[HN Gopher] How two photographers transformed RAW photo support ...
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How two photographers transformed RAW photo support on Mac
Author : gbugniot
Score : 54 points
Date : 2025-11-15 05:32 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (petapixel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (petapixel.com)
| Arainach wrote:
| I don't understand the appeal here. When Microsoft added some RAW
| support for Windows, I've never used it for anything except
| thumbnails in File Explorer.
|
| If you're shooting RAW it's because you want to edit the photos
| in the kind of tool that will never be natively included in the
| OS. Otherwise shoot JPEG (or whatever format the iPhone shoots
| because universal standards are never good enough for Apple)
| xattt wrote:
| I thought iOS exported DNG...
| Ayesh wrote:
| iOS shoots HEIF natively I think.
|
| Raw photos probably are shot in DNG. DNG "images" are popular
| for raw images because theyb can be losslessly converted from
| to the camera raw formats like the Nikon's, and DNG is open
| source and royalty free.
| buildbot wrote:
| Natively it's coming off the sensor like everything else,
| raw 8-16bit values. The OS then takes that stream and
| packages it into whatever, which on iOS can be a DNG,
| optionally pre-debayered with ai stuff in it (proraw), or
| just a standard, bayer mosaiced DNG, or JPEG, or HEIF, or
| JPEG XL.
|
| Depending on the RAW, a conversion to DNG may not be
| lossless.
| alistairSH wrote:
| And unless I missed something, the default Camera app
| doesn't support "unprocessed DNG" - you need an app like
| Halide. Camera app only does JPG/HEIC or ProRAW. And as
| the sibling comment says, it's a confusing UX, split
| between the Settings app and the Camera app. Not that it
| matters to most users, who only need/want the default
| HEIC.
| buildbot wrote:
| The OS supports it is all I was saying.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The iOS camera format control is one of the most confusing
| UIs in iOS. It first asks you to select between high
| efficiency and most compatible (HEIF vs JPEG). Then it asks
| you whether you want ProRAW. Then under ProRAW it asks
| whether you want JPEG lossless, JPEG XL lossless or lossy.
| That doesn't even include the in-app control of JPEG Max
| (which AFAIK is just 48 MP JPEG).
| buildbot wrote:
| It's capable of doing so but is not the default for the built
| in camera app
| mr_toad wrote:
| > because universal standards are never good enough for Apple
|
| JPEG is almost as outdated as SMS.
| Arainach wrote:
| Old doesn't mean outdated. TCP is ancient and we still use it
| for a bunch of stuff.
|
| JPEG is good enough, not encumbered by IP concerns, and
| universally supported. That makes it better than an
| alternative that is "better" in a less important dimension
| but worse in broad support.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| JPEG only supports up to 8 bit color. It has much worse
| compression than more modern standards. It doesn't support
| alpha transparency. It doesn't support many of the modern
| smartphone image embedding functions (image sequences,
| derivatives/edited images, small movies embedded in the
| image).
|
| You could make the same arguments about any of the wide
| variety of outdated video formats. This sort of thinking
| leads to a lack of progress in the industry.
| Arainach wrote:
| 8 bits and no transparency is good enough for many 9s
| worth of the photos people take.
|
| I have a calibrated HDR monitor. I have a camera that can
| shoot in 12bit color. And what HDR support does is just
| cause me pain. I don't find it beneficial in games. I
| find it to have limited utility in video. I never need
| more than 8 bits when sending photos to friends or having
| them printed. The extra support other formats offer gives
| me no value.
|
| If you want transparency you want some other format, but
| no camera I know of records an alpha channel.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Transparency is useful immediately for any editing. Why
| is that so hard to have support even if it's unused?
|
| Also, the other formats are useful and provide value: if
| you send a photo to people, the "live" portion of the
| photo is sent automatically for compatible receivers.
| It's only beneficial.
|
| If that's not enough, why wouldn't you want similar
| compression quality at half the file size? That really,
| really adds up with tons of photos.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| A JPEG takes 1.5ms to encode and decode on my CPU, a WEBP
| 20ms and an AVIF 60ms.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Being locked in to TCP due to network effects doesn't mean
| that TCP isn't outdated.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| And yet there are still use cases for JPEG specifically,
| because there has never been a replacement with 100% parity.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I think Apple still has aspirations to include professional-
| level photography in their OS so a photographer could do
| advanced RAW edits with just the OS.
|
| The article says:
|
| > photographers can take full advantage of Apple's fantastic
| RAW engine, even when Apple itself does not support a RAW file,
| which is, unfortunately, a common problem for photographers
| using macOS, of which there are many.
|
| And I'm also curious about how this RAW engine is fantastic
| even when it doesn't support a RAW file. I guess people who
| actually shoot RAW can answer that. (I shoot JPEG on my
| camera.)
| alistairSH wrote:
| Apple bought Pixelmator/Photomator last year, though I have
| no idea what their roadmap looks like or if they plan to turn
| those into native apps or OS features.
|
| Every camera manufacturer has their own RAW format. Apple
| produces a general-purpose RAW engine that can process many
| of those formats, but not all of them, and with a few notable
| misses, as noted in the linked article. The RAW engine is
| considered pretty good, fast/efficient, but overly aggressive
| on some of its defaults (noise reduction to the point of
| detail loss). The native Photos app also doesn't have many
| advanced RAW tools for editing the RAWs.
|
| I posted my current workflow in a sibling - basically, I use
| Photomator for edits (Lightroom competitor, now owned by
| Apple) and Photos for library management and sharing. Works
| fine for me as a enthusiasts, but unlikely to work for a
| professional (and probably not for enthusiasts who like
| tinkering with their photos more than I do).
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Well they shouldn't have shitcanned Aperture then
| alistairSH wrote:
| I occasionally shoot RAW, use Apple's OSes, and primarily shoot
| with an OM-System mirrorless camera.
|
| Currently, I'm using Photomator alongside Apple Photos.
| Workflow is roughly... - Import photos from camera into Photos
| - Edit photos in Photomator - Share photos to Shared Library in
| Photos
|
| Wife will also share her photos via Shared Library so I can
| edit.
|
| For non-professional this works well. Native file library
| integration (including shared library and shared albums), edit
| across all OS variants (iOS, iPadOS, MacOS), and Photomator is
| as close to native as you can get today (they're owned by
| Apple).
| Joeri wrote:
| I am too worried about ballooning icloud storage to add raws
| to apple's photos, but the workflow appeals to me.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yeah, that's a problem for sure.
|
| I mitigate by shooting JPG most of the time, only going to
| RAW for shots I think will need the sort of editing RAW
| enables. So, maybe 10-20% of my shots are RAW, at most.
|
| And for most of those, after edits, I'll export back into
| Photos as a new file, and remove the original RAW.
| Obviously, this is destructive, so it might not appeal to
| you, but it does side-step the RAW storage conundrum.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| OM-System provides a software to edit RAWs
| pklausler wrote:
| Do these tools support Nikon's "high-efficiency" compressed NEF
| files? I suspect that they're encumbered by patents.
| bydo wrote:
| They do, yes.
| viktorcode wrote:
| > "The only thing I have is Preview, and I have to look at one
| photo at a time," Shan says. "It's crazy. I got fed up with it so
| I looked at different apps."
|
| Select files in Finder, option + double click on them, and you
| have many photo files accessible in a single Preview window.
| mig39 wrote:
| This also works in quicklook. Highlight the photos (command-A
| for all of them), and press the spacebar. Then there's a "tile
| icon" that will show you all of them.
| aanet wrote:
| Thanks for posting this.
|
| Both the apps + people (Nik & Shan) are new to me. I like
| supporting indie devs and their apps, and seeing their success,
| so I might support them. Esp. with Adobe and their yearly
| subscription for PS / Adobe CC ( _groan_ ).
| imagetic wrote:
| If you're shooting RAW you probably have a processing pipeline in
| mind.
|
| Finder supporting thumbnails for newer cameras is a pain but it's
| not all that normal to browser your archives in Finder either.
|
| https://home.camerabits.com is a commonly used tool for browsing
| photographer/files and editing metadata. I've used it for
| ingesting and selects since 2005. Almost everywhere I've ever
| worked has used it to some degree.
|
| After ingestion, you would import to Lightroom or Capture ONE for
| processing and finally you export to jpg or a generic usable
| format and size.
| imagetic wrote:
| It's always cool to see new options for processing. Anything to
| bypass the Adobe overlords.
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