Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Hey all,
How long does it usually take Apple to add new camera RAW support? I have a Canon EOS M5 and it is not currently supported by Apple, making it kinda hard to edit my photos and keep them in Photos at the same time. It recognises the RAW+JPEG and will display the JPEG but wont let me use RAW as master for editing.
MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), macOS Sierra (10.12.1)
Apple does not provide information on when or if anyone can expect new camera RAW support and the TOS forbids us to guess, but the decision to no longer support the EOS M5 is entirely the product of Canons marketing department so you may wish to call them and see if they can provide a workaround for their product.
There is no usual" support time however in the Past because Canon is such a popular brand support has been pretty quick for their new products - the current support list is here - Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 10 and macOS Sierra - Apple Support
It can not hurt so send Apple a request - http://www.apple.com/feedback/
And sometimes Adobe RAW converter beats Apple - plus I believe (I do not use Canon) that the Camera comes with a Mac RAW conversion program that youcan use until APple adds support
LN
Thanks for the responses. Sent the feedback request to see if that will speed things up. I'd imagine the CR2 format will be very very similar to the 80D as it uses the same sensor, so hopefully it wont be long before they can support it.
I do have Canon DPP which processes the RAWs, but that's still useless when it comes to using Photos as my DAM. I'll have to keep the RAW+JPEG until they support it and manually drag the RAW file out of the Photos library for Canon DPP if I want to do some post processing on it.
You could use the Canon DPP software to convert the RAW files to another lossless format, while you are waiting, for example TIFF and use the TIFFs in Photos.
Are you using a compressed RAW format? If you look at the list of supported cameras (Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 10 and macOS Sierra - Apple Support) and the footnotes, you will notice, that Apple does not always support all variants of the RAW format a camera can take. Sometimes only the highest resolution RAW format will be supported.
Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, Canon EOS 80D: Canon RAW format only
To be on the safe side, take only shots in Canon RAW format, until you are sure, which RAW format will be supported by Apple.
You can use easily external editors from Photos, if you are installing the External Editors Photo Editing extension from the App Store. It is on 99¢, but makes it easy to access other editors from Photos's Edit panel.
I don't believe there is an option to change the RAW format on the camera, it outputs CR2 files which I've always known as Canon RAW.
With the external editors, I have one which does support the RAW file - Luminar. The problem is, when you goto the editor, it wont let you use RAW as the original, and therefor won't let you then use an external editor with it, only allowing you to send the JPEG to the editor. RAW only files it will not do anything with other than display the thumbnail of the image.
I like the idea of RAW to TIFF as an alternate workflow. There may not be that many images that I need RAW for anyway, I'm not a dedicated RAW shooter at the moment, just use them for challenging situations where I know I will need to do some post processing on them. I think for now I will stick with RAW+JPEG and leave them in Photos. If I need to do some post from the RAW I can just pull it out of the library manually. If it takes too long for Apple to support them, I might just bite the bullet and go to Lightroom.
With the external editors, I have one which does support the RAW file - Luminar. The problem is, when you goto the editor, it wont let you use RAW as the original, and therefor won't let you then use an external editor with it, only allowing you to send the JPEG to the editor. RAW only files it will not do anything with other than display the thumbnail of the image.
At the bottom of the External Editor pane is a magic button "Replace with Image from Disk".
If you use "Image > Duplicate" to create copy of your RAW&JPEG pair, and simply export the pair to the Desktop with "File > Export > Export unmodified original", you can then pass the RAW file to your external editor, for example your Canon Software. Save the edited version as a high resolution JPEG on the Desktop.
Now open "External Editors" for the copy of your RAW&JPEG pair in Photos and use the "Choose File" button to replace copy you created with "Image > Duplicate" by the edited file you created externally. This edited JPEG will be linked to the RAW&JPEG pair in Photos and Photos will be showing the replaced file as the second version of your photo.
Thats good to know, handy little feature. Will work much better than grabbing the files from the library on disk manually. 😎
You're welcome 🙂
I hope the RAW support for your camera will be released soon.
Canon EOS M5 RAW support
