Apple Photos behavior pissing me off

Chew Toy McCoy

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I don't know if this is a "feature" or a bug, but I did some post processing on some photos from my apple photos library, but when I drag those processed photos into Apple Photos it shows them for about 10 seconds and then auto replaces them with the original unprocessed photos. WTF?
 

Eric

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I don't know if this is a "feature" or a bug, but I did some post processing on some photos from my apple photos library, but when I drag those processed photos into Apple Photos it shows them for about 10 seconds and then auto replaces them with the original unprocessed photos. WTF?
I'm not sure of your process but what I always do after I post process in Lightroom I export it to a standard .jpg file, then copy it to my google photos. This way you can control the entire process and output.
 

SuperMatt

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I don't know if this is a "feature" or a bug, but I did some post processing on some photos from my apple photos library, but when I drag those processed photos into Apple Photos it shows them for about 10 seconds and then auto replaces them with the original unprocessed photos. WTF?
You can go into the settings for Apple photos and choose an external editor that will open whenever you click edit on a photo… or at least there was in previous versions. I haven’t tried it in a while… try this suggestion from Apple’s support page:

Edit photos within third-party apps on your Mac​

With Photos for macOS High Sierra and later, you can send a photo to most third-party photo apps for editing, then save the changes right back into your library.
  1. Control-click a photo and choose Edit With from the contextual menu. Then choose from the list of third-party editing apps on your Mac. You can also click a photo and then choose Image > Edit With in the menu bar.
  2. The photo opens in the third-party app that you chose. Make your edits, and then save.
    If the app saves photos in a non-standard format, look for an option to save as JPEG or another format that Photos supports.
Your edited photo appears automatically in Photos.
This is the “official” way to do it and should avoid the issues you are seeing. For the existing photos you’ve already edited, you might need to delete them from your library and import the edited versions.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Thanks for the responses.



Here’s the process I was doing that resulted in this issue. I would drag and drop a photo from Apple Photos onto my desktop. I would then open the photo in Aurora HDR. After some quick edits I would then save the photo with a different name. Then I’d drag that file back into Apple Photos.

Still not sure what the issue is because I’ve done that exact process before without this problem, but here’s what I’m now doing. Actually it’s a couple things. I use Luminar AI and/or Aurora HDR for editing. I just realized I can use both in Apple Photos as plugins. If ‘s a normal photo that is what I am now doing without issue. However, neither of the plugins will work in Apple Photos if the picture is panoramic or portrait (focus blurring format, not talking about orientation). The plugin either says it can't open the file or crashes. For those I now export the photos from Apple Photos (file menu process, not drag and drop). Do the editing in those applications and then export to the desktop adding a “p” to the file name. Then I drag that file into Apple Photos and haven’t had an issue.

If I need to do the editing outside Apple Photos the only things I am doing differently now is exporting the photos instead of drag and drop and adding a “p” to the original file name instead of giving it a completely unique name like purple flower. I guess that’s enough of a difference? But even so, I don’t know why when I was having the issue it would completely ignore the edited version. You’d think if anything it would replace the original with the newer edited version.
 

SuperMatt

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Thanks for the responses.



Here’s the process I was doing that resulted in this issue. I would drag and drop a photo from Apple Photos onto my desktop. I would then open the photo in Aurora HDR. After some quick edits I would then save the photo with a different name. Then I’d drag that file back into Apple Photos.

Still not sure what the issue is because I’ve done that exact process before without this problem, but here’s what I’m now doing. Actually it’s a couple things. I use Luminar AI and/or Aurora HDR for editing. I just realized I can use both in Apple Photos as plugins. If ‘s a normal photo that is what I am now doing without issue. However, neither of the plugins will work in Apple Photos if the picture is panoramic or portrait (focus blurring format, not talking about orientation). The plugin either says it can't open the file or crashes. For those I now export the photos from Apple Photos (file menu process, not drag and drop). Do the editing in those applications and then export to the desktop adding a “p” to the file name. Then I drag that file into Apple Photos and haven’t had an issue.

If I need to do the editing outside Apple Photos the only things I am doing differently now is exporting the photos instead of drag and drop and adding a “p” to the original file name instead of giving it a completely unique name like purple flower. I guess that’s enough of a difference? But even so, I don’t know why when I was having the issue it would completely ignore the edited version. You’d think if anything it would replace the original with the newer edited version.
I would suggest right-clicking the photo you want to edit and choosing “edit in...” and pick your app for best results.
 

DT

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That is super weird.

So to clarify, you're saying you take a pic with an iPhone, then from Photos on your Mac, you drag that photo out to (for example) your desktop, load it into an editing app, make changes, drag it back in and it's being replaced by the original version?
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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That is super weird.

So to clarify, you're saying you take a pic with an iPhone, then from Photos on your Mac, you drag that photo out to (for example) your desktop, load it into an editing app, make changes, drag it back in and it's being replaced by the original version?

Exactly. What made the issue clearly obvious was I created an album for these edited versions. I dragged 4 edited photos from the desktop into that album. Briefly the thumbnails would show the clearly edited new versions and then within a couple seconds the thumbnails would display the clearly unedited versions.

I'm sure this probably has to do with some kind of tech trying to prevent a mountain of duplicate photos from being saved and stored, but it seems to have gone a little off the rails and in the wrong direction.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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As an example. Can you tell these are different versions of the same photo? Apple Photos couldn’t.

044363C0-047C-4EE6-9829-71699FF65051.jpeg


01C3D03B-A15B-4B19-9CC4-B589C3922764.jpeg


Not exactly a subtle difference there.
 
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Chew Toy McCoy

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I'll never forgive Apple for killing Aperture.

Glad I dodged that bullet as I really wasn’t that much into photo editing until recently.

On a related note, I’m going to kill my Adobe subscription. I think I’ve been paying for it for about a year and not used any of their software even once during that time. I’m finding quality software by other developers that suits my needs and is affordable and doesn’t demand a subscription. I’m glad I didn’t get sucked into the Adobe ecosystem because if I did and got all deep into their cloud sync I probably wouldn’t be able to back out of it.
 

Eric

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Glad I dodged that bullet as I really wasn’t that much into photo editing until recently.

On a related note, I’m going to kill my Adobe subscription. I think I’ve been paying for it for about a year and not used any of their software even once during that time. I’m finding quality software by other developers that suits my needs and is affordable and doesn’t demand a subscription. I’m glad I didn’t get sucked into the Adobe ecosystem because if I did and got all deep into their cloud sync I probably wouldn’t be able to back out of it.
Oh yeah, if you're not using it the expense is steep. I personally use it almost daily for my photography, almost exclusively LR Classic and only using PS for resizing where needed. I also save everything to local HDDs so no matter what I'll have my photos stored outside of their ecosystem but for management and workflow LR is fantastic.
 

DT

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Exactly. What made the issue clearly obvious was I created an album for these edited versions. I dragged 4 edited photos from the desktop into that album. Briefly the thumbnails would show the clearly edited new versions and then within a couple seconds the thumbnails would display the clearly unedited versions.

I'm sure this probably has to do with some kind of tech trying to prevent a mountain of duplicate photos from being saved and stored, but it seems to have gone a little off the rails and in the wrong direction.

It definitely does not do that with me. I even just confirmed it, dragged a pic out of Photos, opened in Pixelmator, made a change (added some text), exported it back to JPG, overwriting the exact same file (no name change), dragged back into Photos ... it's a separate photo, with the same filename. I doubt photos uses something as primitive as just the filename for unique ID, it would have to be some mix of filename, datetime, meta-data, and maybe even a generated checksum identifier.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Oh yeah, if you're not using it the expense is steep. I personally use it almost daily for my photography, almost exclusively LR Classic and only using PS for resizing where needed. I also save everything to local HDDs so no matter what I'll have my photos stored outside of their ecosystem but for management and workflow LR is fantastic.

Adobe products are great if you want to get really detailed and know what you are doing, but sometimes I feel they are a little like Microsoft Office with a “You’ve been using this for decades so of course you already know how it all works” attitude. A lot of things aren’t obvious if you haven’t been using and upgrading since version 1.

Personally I’ve been blown away by Aurora HDR just with the initial AI scan and auto adjustment, instant detail enhancement and regional exposure adjustment meaning if a photo is overexposed in just an area it will automatically adjust that area without making the rest of the photo look like a cartoon. Usually for that you need to start manually playing with masking or adjustment layers.

I will say though that Adobe probably has the best cross platform sync options between Mac and iOS (and Windows I assume). With the M1 chips now in iPads hopefully this will become less of an issue with smaller developers who don’t have the resources that Adobe has. In a lot of ways these obvious needs have been the luxury of larger developers who will charge you a premium to use them.

Kind of off topic but related, I was working on designing a piece of furniture and was tired of using pencil and paper for a sloppy 3D perspective attempt. So I found an iOS CAD app for iPad that turned out to be perfect for my needs, and I don’t have any CAD software experience. It’s fairly easy to understand and even has a furniture design specific module. However, you can only save 2 designs within the app with no way to export, share, or even print. If you want to do any of that you have to pay $30 a month. Excuse me?
 

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Years ago I used Adobe Photoshop and Creative Suite, but never bothered with iPhoto, as it was then. After Aperture came along I found myself ignoring CS 3 altogether and eventually the next time I moved to a new computer I simply left Adobe behind and never bothered updating. By the time they were going to a subscription model I was perfectly happy with other software and still am. I wasn't interested in going to Photos when Aperture bit the dust and hung on to Aperture for a year or so, putting off the inevitable as I tried out various programs as potential replacements. I'm not someone who does a lot of layers and a lot of composite images, I just basically edit whatever it is I've shot and that's it. I tried Capture One and found it way too much -- really overkill for my needs or skills, tried a couple others which names I don't even recall now and found them lacking.... I did like Luminar 3, especially their wonderful erase tool, but wasn't always happy with the program otherwise. Eventually I stumbled on DXO PhotoLab 3 and found myself at home at last. Now I use that (current version being PhotoLab 4) as my primary editing tool, and then I sometimes jump into the new Luminar AI for a quick finishing up or if I need to do a bit more with the "healing" or erasing function. I also use Topaz Gigapixel from time to time and Topaz Sharpen AI from time to time, when an image needs just a bit more finessing in one way or another.

I still am not fond of post-processing, but it is a necessary evil when one shoots with a digital camera and especially when one shoots in RAW as opposed to jpeg. Over the years editing programs have become a little more intuitive and I've slowly improved a little more in my skills. I'm still much happier just being out there shooting the photos rather than dealing with them afterward, though!

I never allow a program to take control of my images. When I have finished shooting, I stick the memory card into the SD card reader that I keep plugged into my desktop, and then download all the image files into a folder on the desktop. From there, I'm free to take the files into whatever program is appropriate and I move forward with the editing. I SHOULD, but usually don't, review and cull the images in PhotoMechanic prior to processing them (usually wind up doing this later at another time). Once finished with whatever it is I'm going to do to the images, they go into a new folder on the desktop and then into various other folders within my Pictures folder (they are categorized and arranged by month, such as Images Edited April, 2021, Photos of the Week [52-week project], arranged by weeks of the year, and RAW image files, arranged by month and date. Each month or sometimes more frequently I back these folders up on external drives, and older files from years past are on archival external drives while right now I'm working with a new set of archival drives with image files from 2020- on. There are multiple copies of the archival drives and the current backup drives, and each month one copy goes to my bank safe deposit box. Redundancy is key!
 

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Anybody else noticed for a number of years now iPhones don’t seem to be able to process a clear blue sky? It seems to go blocky and pixelated. It did this on my 6S, 8+ and now the 12. Drives me nuts as it ruins a good picture.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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I took this one yesterday. Notice the rectangular blocks where the software is confused by the different blue tones.

8655ebf538d99487c79702c3ee7c6c40.png

Can't really tell on that picture on my work PC monitor, but I have noticed when doing some post editing that the blue skies start getting lines and highly noticable blue shade changes when I add more picture definition.
 
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