Why is Aperture ignoring effects selected in iPhone?

I just noticed that all the effects like Chrom, Old, Transfer etc that one can select in the iPhone when taking a picture are ignored once the pictures are coming into the Photostream in Aperture. Is there a setting somewhere to keep those effects?

No, the photos are added to the Photo Steam before the effects are applied. The Photo Stream is transferring the original without effects. Which iOS version do you have? With iOS 7 or earlier you could duplicate the photo and try to save the edited version to the Camera Roll, Then the edited version will be added to the stream. With iOS 8 I do not know of any way to save duplicates to the Camera Roll. You can mail the edited version or use a shared stream.

See Apple's document: iPhoto and Aperture don't have edits to photos you import from iOS 8 devices

If you enable iCloud Photo Library Beta, available in iOS 8.1, you can download the edited photos with the filters applied from your iCloud home page, when you open the Photos.app on the page: https://www.icloud.com/

The photos will download in the full resolution with all filters applied, and you can select a complete "Moment" at once to download. The bad news is, that all tags and GPS coordinates will be gone, and the adjustments are burned in. Right now, it is impossible to transfer the edited photos losslessly like it was possible before. In iOS 7 we could undo filters applied in the camera inAperture on the Mac, but this is now impossible. Sharing by email will also remove the GPS coordinates and it will rename the photo with a stupid name, like "full-sizerenderjpg". So it will not be possible to sort the photos by name.

It is really a long wait for the promised Photos.app.

Wow - I just thought why then there is the feature to add filters if they do not get copied to Aperture or iPhoto. OK, but thanks for the explanation.

It is just the time of the transit from the old Photos.app on iOS to the new Photos.app. The software versions on the Mac (Aperture, iPhoto) are not fully compatible with the new photo library architecture on iOS 8. The new Photos.app for the mac to rereleased early next year will be able to access iCloud Photo Library and sync all edits between iPad and Mac.

Unfortunately, Apple did not both sides of this upgrade ready at the same time.

I experimented a bit.

When I do not import directly into Aperture, but use Image Capture to import, you will see, that all image files come accompanied by a .AAE sidecar file. The image files are now stored on the iPhone as pairs, the JPEG and an sidecar file with metadata and adjustments. Image Capture in Yosemite imports the image files in pairs, so the edits can be applied loosely. We only need to find an image editor, that can read .AAE.

After importing from my iPhone with Image Capture the folder will show for example:

IMG_1416.AAE IMG_1416.JPG IMG_1488.AAE IMG_1488.JPG

Opening one of the .AAE files in TextEdit I can see that the adjustments are inside:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>adjustmentBaseVersion</key>

<integer>0</integer>

<key>adjustmentData</key>

<data>

bY2xCsIwFEX/5c4ZtBaRrCI4OdpBHJ7mpX1iEkhep9J/N2rBxe1yONwzwaccSM+ci6QI

uzYIrORICXZCoKKcjyz9oLBN2+7MwjpxOsBumm1rkLJwVNLvxWxA7jEWDRUW2Mv0p8KR

bk92sJpHNiisKrEv7yh7z/efvDILOVFgWOyHnOqoFXE1IF44V3z4OJiv8ws=

</data>

<key>adjustmentEditorBundleID</key>

<string>com.apple.camera</string>

<key>adjustmentFormatIdentifier</key>

<string>com.apple.photo</string>

<key>adjustmentFormatVersion</key>

<string>1.0</string>

</dict>

</plist>

Aperture, iPhoto, Preview ignore this file. I hope, this will change.

so the edits can be applied loosely

I meant "losslessly" 😁 Oh, this spell checker.

When I import edited photo files from my iPhone via Image Capture, I see only JPG files; no AAE files.

(“Edited” includes square photos, which I assume the Camera app crops to a square shape.)

I do get the original unedited version, as you report.

Can you suggest why I would not see AAE files? Has the software changed since you ran your test?

I am running iOS 8.1.3 and OS X 10.10.2.

Thanks

I saw the .AAE files after importing with Image Capture. They were visible in the folder as sidecar files after importing from the iPhone 5s.

I still saw them a few days ago with OS X 10.10.2, but on the Mac I am currently using can I not test this any longer.

Image Capture is still importing the .aae files:

I tested with four photos, (HDR), cropped them and added a color adjustment:

Try an adjustment, that requires a color modification.

Here's a workaround that involves the new Photos app for Mac:

1. Make any edits you want on your pics to your phone
2. Open Photos on both your phone and your mac, and wait until all your edits have been synced to your computer. (Provided you have not migrated your Aperture/iPhoto library to your Photos for Mac app, and you have activated the iCloud Photo Library on both your phone and the Photos for Mac app).
3. Select the photos you want to transfer from the Photos for Mac, then right click -> share -> Add to Aperture. The edited pics will be imported into a new project in Aperture, with all edits and metadata preserved. (Once in Aperture, you won’t be able to revert to the original as it was taken, you would have to revert on Photos for Mac)
4. You can now delete from your iPhone & Photos from Mac.

Thanks for this suggestion. I think you have to be willing to put all your photos in iCloud in order to have this option available and that fact alone is likely to deter many people. For myself, I am not ready to trust my family photos to cloud based architecture, both for stability and security reasons. The only option seems to be emailing the edited photos to myself. Now that I've read online to discover the loss of edits is an intended behavior, I'll consider photo editing to be a rare, or never, use item on my iPhone. That is an amazing disappointment and behavior I find truly bizarre. But, there's other photo editing programs out there that may not work as seamlessly but will, with this new behavior in iOS 8, clearly save time and frustration in the long run.

A good query from the original poster. I find this weakness in the transfer of images conveniently edited on I-pad air to my pc extremely frustrating. I now have to transfer the originals to Photoshop or LR and hope I can re-achieve the same effects - not always possible, always an approximation and very time-consuming. Hope this is sorted out soon as it almost eliminates the point of having an editing feature on the smaller devices.