Externally edited images do not automatically appear in Photos (Mac)

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Externally edited images do not automatically appear in Photos (Mac)

According to this Apple webpage (Edit with third-party apps and extensions in Photos - Apple Support), externally edited Photos do NOT automatically appear in Mac Photos.

Key text from that web page:

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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.

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.
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.

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I am testing Apple Photos to see if I can use it for image organization and management while using an external image editor.

I will guess that I am suffering from "pilot error" but I don't know where to start troubleshooting this.

My external editor is producing a JPEG, so I am at least avoiding that snag.

Mac Photos 10.0 (721.0.150) running on Sequoia 15.2

iMac 27″, macOS 15.2

Posted on Jan 25, 2025 4:18 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,918 points

Jan 26, 2025 1:27 AM in response to MJ

Are you 'Saving' or 'Saving As'?

This works because Photos create a file and sends it to the editor. If you then Save that file, it reverts. If, however, the act is Saving As... then the editor is creating a new file the Photos knows nothing about. Even if you're not intentionally using a Save As command, if the file is renamed or changed in format - from raw to jpeg for instance - that is the same as a Save As.

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Answer 2

Jan 26, 2025 7:14 AM in response to Yer_Man

Yer_Man wrote: … If, however, the act is Saving As... then the editor is creating a new file the Photos knows nothing about.

I'm sorry, this confused me at first-- but re-reading, I agree.

The moral is, Use "Save," not "Save as…," and don't change the name.

About the original post:

That business of "look for an option to save as JPEG" is garbage! It looks like, in the linked file, that this was an afterthought that someone added after but without thought. The picture to be edited obviously came from Photos in a compatible format, since it was already in Photos!

Some editors (like Lightroom) don't even have a "Save" function, since they deal with RAW data for which "Save" has no meaning. (It wouldn't be RAW data if it were changed!) So we use Export. Then we must import that to Photos, and we'll have two images, a before and after. The "file name" of the "after" picture will look the same, although Photos actually assigns it a new hidden name. For Lightroom, I add a keyword of LRc, and I add an L to the title of the LRc edited picture.

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Answer 3

Jan 26, 2025 10:05 AM in response to MJ

You say "My external editor is producing a JPEG," but you didn't say what the original format was. Was it also a jpeg? If the original was different, the it's doing a "Save as jpeg," so Photos would have no way of knowing what file to load.

If you're trying to edit RAW data, then the RAW file won't change. If it did, it would no longer be RAW. That's why Lightroom, for instance, doesn't have a "Save" for RAW files.

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