External Editors in Photos Are Here

Thanks to user Paradise Pete in this topic, Why remove external editor capability- one of the most useful iPhoto features.!, who found this new app in the App Store, External Editors For Photos, we can now edit from within Photos with the 3rd party editor or editors of our choice like we did with iPhoto. The new app installs an extension which lets us chose any 3rd party editor of our choice to use within Photos for editing.

When you run the app for the first time you can choose an image editor to be the default editor when you invoke the External Editors extension:

After running the app for the first time this is how you select the external editor(s): enter the Edit mode and select External Editors in the Extensions menu:

and your editor of choice at the right:

Your previously selected default editor will open automatically. If you prefer to use a different editor you can close that editor, go back to the Edit window and select a different editor from the list at the right.

Here's what you need to know about editing with Photoshop (PS) or any 3rd party editor from within Photos:

Note: when I refer to the Photoshop file extension, .psd, it can be the file extension that your editor of choice uses.

1 - if you create a .psd file from a jpeg original you must save it to the desktop and import as a new file just like with iPhoto.

2 - if a jpeg is edited by PS resulting in a .psd file and it's saved without selecting the Desktop the default location will be here in a folder like this shown

AND the resulting folder and .psd file will be deleted automatically.

3 - if you flatten the file in PS and save it as a jpeg it will be saved correctly and recognized by Photos. Revert to Original can be used on the edit to remove the edited version.

4 - if the original file is a .psd file and is edited by PS and just saved the resulting edited version will be converted to a jpeg file and recognized by Photos. If that image is edited with PS a second time you'll lose the layers and just be editing a jpeg file.

5 - to keep the .psd file so you can do another edit first duplicate the photo and edit the duplicate file with PS. That will preserve the original .psd file and it's layers for additional edits but the first edit will will not be included in the second edit.

And all of this for only US $0.99.

I've corresponded with the developer to see if there would be a way to edit the applications that appear in the list at the right. He stated that any app that can handle an image file gets included which includes some unlikely apps like Amadeus Pro, File Name Rebuilder, Firefox, Lyn, LibreOffice, Quicktime Player 7 among others. He said he would look into the possibility of allowing the user to edit the list at the right.

This user tip was generated from the following discussion: External Editors in Photos Are Here