Whenever I drag and drop a photo or group of images from iPhoto. it automatically converts them to jpegs.
Drag and Drop and Media Browsers access the iPhoto Previews only. No conversion, just the previews.
With 10.8 Spotlight no longer searches within packages, that's to protect the inexperienced user from trashing his or her library inadvertently - as directly accessing the file can do.
To use Raws with an external editor:
First off set your preferred app as an external editor in iPhoto:
You can set Photoshop (or any image editor) as an external editor in iPhoto. (Preferences -> General -> Edit Photo: Choose from the Drop Down Menu.) This way, when you double click a pic to edit in iPhoto it will open automatically in Photoshop or your Image Editor, and when you save it it's sent back to iPhoto automatically. This is the only way that edits made in another application will be displayed in iPhoto.
Next: In the iPhoto Preferences -> Advanced, elect to use Raw with your External editor:
Now when you go to edit the Raw it will be sent to your external editor.
But there's a kludge here.
iPhoto sends a copy of the file to Photoshop. In the case of a Jpeg you simply save and it all comes back to iPhoto seamlessly. However, if you use a Save As then Photoshop is creating a new file and iPhoto knows nothing about this.
Now here's the catch with Raws. You cannot save a Raw. The work you do must be output to a new file, in a new format (jepg, tiff, whatever). However, as the External Editor is making this new file iPhoto has no knowledge of its existence. Therefore you must save it to the desktop and then import it back to iPhoto as a new file.
This means that you will have your Original Raw and the processed version in iPhoto but they will not be recognised as version and original. iPhoto will see them as two separate shots.
