Ikonomos Loc: Adelaide, South Australia

Hi All,
I have so far not been shooting in Raw mode.
I understand the benefits of Raw & the ability to edit the image without loss in quality.
However at the moment I want to shoot only select photos in RAW & keep the processing simple.
I store all my images on my Mac in photos & I have shot some Raw images but I need some advice on how to import/ identify/ process / convert to JPEG using the photos app.
I don't want to spend a lot of money & if possible would like to use photos on my Mac until I become more experienced or start spending more time editing.
Any advice around this topic would be appreciated.

rjaywallace Loc: Wisconsin

Over time even the JPEG images will consume a lot of space on your drive. One fairly simple and inexpensive solution involves keeping your photo apps on your computer and storing the photos on a separate, portable hard drive.

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

That is what I do plus in addition two additional back up external drives as insurance.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Don't you just do a "save as," or whatever iOS calls it when you save to your target drive?

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

I have all of my apps are installed on a very large (1 terabyte) C: drive. All of my photos are uploaded to subdirectories on my 6 terabyte "D:" drive. My E: drive is a 4 TB drive that holds other data such as word docs, email etc. and I have a "g:" drive that is 6 tb that is shared to my wife's computer to hold all of her Lightroom images. (she has a 1 tb local drive with apps and her other "regular" data on it and a much slower computer.
My H: drive is my WD Cloud which holds images that I either have uploaded while traveling to get them home for safekeeping or images that are for customers to view from their computers at home/phones. Their directories are temps on the WD Cloud and deactivated after a review period on their images (they can not download or do anything but view the images). I have several other drives but this is the basics for your question.
I would install as large a drive as I could for photo storage as this gets everything to one spot for backup. Then use multiple external (usb3, firewire, or external sata drives for backup and get them offsite or in a secure location. (I rotate mine between the house, the garage, and a bank safe deposit vault.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

I have no experience with Photos (the app), but does it even allow editing of raw files? For whatever the reason, I didn't think it did.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

If you are talking about Photoshop, then it requires Bridge? I think to convert the file to jpg, dng, Tiff or something first. Lightroom will make adjustments to raw/nef and then exports to Photoshop by creating a jpg, dng, or tiff file for further enhancement.

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

Did your camera come with any software?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

iOS runs on iPads, iPods, iPhones, but not Macs. On a Mac, OS X or MacOS is the name of the OS.


You Export, or Export Unmodified Originals from Photos. But for raw, the OP needs a better editor. Affinity Photo is about $50 and will do a great job. Other options are out there. The $10/month Adobe CC bundle of Lightroom and Photoshop is an industry standard, although it is very advanced, with a steep learning curve for the inexperienced.

OP — DO check for the disk that came with your camera. It probably has a raw editor on it.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

No, I'm referring to the Apple application named Photos.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Um, the OP uses a Mac... drive letters are meaningless on it, unless you're running Windows. You can name drives whatever you want in MacOS. Instead of C:\, the startup drive default name is MacintoshHD.

The basic concept of using multiple externals works well, though. And Apple iCloud works well with Photos, especially between the Mac and an iPhone.

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

Not only store the image files on a separate portable hard drive, but back that drive up to at least one other hard drive. There's safety in numbers!

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Ok, I am not familiar with the Apple application.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I think you'll find that processing a raw image is faster and easier than trying to do things to a jpeg.

I don't use nor do I like Photos. Aperture was much better, and Lightroom/Photoshop is what I use. Though I have been playing around with Affinity (on a PC) and it looks promising, and On1 Raw, which is positioned to give Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw a run for it's money.

I use Lightroom primarily for it's catalog and organizational/management tools. There is nothing like it outside of a full DAM enterprise application (Digital Asset Management). I convert to jpeg only for output for clients, printing and/or uploading to social media. Once the files get to their destination, they are deleted. I use an intermediary file, a 16 bit ProPhoto color space psd file where I do the bulk of my post-Lightroom editing, and I save that with all the layers and objects that I create during that process. But I toss all of my jpegs. In LR you can create an export (conversion) preset for each destination, and I name and save those. Much easier to manage.