Broken RAW support for Panasonic GH5 II under macOS Sonoma

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Level 1

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Broken RAW support for Panasonic GH5 II under macOS Sonoma

I've recently updated my Mac from Ventura (can't recall the specific build, I guess something from early '23) to Sonoma (current build - 23C71) and now I'm no longer able to view any of my .rw2 RAW images from my Panasonic GH5 II, neither using Preview, where I get a gray and a red stripe, nor QuickView, where the view stays completely black. Using the gallery view of Finder also doesn't work; there I also get the gray & red stripe. Only the icons within Finder seem to work - see the attached picture as an example. All of this was clearly working under Ventura so please no bs-comments regarding "your camera is not supported yet, this will likely be added via an update in the future".

Any ideas on how to fix this? Or is this due to some bug that got introduced with one of the recent updates and we'll have to wait for this to be fixed?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

MacBook Pro (M2 Max, 2023)

Posted on Jan 13, 2024 5:16 PM

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Answer 1

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VikingOSX

Level 10

123,164 points

Apr 24, 2024 11:33 AM in response to TechTobi

Although Apple has no footnote restrictions on GH5 II images in Sonoma, I am on Sonoma 14.4.1 (23E224) and can reproduce your bad results in the Finder Gallery view. Apple's Preview shows the same visual, Quick Look shows a black screen, and Affinity's Photo 2.4.2 opens and displays the RAW image correctly.

You appear to be using v1.0 of the camera software. Has Panasonic made any newer software updates available?

One alternative is to feed this GH5 II image to Adobe's DNG converter and that resulting .dng image will play nice in all Apple apps. Tested with Digital Negative Converter v16.2.1.

Or without conversion, and probably looking at the embedded JPG content in the RAW image, one can use the free XnViewMP tool. You would then see the image in a view like the following from XnViewMP 1.7.1 and double-clicking expands it.

Apple can push camera RAW updates to Sonoma outside of standard macOS installations, so if they are aware of this GH5 II RAW issue, and Apple can fix it, then it might get pushed out prior to the next Sonoma update — or not.

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Answer 2

dialabrain

Level 10

135,563 points

Jan 13, 2024 6:40 PM in response to TechTobi

Just to add, if you need something to preview them in the free XnView MP works.

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Answer 3

dialabrain

Level 10

135,563 points

Jan 13, 2024 6:10 PM in response to TechTobi

Sorry. I have to take that back. My screen shot was from Monterey. It does not open correctly in Sonoma. Nor do the ones I downloaded from DP Review.

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Answer 4

dialabrain

Level 10

135,563 points

Jan 13, 2024 6:13 PM in response to TechTobi

You can send a bug report from the feedback page.

Feedback - macOS - Apple

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Answer 5

Jun 27, 2024 8:44 AM in response to TechTobi

Same for me M1 Max Mac Studio OS Version 14.5 (23F79)

This is a proper pain when editing large amounts of photos. Whilst Apple aren't responsible for Adobe's workflow, when you can't see original filenames in Lightroom and you want to look back through a heap of similar looking photos, not being able to preview RW2 files from Lumix GH5ii (a very popular camera) with spacebar is a proper faff.

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