Integration with Apple Photos

Hello,

I have a trial version with DXO PhotoLab 6 and I was checking out the integration with Apple Photos
I migrated my aperture library to Photos and now I want a more powerful raw editor.

The flawless integration of Photos and PL6 is crucial for me. Unfortunately, when I click PL6 in the “edit with” menu in Photos, nothing happens. PL 6 is not appearing in the Photo’s privacy and security settings. Maybe I am doing something wrong. I already read some threads concerning this. But non of them state a clear solution. And this worries me. I would like to jump in now with the Black Friday deal … if I see if this works one way or another.

Hello and welcome.

It’s due to Photos way of manage the images.
Here’s an explanation from DxO on the matter.

Photos will always disappoint, even betray you. Eventually you’ll lose your images, your ratings or your edit history or some combination of the above. The harder you push Apple Photos the more likely the loss.

You’d be better to compile selects in Photos for an edit session in PhotoLab. Export those images to a folder. After creating finished images, import the finished images back to Apple Photos as their own set. If you want to work on those images again from RAW, you can go back to the folders of selects on a hard drive.

The most reliable photo manager on MacOS is the Finder and the most reliable photo manager on Windows is the File Manager. Both are in use by tens of millions of people per day and are not allowed to fail often (Finder has become less reliable over the last ten years for certain copy operations, particularly to network volumes or RAID arrays, keep your disk configuration as vanilla as possible as well).

Any other approach to working with Apple Photos will end in tears. Yours. There’s a lineup of thousands of serious photographers in front of you, already wailing.

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I’m a long-time user of  Photos, previously known as iPhoto, but… only for jpgs for quick viewing and selecting. I shoot in jpg and CR2 format (Canon RAW) but I have never imported any RAW files into Photos (or iPhoto). Reason: the library would soon get too bloated.
Instead: I store my RAW files in a yyyy/mm/dd folder structure on an external HD, whilst -as said- importing the jpg files into Photos.
When I want to do some postprocessing, I will view the jpg files in Photos, but then retrieve the folder+corresponding RAW files on my external drive, simply by opening that folder in DxO PL.

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Thx for your reply. As I am getting into the Fujifilm ecosystem, I doubt if PL6 is the best way to go for me anyway …

DxO is ramping up Fuji (X-Trans) support and has done a good job so far, even though not all of features currently work with Fuji files. Capture One seems to be the one to use now…

Currently, DPL and Apple Photos can’t interact with RAW files. If I were in your position, I’d probably work Fuji RAW files in C1 and export JPEG files to Apple Photos for it’s sharing features mostly. For further editing in Photos, I’d use 16bit TIFFs…sparingly, because of their relatively large file size.

I’d also set Photos to NOT import files, mostly as a preparation for easier transition, should you choose to abandon Photos at a later time and in recognition that this inhibits the use of iCloud-Photos.

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Thx for your help

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Hello Alec,

I drawn the same conclusion about Apple Photo Library and came up with a similar solution.
I also decided to stop sponsoring the software developers with the monthly rental fee. That’s why I purchased DxO PL6. I hesitate, although it look promising, to include Adobe Bridge in my workflow just because I fear what is free today will become subscription only tomorrow.

I wish you well with your migration.

Regards,

Rob

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