Q: RAW file import to Photos; OS X 10.10.3

Photos does import both the Raw and the Jpeg versions but they are stacked. Go to edit the shot and you'll be given a choice between editing the Raw or the Jpeg. The J means that it's a stack and you're looking at the Jpeg version.

Not sure why you would shoot both, as importing a raw give you a Jpeg preview anyway.

After you have clicked "Edit", select "Use RAW as original" under the Image menu. When you close the edit session, the thumbnail will now show "R" on the stack instead of "J", and the raw version will open the next time you edit that photo.

Terence Devlin wrote:

 

Photos does import both the Raw and the Jpeg versions but they are stacked. Go to edit the shot and you'll be given a choice between editing the Raw or the Jpeg. The J means that it's a stack and you're looking at the Jpeg version.

 

Not sure why you would shoot both, as importing a raw give you a Jpeg preview anyway.

Often the JPG of the pair can be quite adequate without any need for significant processing, the RAW can then be a fallback should the in-camera exposure/metering used have not provided a satisfactory result.

Equally, I believe shooting both offers people who need to do so, the ability to cut initial time expenditure in post-processing say if producing a portfolio of images for a client to narrow down which once selected can be optimised by using the RAW files.  Admittedly perhaps the JPG preview files are much better quality than they used to be years ago.

Personal choice at the end of the day I guess, but I prefer the more flexible approach shooting RAW/JPG pairs gives me.  If I could only shoot one it would be RAW naturally as I'm more likely to be able to salvage a bad shot - Many cameras also give the option to save the pairs at differing resolution.

black99S wrote:

 

Solved.

Thanks to Terence Devlin for describing the meaning of the shadowed J box in bottom LH corner = 'stacked' JPG & RAW images; both are imported.

Thanks to Markwmsn for describing how to access the RAW image. Double click the image, click edit in the picture frame, THEN go to the pull down menu 'Image' to select use RAW as original.

Not intuitively obvious.

No it's not at all.  I've not fiddled much with Photos since the official release and was scratching my head wondering why the 'Use RAW as Original' was greyed out in thumbnail mode.

There is a bigger issue - there is no global setting to choose RAW or JPG as the original on import or migration AFAICS.

So with only a small test library with maybe 500 RAW/JPG pairs, there is no easy way to perhaps select a batch of 10 thumbnails using JPG which look a tad over or underexposed and to select 'Use RAW' for that group - you would have to set this manually for every one, what a chore.

small J icon on the bottom left corner

When in Edit mode you can also use the contextual Menu using a 'right click' on the image rather than having to go via the Image menu options:

By following this I also discovered that, after selecting photo and Edit, you can switch between JPG and RAW as shown in this screenshot at top of edit screen.

My old workflow was: shoot RAW+JPEG. Import only JPEG. Select keepers. For images that need extra post processing (quite rare nowadays), import RAW versions.

I would like to achieve something similar with Photos for OS X if possible. The reason to not keep all RAW files is purely related to storage needs and related costs.

Is it possible to delete the RAW or JPEG version of the file after import? Or choose to import only JPEG from the pair?

Just an update, went to show this process of clicking between jpg and RAW as shown to someone on my computer and voilá it doesn't work today. Update? Personal hallucination? Pretty confident of what I saw but I can't get it to work today. :-( Hopefully fixed in a future update...

Often the JPG of the pair can be quite adequate without any need for significant processing, the RAW can then be a fallback should the in-camera exposure/metering used have not provided a satisfactory result.

If the shot is good, then the Jpeg preview created by the app will be as good as the Jpeg from the camera. See? If the shot needs work then you've got the Raw anyway...

If the shot is good, then the Jpeg preview created by the app will be as good as the Jpeg from the camera. See?

My camera's JPEG processing is almost always better than the default JPEGs created by either Aperture or Photos for OS X. Not to mention the time needed to create them in the applications, which slows down the import process quite a bit. Therefore I want the JPG from the camera. See?

If the shot needs work then you've got the Raw anyway...

If the shot doesn't need work I'd like to throw the RAW away and not pay for the storage it uses up (locally and in the cloud).

Any idea on how to do that?

My camera's JPEG processing is almost always better than the default JPEGs created by either Aperture or Photos for OS X.

Sure.

Not to mention the time needed to create them in the applications, which slows down the import process quite a bit.

Well that doesn't make sense, as they are created anyway, and if you use in camera editing on the jpeg you actually be generating two sets of previews on import.

If the shot doesn't need work I'd like to throw the RAW away and not pay for the storage it uses up (locally and in the cloud).

This is easy:

File -> New Smart Album

Photo -> is -> Raw

Find them, and then you can delete the ones you don't want.