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Why Apple Photos still doesn't support Leica CL RAW format?


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Right Now I'm using Lightroom CC, I'm confuse of it's duplicate thumbnails when shooting with DNG+JPG. In Apple Photos, it's great that it just combine to one thumbnail as showing a tag in right up corner to indicate it is a DNG+JPG. 

Also I want to try using Apple Photos to edit my photos cause It's easy to use and I see that the app Darkroom reviews are good. and I don't like subscription especially they increase the price recently. 

But I look in Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 12 and macOS Mojave page that it still doesn't support Leica CL Raw format, it seems this camera's been release like two years, I wonder why. I think maybe Apple think not many people using Apple Photos professionally?

Edited by a_b-c
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45 minutes ago, ropo54 said:

Apple Photos does support RAW on the CL.  Select edit, then right click on your mouse, and you shoot be able see select RAW in a drop down menu.  Rob

I just tried it seems good, but last time I tried import to Photos app, the Raw photos was blur, I think they add the support in the latest upgrade. Don't know why their web page didn't update... But I think you have to select edit to use "Use RAW as Original" is very inconvenient.

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7 hours ago, a_b-c said:

Right Now I'm using Lightroom CC, I'm confuse of it's duplicate thumbnails when shooting with DNG+JPG. In Apple Photos, it's great that it just combine to one thumbnail as showing a tag in right up corner to indicate it is a DNG+JPG. 

Also I want to try using Apple Photos to edit my photos cause It's easy to use and I see that the app Darkroom reviews are good. and I don't like subscription especially they increase the price recently. 

But I look in Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 12 and macOS Mojave page that it still doesn't support Leica CL Raw format, it seems this camera's been release like two years, I wonder why. I think maybe Apple think not many people using Apple Photos professionally?

There's a Lightroom general preference to "Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos." Turn that off and when you import JPEG+raw pairs, only the raw files will be imported.

If you have a bunch of JPEG+raw pairs already loaded and want to simplify the view to a single thumbnail, in the Metadata browser set File Type and select JPEG. Then LR will show you only the JPEGs. Select them, save the metadata so that whatever IPTC annotation you might have done is embedded in them, and then remove them from the catalog. Turn off the metadata filter and only your raw image thumbnails will be open. 

Lightroom always replaces the in-file display thumbnail with its own generated thumbnail for any raw file, so raw files look just as nice (or nicer) than the JPEG files, regardless of the embedded thumbnail. 

Current Photos on macOS supports the CL DNG files, as you've seen above. If you only use raw capture, it will show the thumbnails embedded in the DNG files, which are blurry and low resolution. Once you process the files in any way, Photos generates a new thumbnail to use in browsing them. It works this way on iOS devices too. 

I seriously doubt that many professional photographers use Photos as their primary image processing tool. Most these days seem to be using Lightroom or Capture One; supposedly between them they have more than 90% of the professional audience, and there are a half dozen other high quality image processing systems available too. If you do want to use Photos, I would also suggest you try RAW Power as well: it extends the image processing capabilities of Photos very nicely by giving access to Apple raw processing functions that are not in the Photos UI. 

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If you use DNG only, the photos will be blurry. Because Apple is too lazy and only show the small embedded jpg. But if you start to edit, Photos app will process the DNG. 

Just use Lightroom 6 - Classic or CC on Mac or Lightroom CC mobile on iPad. They will show the image properly.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/20/2019 at 3:51 PM, nicci78 said:

If you use DNG only, the photos will be blurry. Because Apple is too lazy and only show the small embedded jpg. But if you start to edit, Photos app will process the DNG. 

Just use Lightroom 6 - Classic or CC on Mac or Lightroom CC mobile on iPad. They will show the image properly.

 

 

So did you mean that when I start editing photo in Photos, it'll automatically process the DNG instead? don't need to select "Use RAW as Original" first?

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2 hours ago, a_b-c said:

So did you mean that when I start editing photo in Photos, it'll automatically process the DNG instead? don't need to select "Use RAW as Original" first?

As test, I took a random DNG from of my Leica CL's SD card and dropped it into Photos on macOS Mojave v10.14.5. I have the CL set to DNG only, it only makes a very low resolution thumbnail JPEG and embeds that into the DNG file. 

Photos displayed the original thumbnail when I double-clicked the image to see it... a very degraded image. 

I clicked the Edit button. A moment later, the preview image was updated to high resolution. 

So yes: at least with the latest version of macOS and Photos, there's no need to select "Use RAW as Original", at least if you're only importing the DNG files. If you're importing both the DNG and JPEG files, then you might need to use that function. 

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