Media Browser There are not photos under the Photos icon when I click on the triangle.

[S.Dave Fairless]

Kip, I have found a solution for accessing photos from Apple products from within Affinity Photo.

Open Affinity Photo

Click view from main menu

Click Media Browser

Choose and open folder for:   iPhoto,  Photo,  or Pictures folders. If they are not visible they can be dragged in using finder.

Thumbnails will appear which will make choosing easy

Select and click on picture (s) to open inAff.P

 

Also, go to Apple Preferences click, click extensions + Photos, then select all the Affinity extensions for editing photos. These will appear in iPhoto and Photos as extra editing aps for improved editing within your picture program.

 

Dave

[rwakeford]

Apple haven't yet completed their 'Edit in...' functionality for Photos, so at present you are not able to edit any images in external editors - this will come in time though. When it arrives we will make sure that the experience is as good as it can possibly be :)

You can, or at least, I can. I've installed "External Editors" (free) and also the extensions of various programmes such as Affinity, ON1, Intensify and Tonality because all my photos are in Photos. They are then selected and ticked in System Preferences/Extensions So I can select a photo in Photos, pick Edit and then choose extensions at the bottom of the edit menu and all the programmes are there ready to be used. If External Editors is used then it opens the photo in Affinity when I choose it and it's just a matter of using the export persona when it's finished which does of course mean that you have to export the adjusted picture into photos as it doesn't overwrite the one you're editing. So you either keep the original and the newly edited one side by side or ditch the one you don't like in preference for the one you do!

[KipV]

Dave, When I made my original post I don't think the extensions feature was available, at least not from within Photos. I have now used extensions from Affinity and Pixelmator and they work great! It's a pretty neat idea to use the features inside of the program rather then having to switch to the more advanced program if you only need a few features. It would be nice if there was a way to have those features come up by default so they wouldn't even have to be selected each time you click edit.

[KipV]

I want to back track I little on what I posted this July about extensions working great. As much as a love AP as a Photoshop replacement the combination of AP and Apple Photos can't touch LR. There are just too many issues between the two apps:

 

- Photos will get flattened if over a certain size.

- Files sometimes don't get saved.

 

This caused me to end up saving my Affinity work in the Finder but unfortunately photos of a certain size don't seem to give previews either. In my opinion AP most needed feature is to make it catch up with LR more then with Photoshop. I noticed that this is by far my highest viewed topic so clearly this issue matters to most people. Hopefully improvements in this area will get moved up Serif's list of priorities.