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small J icon on the bottom left corner

What does it mean?

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Apr 14, 2015 11:11 PM

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Posted on Apr 15, 2015 1:05 AM

The "J" may indicate that you are viewing a photo, that has been imported as a RAW&JPEG pair, and you are currently viewing the JPEG and not theRAW.

These pairs are imported as one photo, and you can switch between the RAW and the JPEG as original photo. To switch between RAW both originals to see the RAW click the EDIT button. That will show controls for handling RAW file.

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Apr 15, 2015 1:05 AM in response to qqg

The "J" may indicate that you are viewing a photo, that has been imported as a RAW&JPEG pair, and you are currently viewing the JPEG and not theRAW.

These pairs are imported as one photo, and you can switch between the RAW and the JPEG as original photo. To switch between RAW both originals to see the RAW click the EDIT button. That will show controls for handling RAW file.

Apr 15, 2015 1:04 AM in response to léonie

léonie wrote:


The "J" may indicate that you are viewing a photo, that has been imported as a RAW&JPEG pair, and you are currently viewing the JPEG and not theRAW.

These pairs are imported as one photo, and you can switch between the RAW and the JPEG as original photo. To switch between RAW both originals to see the RAW click the EDIT button. That will show controls for handling RAW file.

Well here we go - it's a few weeks since I dabbled more extensively with the beta and this goes to show how unintuitive this system is.


I was just about to post:


________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________


That was my assumption and that the small 'R' on others implied RAW.


However, I have loads of images tagged 'J' - non-system library on non-startup internal drive imported with the beta a few weeks ago.


User uploaded file


None are now offering the ability to use the 'RAW' - I need to find the source images to check they were catually JPEG/RAW pairs, but I normally shoot with both settings unless I'm running low on space and need a few more shots and switch to JPEG only. When I select the image thumbnail for such an image the 'Use RAW as Original' is always greyed out:


User uploaded file

________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________


Reviewing your post above, struggling to find the Edit button - because it's unavailable with a selected image in thumbnail mode only fullscreen mode - when I try the same menu fullscreen, same issue unless Edit selected:


User uploaded file


With Edit, the dropdown menu or contextual click on teh image allow you to select RAW:


User uploaded file

User uploaded file


Selected and i get a small R:


User uploaded file


The interface has so many hidden features or things which only work in specific ways (so you think it's not available at all) that you really get the feeling that it has only been internally tested with a very small number of images, otherwise such inefficiencies would have been apparent.


So if I have 500 RAW/JPG files imported, do I have to choose 'Use RAW as Original' for every single one!!! Is there no global setting? Not that I can see....I've tried selecting several Photos in thumbnail mode but no the option is still greyed out.


Even then - we probably would not only want to be using RAW or only JPG - what is required is the ability to easily switch for individual images or groups of images, plus a preference on Import to choose which to used initially for that batch of Photos.

Apr 15, 2015 2:11 AM in response to Alley_Cat

It is not even scriptable with an AppleScript to switch between RAW and JPEG.

I checked the dictionary for Photos. There is no related property, that could be used in a script. And most of the properties that are scriptable are read only (r/o), so we cannot change them. 😟

media itemn : A media item, such as a A photo or video.

elements

contained by application, albums, moments.

  • properties
  • keywords (list of text) : A list of keywords to associate with a media item
  • name (text) : The name (title) of the media item.
  • description (text) : A description of the media item.
  • favorite (boolean) : Whether the media item has been favorited.
  • date (date) : The date of the media item
  • id (text, r/o) : The unique ID of the media item
  • height (integer, r/o) : The height of the media item in pixels.
  • width (integer, r/o) : The width of the media item in pixels.
  • filename (text, r/o) : The name of the file on disk.
  • altitude (real, r/o) : The GPS altitude in meters.
  • location(list of real, r/o) : The GPS latitude and longitude, in an ordered list of 2 numbers.
  • Latitude in range -90.0 to 90.0, longitude in range -180.0 to 180.0.


We would have to resort to GUI scripting, and that is slow and unsafe.

Apr 15, 2015 2:23 AM in response to léonie

No, I've not imported much yet but I don't think there's a simple option.


I've mostly been adding Photos from the iPhones so the RAW/JPG problem is less of an issue.


Several Panoramas I imported yesterday are not showing up in the Panoramas section but have imported to All Photos - I don't think this app is really out of beta long enough to be regarded as reliable. Some aspects are nice, too much isn't or just isn't available.


Actually quite surprised how much I'd been using digital zoom on the iPhone recently - quality really suffers badly (as expected).


This app at least gives me more insight on things like burst photos which seem to be named individually, and have good resolution counter to something I'd heard before (maye iPhone 6 does better than the 5 series?).

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