Unable to Edit in Affinity Photo from Apple Photos

[chwebb1]

Hi,

I am a recent convert from Adobe Photoshop, so please pardon me if I am doing something obviously wrong. 

I am trying to edit a photo that is currently in Apple Photos, and I have tried it both by right clicking on the photo and selecting "Edit With > Affinity Photo", which causes the changes to not be saved back to Apple Photos, and then I read that I should click Edit, click the three dots, and click "Edit with Affinity Photo". I make the changes I want to the photo in Affinity, and then click Command S to save (or Command W to close), and return to Apple Photos. The photo in Apple Photo updates, and I click Save Changes. Afterwards, I get an error saying either "Unable to Save Changes for “Edit in Affinity Photo"" "An error occurred while saving. Please try again later." or an error saying "Unable to edit with “Edit in Affinity Photo”" "An unexpected error occurred.". Would someone please help me figure out what I'm doing wrong here?

Some information on my setup:

2017 iMac 27" 5K, 3.8GHz Quad Core i5, 40 GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 580 (8GB), 2 external monitors (NEC MultiSync EA232WMi), macOS Catalina 10.15, Wacom Intuos (Small, Bluetooth, 2018).

Thanks!

Edited October 12, 2019 by chwebb1

[Cecil]

Many are floating down river in the same boat, without oars.  It should work if you double click on Apple Photo, click Edit, Extension, Edit In Affinity Photo.  Works for me until I try to save.  I started Exporting to desire drive folder, which works, without the AP format.

[markw]

Hello chwebb1 and welcome to the Affinity forums
I’m really sorry to have to say this but at the moment it’s not good news I’m afraid.

 

[chwebb1]

It is good to know I am not the only one having issues, I thought I was probably doing something stupid. :) I suppose I will wait for the next update to Affinity to hopefully resolve this issue.

Thanks!

[LarryB]

Has there been any progress on fixing this?  I am having the same issue after upgrading to Catalina.

[mille19]

I'm getting same problem, any progress

[Patrick Connor]

@mille19

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

We will shortly have a beta Affinity Photo build with a candidate fix for this. Check this beta forum for an announcement or follow this thread to be notified directly

[jeffnles1]

On 11/20/2019 at 11:53 AM, Patrick Connor said:

@mille19

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

We will shortly have a beta Affinity Photo build with a candidate fix for this. Check this beta forum for an announcement or follow this thread to be notified directly

welcome news

 

[mayrit28]

Hi

I have also this problem with the last version 1.8.3 

Is it normally solved or is it a problem in y configuration?

 

 

[Andreas Bauer]

Hi

I have also this problem with the last version 1.8.3 

Is there any solution?

[Steve D-]

I am having this exact problem as well.  I could round-trip from Apple Photos using  "Edit with" and choosing Photoshop, but when I try to do that with Affinity, the edited image cannot be saved.  I am eagerly awaiting Affinity's bug fix.  Thanks so much.

[LiamBates]

Not sure if this helps anyone, but I am also having this issue. I've realized that it seems to only occur when you're editing a file that doesn't exceed the 16mb limit, which for me is only a few older shots from a point and shoot. As soon as I upped the bit depth to 16-bit and increased my file size the extension started working again as expected.

[Cecil]

One year, no fix.  

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Cecil said:

One year, no fix.  

It has been fixed for most but unfortunately not for all users. The problem is so far they have not been able to determine why it works fine for some users & not for others when all of them are running the same versions of AP, the macOS, & Apple Photos. 

[Cecil]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

It has been fixed for most but unfortunately not for all users. The problem is so far they have not been able to determine why it works fine for some users & not for others when all of them are running the same versions of AP, the macOS, & Apple Photos. 

I don’t know if most is correct so no disagreement; however, for those falling outside of most it’s like a hamburger that someone made without the beef,

[Steve D-]

It now seems to work for me!  I open up the photo in Photos, click Edit, then click the circle with the three dots, and edit with either the specific Affinity controls or even Edit in Affinity Photo .  I make my edits and then Save.  My edits are visible in Photos,.  I tested whether the edits persist in the file by dragging the edited photo to my desktop and opened it--and the edits are still there.  And the edited photo is still in the same position in Photos where it had been, among the others taken at the same date, so my organization is not changed, which is important to me.  (I definitely feel I tried this before and it didn't work, so I don't get why it seems to work now.)

What does NOT work is the procedure I used to follow in Photoshop CS5, in which I'd select the photo in Photos and chose "Edit with" and then select Photoshop and open PS.  Doing that with Affinity Photo, opens Affinity Photo and you can make all the edits you want, but then they seem lost once you close the document. 

Another odd thing is that if I do successfully save edits as described in the first paragraph, later opening them in Affinity Photo as described in the second paragraph above, the photo doesn't consistently show the edits that were made.  Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't.  (Perhaps they don't show because the Photos editing feature is nondestructive, saving the original and allowing you to revert to it--and AF then pulls from the original not the edited version.)  This doesn't seem like a big problem--just be consistent and use the method in the first paragraph.  However, it's still confusing to me as sometimes opening a photo as described in the second para, shows the edits and sometimes it doesn't.  Sometimes only some of the edits show.  Go figure.).

[Steve D-]

Postscript.  The method I described just above did not work just now, and I got the unable to save error message.  So I don't know if it depends on what editing tools you used or is random.  Very frustrating.

 

[rhmb]

4 hours ago, Steve D- said:

The method I described just above did not work just now, and I got the unable to save error message.  So I don't know if it depends on what editing tools you used or is random. 

There are a number of threads about this bug with numerous work arounds some of which work some of the time for some of the people but none of which work for all of the people all of the time. The only certainty is that in a week or so another new thread will be started as someone else “discovers” that Edit in Affinity Photos does not work well with Apple Photo. And arguably, as time moves on, so too perhaps the likelihood that there is no fix.

Surely it is well past time for the Affinity staff to be more transparent and open about this and include a warning on both the Apple store and Affinity store about this long standing issue. Judging by the number of recurring threads, far too many users of Apple photos are getting needlessly bitten by a bug which they should be warned about before buying the product. Even if only a minority (as we are led to believe) are impacted. How many users, like myself for instance, have simply given up on using Affinity Photo extensions within Apple Photos? And in fact, because of this, discovered another photo editing application which meets most of their needs?

Surely part of the process for finding a fix should also include making more of an effort to determine if there are any common factors at play with those affected. I see very little attempts by developers to ask any follow on questions of those of us that are affected. 

[R C-R]

FWIW, as explained in great detail here, the way Apple Photos itself handles multiple external editors is clunky, & for other than jpeg format files, the "Edit with..." options should generally be avoided. It also does not help that accidentally editing anything in a Photos library directly can screw up how it keeps track of media files.

[Steve D-]

Thanks R C-R.  Your article is a very informative and clear explanation of something pretty confusing.  My takeaway is that Edit With is unreliable due to quirks in Apple's Photos, and that it's always better to use the extensions from Photos if offered by your preferred photo editor, such as Affinity Photo.  I'll proceed that way in the future with Affinity Photo, but unfortunately that approach is unreliable as well.  I'm still blaming Affinity Photo, because I had no problems at all using Edit With in Photos when I used Photoshop.  So I have the same frustration with Affinity Photo expressed by rhmb .  If Photoshop can mesh effectively with Photos , why can't Affinity Photo do the same--especially after a year plus of complaints?

[Bruce Atkinson]

On 5/6/2020 at 8:07 PM, LiamBates said:

Not sure if this helps anyone, but I am also having this issue. I've realized that it seems to only occur when you're editing a file that doesn't exceed the 16mb limit, which for me is only a few older shots from a point and shoot. As soon as I upped the bit depth to 16-bit and increased my file size the extension started working again as expected.

I'm not sure if anyone is still having problems with this or not but I recently encountered the same issue but only intermittently. It turns out that, as LiamBates indicated, files exceeding the 16 mb limit do get saved properly and consistently. The message that accompanies the notice that the 16mb limit has been exceeded also indicates that as a result, the document has been flattened. That would suggest to me that images <16mb retain the various layers and that Photos can't handle this situation thus resulting in the 'unexpected error'. Increasing the bit depth to 16-bit does increase file size to >16mb so gets around the problem. Another option that works is to do all of the desired editing but as a last step select all of the layers and do a 'merge visible'. This too will result in a file >16mb that will then be flattened then saved OK. 

Perhaps a permanent solution would be for Serif to simply have the 'Save' work as the 'Save Flattened' option, similar to the Save options when opening a file in Affinity and adding layers.

[kouek]

Have the same problem with some photos, and yeah increase the file size, 16 bit depth and x1.5 or x2 resolution, "fix" the problem.

[Fly-Boy]

I was having the same problem, old 2013 iMac running Catalina.  A solution that seems to work is to select an image in the gallery, don't click on Edit, rather, click in Image in the menu bar, go down and select Edit With then select Affinity Photo.  Make your changes in Photo, when you are done, select File and Save.  Before leaving, if you Check back to the gallery, you will see your edited image.  You can still select that image, edit it in Photos or even revert to original, getting rid of the changes you made in Affinity Photo.

I am delighted that I finally got this to work.

[KennP]

Thanks, Fly-Boy. This method works for me as well, also reverting back to the original in Apple Photos. 

I can see the original problem was reported the first time in this thread nearly two years ago. I can confirm the actual problem still exists, at least for me on 1.9.3 and Big Sur. I have other photo apps where it seems to work as intended.

[jmwellborn]

Welcome to the forums @KennP😊  For what it is worth, I have tried this with my Macbook Pro with the M1 chip, Big Sur v. 11.3.1 and using Affinity Photo 1.9.3.  It works seamlessly for me.  Choose an image in Apple Photos, right click on it, go down to Edit With and choose Affinity Photo.  Perform edits.  Choose FILE>SAVE and then immediately open Apple Photos.  There is the newly edited image.  Should I want to go back to the original in Apple Photos, I click on Revert to Original.

I also tried @Fly-Boy's method, which worked some of the time and for some strange reason not some of the time.  FILE>SAVE sometimes sent me to the "Save As" category, which was not what I wanted.  I did find that after editing the image in Photo, I could go to FILE>SHARE>ADD TO PHOTOS.  In that case Revert to Original is greyed out.  But at least the work was saved.