I cannot access RAW image files in Photos.app. I have a bunch of RAW files from both my Olympus OM-D E-M5 and from my iPhone (I use the Halide app to take them). They are all JPG/RAW pairs.
The photos display with the little J icon in the top right corner but the Image > Use RAW as Original
option in the menu is greyed out. I'm pretty sure I had this working in the past.
If I dig into the Photo Library with the terminal I can see that the ORF (Olympus RAW Format) and DNG (Digital Negative) files are there. I just cannot access them from Photos app.
My library is an iCloud Photo Library and on iOS if I use apps that know about RAW files, such as Darkroom, they are able to open the RAW versions. I have "Download Originals" configured on my Mac.
I'm on Mojave 10.14.6 and Photos is Version 4.0 (3461.7.140)
Some things I investigated:
If I create a Smart Album with Photo is RAW
as the only criterion, it only shows me a fraction of all my RAW files (170 images). Curiously, the ones that are JPG/RAW pairs show with the R
icon in the top right corner but for these I cannot choose Use JPEG as original
.
However, if I count the actual number of RAW image files in my photo library folder I have 1189 RAW files:
➜ ~ cd Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary
➜ Photos Library.photoslibrary find . -name "*.ORF" | wc -l
416
➜ Photos Library.photoslibrary find . -name "*.orf" | wc -l
550
➜ Photos Library.photoslibrary find . -name "*.dng" | wc -l
223
The only thing that "works" is File > Export > Export Unmodified Original
from the menu, which correctly exports both the JPG and RAW versions of any image marked has having both.
Best Answer
Ok, the problem is one of:
Or a combination of the above ?
The
Use RAW as Original
option is only available when you are inEdit
mode and only affects one photo at a time ?♂️Related:
This is because the
is RAW
criterion isn't if a RAW file is available, rather, if a photo has previously been switched toUse RAW as Original