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  • #110177
    GuyHammond
    Participant

    I gather RAW Power has now been optimized for the Apple M1 chip but is there a minimum recommended system configuration? I know the M1 is supposed to be incredibly fast but I’m thinking about how much RAM to get. Ordinarily, I would have gone for 16Gb but some reports suggest it’s not necessary with the M1.

    Does anyone have any real-world experience yet of using RAW Power and Photos (or indeed Lightroom, Luminar, etc.) on an M1 Mac?

    #110183
    Nik Bhatt
    Keymaster

    Yes, RAW Power has been optimized for the M1. In my experience, 16 GB is the way to go, especially because you cannot add memory later. I have not played with other apps on the M1, but since I have one of Apple’s developer prototype kits “DTK” rather than a production unit, my experiments would not be applicable anyway.

    #110565
    GuyHammond
    Participant

    Yes, I’m you’re right Nik, best to get as much as possible. If only Apple’s prices for RAM and storage weren’t so ridiculously high!

    I’ve now purchased both the Mac and iOS versions and am starting to get to grips with it, at least on the Mac. My aim is to use RP as my main photo organising tool, I like the star ratings plus the ability to flag and tag etc. and then filter the results. Up until now I’ve been using Luminar but the DAM element is basic to say the least and the whole programme just crawls along. I’m pleased to say that Raw Power seems lightning fast in comparison, even on my ageing 2013 iMac. I can then edit them in RP and export Jpegs for use in Apple Photos (as mentioned previously, a way of directly exporting the Photos would be great), thereby reducing the amount of both local and iCloud storage needed. At the moment I keep all my RAW files on an external drive, import them into Photos and then edit them, so I effectively have two copies of the RAW plus the edits (as well as multiple back-ups of course). With storage space at a premium, it would be good to reduce that.

    A few more questions for you: –

    Is there a list of all keyboard shortcuts? I couldn’t find one in the manual or FAQs. I’m hoping there’s a shortcut for rotating images like there is in the Finder.

    If I have two MACs is there a way of maintaining a single database of edits, say by storing it on an external drive for instance?

    I cam hardly bring myself to ask but will there ever be a Windows version?!! I could really use something like Raw Power at work where we have to use PCs. Most apps I’ve tried are so clunky.

    #115961
    Nik Bhatt
    Keymaster

    Sorry for the delay – I just saw your post.

    There isn’t a list of keyboard shortcuts – most of the shortcuts are in the menus. There are a few exceptions, like M to show the original. There isn’t a shortcut for rotating, sorry.

    The app does not support multiple access as you asked (two computers using a single drive or a network) except for the Photo library over iCloud.

    As far as Windows goes, no. I don’t plan to create a Windows or Android version. The app strongly leverages (and is dependent) on Apple’s technologies, including its RAW engine.

    #115965
    GuyHammond
    Participant

    No problem Nik, I expect you’re very busy.

    Perhaps it would be possible to include a button for rotate on the main toolbar in a future version? I find that when I am rating photos I usually do so with the info panel open because I like to see the camera settings and creation date, location etc. When I come across an image that has the wrong orientation I have to switch to edit, use the rotate command, then switch back to info which interrupts my flow somewhat.

    Regarding multiple access, if I edit an image on iOS which is in the Files app (rather than Photos) will those edits be reflected on my Mac when accessing the same folder?

    #115985
    Nik Bhatt
    Keymaster

    I’ll make a note of your request for rotation outside of edit. Right now, RAW Power doesn’t sync changes in the Files app. Sorry.

    #115987
    GuyHammond
    Participant

    Thanks Nik

    Don’t be sorry, I think Raw Power is a great app and what you’ve achieved so far is amazing. The integration with Photos is remarkable and makes me wonder why other Mac developers have made no attempt to do anything similar.

    In fact, the more I think about it, I probably just need to adapt my workflow to RP, rather than the other way round. I’m so used to apps that don’t integrate with Photos that I’m stuck in the mindset of editing outside of Photos first and then importing the results (I’ve never liked the extensions option); with RP I can have the best of both worlds.

    Anyway, thanks again and keep up the good work.

    #116115
    Erik Brammer
    Participant

    Hi Guy,

    That’s exactly it: Me too, I was hesitating to beef up my iCloud storage plan from 200 GB to 2 TB, but I made that move at some stage and don’t regret it at all. At the end of the day, we moved from 3 individual storage plans amounting to 7€ per month to a shared family plan for 10€ per month.

    Now iCloud Photo Library is my master where I store raws and modified jpgs, and I do export raws and final jpgs to a RAID NAS, plus iCloud Photo Library is also being backed up via Time Machine.

    Overall, I am super happy with that setup.

    Cheers,
    Erik

    #116539
    GuyHammond
    Participant

    Hi Erik

    Yes, we’re on the 2Tb plan also, although I do wish Apple would introduce some additional tiers – from 200Gb to 2Tb is a big leap. We really only need 500Gb (or 1Tb max) so I feel we’re paying over the odds a bit. It would be great if they’d allow additional folders or external drives to be added to iCloud, at least then I could sync my external drive of older images, scans etc. which I don’t want cluttering up my Photos Library.

    The ability to share the whole Photos Library with other Family members is another thing on my wishlist.

    I tend to work the other way around: I import all images using Image Capture to a temporary Photo Inbox folder and use an app called Hazel (which you may be familiar with) to automatically rename them to my preferred format (YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-Name), then sort into sub-folders by camera (MFT, iPhone etc) and tag accordingly. I can then manually add descriptions and organise them into my main library.

    I do this mainly because I want to keep a separate archive of all images which is accessible on other software/systems in the future. I’m reluctant to put all my eggs in the Photos basket; Apple have already pulled the plug on iPhoto, Aperture and Apple print products and I wouldn’t put it past them to dump Photos altogether one day or at least change it to a point where I’m no longer happy with it. In addition, Photos doesn’t have any way of renaming images on import which is another limitation in my opinion.

    Anyway, whatever the reasons, I’m happier having an additional library. I then screen the images in Raw Power, get rid of any rejects and import the rest into Photos. I used to do all my edits in Photos itself which I actually find pretty good for editing but then used an external editor (usually Luminar) in particular circumstances. Now my plan is to do all the edits in Raw Power, using the standalone app in Photo Library mode, only using Luminar in difficult images, e.g. for object removal, sky replacement etc. Luminar is a clever app but I feel they have concentrated too much on gimmicky features at the expense of basic management, speed and stability. I’ve become somewhat disillusioned with Skylum to be honest so when I came across Raw Power it was a breath of fresh air. I only wish I’d discovered it earlier – I only found it when version 3 came out!

    Hopefully Nik can add more features in the future, including spot healing, in which case I probably won’t use anything else.

    Best wishes

    Guy

    #116639
    Erik Brammer
    Participant

    Hi Guy,

    thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts. I think it is always good to think workflow over and then validate what you are doing or modify the approach. I agree that the lack of renaming functionality in Photos is a gap, but I can see where it is coming from: On iOS devices, one doesn’t want to mess around with it, and in iCould, people shouldn’t need to worry about file names. Then, when you archive raws and edited images to some archive on your Mac, on a NAS or even another cloud service, you would rename during export. I think Apple should then allow users to change the title of images in Photos for iOS, as I normally use the title for naming files while exporting images. Even in Photos for Mac OS adding titles to images is a very cumbersome, manual, one by one process, unless you use Apple scripts which I do and which work really well.

    My approach obviously has a gap: All editing done using RAW Power within the iCloud Photos Library is residing only there, except when I use Fuji X-Raw Studio to create the first in-camera iterations of jpgs from raws. But in all honesty, if one switches from one raw processor and image editor to another, I guess in most cases that new setup wouldn’t be able to consume the editing metadata from the previous application(s) anyhow. So if I ever were to change, I would still have the raws and the final JPGs, not only in the iCloud Photos Library, but also in my archive where for each event I have two sub-folders: “Original” for the raws and “Modified” for the final jpgs. So if that change ever happened, I could still selectively redevelop some of the raws into whatever jpg or TIFF I want to create out of them.

    But I have no plans changing my workflow for now. I hope Apple Photos and RAW Power will continue to exist for the years to come and will only get better.

    Cheers,
    Erik

    #116649
    Erik Brammer
    Participant

    And indeed, I agree with some of your feature requests for Apple Photos as well. For RAW Power, Nik is typically collecting a log of feature requests but obviously needs to prioritize.

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Erik Brammer. Reason: typo
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