Combine the organization of iPhoto with the power of Photoshop

What You'll Need:

>> iPhoto ‘11
>> OS X 10.6.8 or later
>> 10 minutes

Difficulty: Hard

No one denies that iPhoto is an excellent tool for organizing your photos. But while its built-in editing tools are fine for everyday enhancements and basic image effects, there are lots of things you might want to do with your pictures that demand a program such as Elements or Photoshop.

That’s why iPhoto has always offered the ability to use an external editor instead. The idea is that once you’ve chosen your external image-editor in the iPhoto Preferences, iPhoto launches this automatically. And when you save the result, it’s sent back to iPhoto.

This works well if you work with JPEG files and simple enhancements, but the minute you start working with layers and RAW files it gets more complicated. Suddenly, you’re prompted to save new images that don’t get re-imported back into iPhoto, so you have to import them manually and it all gets a bit messy.

So what is iPhoto doing, and why is it not always as easy as you’d expect to get your edited file to reappear in iPhoto?

The crucial thing to realize is that while iPhoto does support ‘round-tripping’, it only works where the edited file is saved in the same format as it was in iPhoto. Except in very specific circumstances (more on this shortly), iPhoto will always send a JPEG to your external editor, and it will always expect to get a JPEG back. So if you do anything in Photoshop that involves layers, you must flatten the image before you attempt to save it again. If you don’t, Photoshop will prompt you to save a new file in a different format, which you will have to import manually into iPhoto.

Things become more complicated with RAW files. Here, iPhoto will carry out its own internal RAW conversion and then send your external editor a JPEG. There’s actually nothing wrong with iPhoto’s RAW conversions (see the Quick Tip). But if you do want to use Photoshop to do the RAW conversion, you must choose this option in the Preferences and accept the fact that you’re going to have to import the converted file manually.

The other Preferences option to create 16-bit TIFF files on editing RAW files, is useful, but adds another complication. If you don’t edit the RAW file in iPhoto, it will still send your external editor a JPEG version. But if you do edit the RAW file in iPhoto, that’s when it will send your editor a 16-bit TIFF.

Once you realize what iPhoto is doing, the rest starts to make sense!

iPhoto’s Editing Preferences

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How to Use iPhoto With an Editor

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  Choose Your Editor

  To choose an external editor, open the iPhoto Preferences dialog, select the Advanced tab and open the Edit Photos menu. You’ll be prompted to choose an app. After that, the app will be displayed here, though you can select it from the menu again to choose a different one.

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  Editing Photos

  You can choose either iPhoto or your external editor from this menu to control which is used when you edit your photos. It doesn’t matter which way round you do it: you can now choose either one from the drop-down menu, bottom-right of the image thumbnails in iPhoto.

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  Flattening Layers

  Your photos can now be opened in your external editor. If you use layers in Photoshop or Elements, you must flatten the image again before you save it. If you don’t, Photoshop will save it as a PSD or TIFF file, which means it won’t automatically be re-imported into iPhoto.

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  Edited Images

  In earlier versions of iPhoto, externally edited images replace the originals (though the originals are kept – you can still revert). iPhoto ’11 creates a copy of the original, and it’s the copy that’s edited, so when the file is saved you’ll see the new version alongside the original.

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  RAW Processing

  By default, iPhoto carries out RAW conversions. If you edit a RAW file with an external editor, the conversion is carried out before the file’s exported. To have Photoshop or Elements convert it, check Use RAW when using external editor in iPhoto’s Preferences.

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  RAW Options

  You can now use Adobe Camera Raw to carry out the conversion – it has a wider choice of adjustments. The downside is that the file you create can’t be saved back as a RAW file – it has to be a JPEG, TIFF or PSD file, say. So it won’t appear in iPhoto unless you import it manually.

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  Editing in iPhoto

  A better option for RAW fans might be to check Save Edits as 16-bit TIFF files instead. This means that when you edit a RAW conversion, iPhoto will save it as a high-quality 16-bit TIFF file. But while these are fine for Photoshop, they’re no good for Elements.

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  16-bit TIFFs

  If you don’t edit RAW files in iPhoto, it will still send a JPEG to your external editor, even when you’ve checked the 16-bit box. You’ll only get a 16-bit file if you carry out some editing, however minor, in iPhoto first. It’s an odd and annoying quirk you have to allow for.

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  Quick Tip

  Don’t immediately assume iPhoto’s RAW conversions are inferior to Adobe Camera Raw’s. The tools are limited, but they are very effective. For example, if you drag the Exposure slider, you get a highlight recovery tool that’s more subtle and more effective than ACR’s.

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