Level 3

519 points

Editing in Photos; what happens under the hood?

Hi,

With the retirement of Aperture, I've been looking at a replacement. The main contenders are Lightroom, Photos, or a combination of the two.

In Lightroom, a detailed history of edits is kept and I can go back one, more or all steps in my edit history. Each edit is non-destructive and I believe stored in a sidecar file. I think what I see on the screen is always the result of a live render of the raw sensor data plus all the instructions recorded in the sidecar file.

In Photos, I am wondering what happens under the hood. There is no history of edits and I've not found proof of sidecar files being used. I can go back all the way to the original raw file, but what I'm really wondering is as I edit the file, click done, edit it again, click done, edit it again, click done, run it through an extension, click done, what actually happens? Does Photos render a JPEG when I click 'done' and open this for further processing when I edit it again? Or can anyone confirm there really is sidecar data happening somewhere?

Very nerdy, I realise this. But if I'm going to pick a photo application, then I want it to use the best quality possible at all times. Using a JPEG from the previous edit as a basis for the next, is not that. Building a list of rendering instructions in a sidecar file, is that.

Anybody with this insight?

thanks,

Rob

MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11), 2GHz i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD

Posted on Jan 19, 2016 4:00 AM

20 replies

Rob de Jonge Author

Level 3

519 points

Jan 20, 2016 11:36 PM in response to LarryHN

but with Photos it does not exist as there never is an intermediate image produced - all edits are recorded in the database and applied wehn the image is viewed or exported - there is no resuction of quality with an infinite number of edits

That is only true for the internal edits for any software. As soon as plugins / extensions are involved, that statement no longer holds true. Neither for Photos, nor for Lightroom.

Rob de Jonge Author

Level 3

519 points

Jan 20, 2016 11:55 PM in response to léonie

Absolutely agree with the statement you're making here. My exploration here was a purely theoretical one, as mentioned before. And playing around with the different bits of software combined with this thread and some videos I've seen, have

shown me the answer ("there is no software that allows for all non-destructive edits, all including those of plugins")
shown me the limitations of the 'extensions framework' in Photos (only 1 photo at a time can be sent to an extension)
exposed me to Lightroom (feels powerful but overkill for my needs, plus i think the interface is rather poorly designed)

Which basically concludes why I opened this thread.

Why the theoretical thread? Had there been a clear winner, it would have considered that as a factor (one of many) in the selection of new software. Obviously, there is no clear winner on the quality front as all seem equal. This means that I'll have to continue my search.

Thanks for the comments!

Trying to decide between ...

Selected DSLR RAW files get 'developed' in Photos, then get combined with iPhone JPEG files, best ones get edited for publishing and put into Albums for easy viewing
Selected DSLR RAW files get 'developed' in another application, then get exported to JPEG or TIFF and imported into Photos, the best ones edited for publishing and put into Albums for easy viewing. (saves iCloud space)
Selected DSLR RAW files get 'developed' in another application, selected iPhone JPEG files get moved into the same application, the best ones get edited for publishing and put back into Photos and into Albums for easy viewing. (saves more iCloud space, keeps only 'winners' on the phone)

But I guess we're really going off-topic now.

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 21, 2016 1:50 AM in response to Rob de Jonge

shown me the answer ("there is no software that allows for all non-destructive edits, all including those of plugins")

In Aperture I used mostly the plug-ins that would make edits using Aperture's adjustments by creating presets. These kind of plug-in is not yet available in Photos, but perhaps one day we will see non-destructive edits and pesets.

Trying to decide between ...

Selected DSLR RAW files get 'developed' in Photos, then get combined with iPhone JPEG files, best ones get edited for publishing and put into Albums for easy viewing

Selected DSLR RAW files get 'developed' in another application, then get exported to JPEG or TIFF and imported into Photos, the best ones edited for publishing and put into Albums for easy viewing. (saves iCloud space)

Selected DSLR RAW files get 'developed' in another application, selected iPhone JPEG files get moved into the same application, the best ones get edited for publishing and put back into Photos and into Albums for easy viewing. (saves more iCloud space, keeps only 'winners' on the phone)

It really depends on your needs.

I am using Photos to keep all versions of my photos organized in one place. If I need to use an editing extension, I duplicate the photo and send the duplicate version to the extension. This way I can revert the edits separately. But all versions of a photo are in one Photos library.

bprice

Level 1

8 points

May 2, 2016 10:46 AM in response to léonie

Is nobody else concerned about the existence of the "sidecar "files in the first place? I think it's a fine concept, technically, for those who know what is going on. However, for the average person using iPhones and Photos (or iPhoto) on the Mac, I think Apple has done a great disservice. Note the tremendous number of discussion posts still being made by people confused about why edits made on their iPhone are lost when they import the camera roll into their computer, a full TWO YEARS after Apple started this nonsense in iOS8. Lots of people continue to use iPhoto and have simply "lost" all that time and effort they spent editing photos on the fly on their iPhones. The collective waste of time is mind boggling. Apple finally came out with Photos.app for the Mac, which can process the AAE/sidecar files, but is this really much better? I consider also the "shoebox" nature of iPhoto or Photos on a Mac... or whatever program one may use, Lightroom, etc, on Windows or Mac. We're lucky that the JPEG standard has been around awhile. What happens 20 years from now when Apple has abandoned Photos.app, and there is nothing that can read the AAE sidecar files? Sure, I still have my photo library (shoebox) and can recover the files, but it will only be the originals. None of my edits. None of the metadata. For this reason I think Apple needs to provide additional options to "commit" edits, or "replace original" when the user wants to. With a batch mode option. I more highly value an increased certainty that my "edited" photos will be available to me twenty years from now, than I value the ability to have nondestructive edits by default using a sidecar file format. Perhaps that's just me, but I think there are millions of casual iPhone users out there who may feel the same way.

Before anyone says "iCloud is the answer", it's not. It costs money and is a waste of resources and bandwidth if you have no need for your photos to be in the cloud.

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

May 2, 2016 11:00 AM in response to bprice

None of my edits. None of the metadata. For this reason I think Apple needs to provide additional options to "commit" edits, or "replace original" when the user wants to.

You can do that always by exporting and reimporting your photos when you migrate your library to a different application.

There is not yet a platform indecent way to describe the edits losslessly. It would be great to have universal sidecar files that will work in any application, but to make this possible, the manufacturers would have to agree on standard algorithms for edits.as long as the adjustments are all implemented differently in each image editor, they cannot migrate losslessly.

Appel could not even migrate the Aperture edits losslessly to Photos.

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Editing in Photos; what happens under the hood?