Mac OSX - Importing RAW images

ciaranhickey

Hi,

Apologies if this was already discussed but a forum search returned nothing.

I recently (and finally) ditched my PC in favour of a mac and I'm looking for the best approach to importing RAW images from my camera. iPhoto appears to auto convert to jpg or tiff on import, and I seem to have lost my canon software disc that came with camera.

I'm a photoshop user so happy to process the raw images with that and don't really plan on changing to lightroom or aperture.

Has anyone any mac tips for importing raw images other than lightroom/aperture?

Thanks in advance,
Ciarán

Fajitas!

I've not used it in a while, but iPhoto should be able to import from the camera.

stcstc

if you use photoshop i assume you also use bridge, why not use that for browsing and photoshop for processing

ciaranhickey

Thanks Fajitas! iPhoto does import fine from the camera but also kindly does the raw conversion for you at the same time and outputs either a JPG or TIFF only, no direct CR2 file upload...

Unless I'm missing something with it (which is very possible - I'm new to Mac)!

Fajitas!

Ah - Didn't know that - I've never used it to import RAW's. Try Bridge so

eolair

OSX will happily convert RAWs for you, but you have no control over the process - Apple just integrated the freeware software DCRAW into the OS. So you get generic files, and little of the advantage of using RAW in the first place.

If you have PS, it too will do your RAWS. If your version of PS doesn't support your camera, you can download the free DMG converter, use that to convert the RAW to DMGs, then open the DMGs in photoshop.

IIRC Bibble Pro and some odd (but excellent) japanese sw will also do RAW.

ciaranhickey

Thanks stcstc - I do have Bridge and looks like it will do the job perfectly. I've never actually gone near Bridge until now and assumed it was mainly for syncing different Adobe applications!

And thanks eolair for the DMG conversion tips!

Ciarán

kumate_champ07

lightroom works well on a mac. you can view any kind of raw file on osx in the preview app. and if u need u can convert them from there to jpeg, theres a little bit of stuff u can do to the file before conversion.

I generally copy over my flash card to new folder on my macv then open all the raw files in preview and then drag the good ones over to a new folder which is then imported to lightroom, saves me importing everything into lightroom and deleting the non keepers.

Fenster

I've always used a shell script. Brutally simple, but it has a single job:

#!/bin/sh

IMPORTS=/Users/Account/Pictures/Imports
PICDIR=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d')
FLASH=/Volumes/EOS_DIGITAL

cd $IMPORTS

mkdir $PICDIR && cd $PICDIR

for file in $(find $FLASH -iname "*.*")
do 
     mv $file .
     echo "Moving $file to $(pwd)"
done

sleep 2

diskutil eject disk2s1

echo

echo "All done! You may safely remove your memory card now."

exit 0