How To Remove Raw Images From Apple Photos and iCloud

Apple Photos isn’t the best application to manage a large digital photo library, but the integration with iCloud, iOS, and macOS is extremely useful. But even though Photos can process and store raw images, it is severely lacking in terms of library management: Smart folders don’t properly recognize them and there’s no easy way to remove them from your library so these huge files can seriously clog up your iCloud account. I have developed a workflow to remove raw images from Apple Photos and iCloud and thought I’d share it. Hopefully Apple will do better in future releases.

How Photos Stores Raw Files

Although I don’t love the slim editing features in Photos, I’m still using it because of the excellent integration between iOS, macOS, and iCloud. It’s just plain useful to have all of my photos stored together and seamlessly synced to the cloud. Still, Photos is pretty terrible when it comes to dealing with raw images.

In macOS, Photos stores all images in a bundle. By default this lives in your Pictures folder and is called “Photos Library.photoslibrary”, though macOS hides the extension so it just looks like “Photos Library” in Finder. A macOS bundle is actually just a regular folder marked so as to be treated like a single unit in Finder.

Inside the library, all photos are stored in Masters/year/month/day/event/file. For example, if you take photo with your iPhone on July 10, 2017, it might be called “Masters/2017/07/10/20170710-12304/IMG_2356.JPG”. If you import a raw+jpg image from a camera (in my case, my Leica Q uses “.dng” files for raw), it will be stored similarly, perhaps called “Masters/2017/07/10/20170710-17385/L123521.JPG” and “Masters/2017/07/10/20170710-17385/L123521.dng”. Note that both the jpeg and raw files are stored together in the same directory.

Although Photos does a nice job of keeping these paired photos together, it entirely drops the ball when dealing with them in the UI. Photos treats raw+jpg images as a single entity but only accounts for the primary or “Original” source. By default, raw+jpg files are treated as “JPEG” by the UI and are thus indistinguishable from plain jpg files from the same camera except for a little stacked “J” icon in the upper right corner. If you edit the photo and select “Use RAW as Original” in the Image menu, it becomes a stacked “R” and can be matched by Smart Folders.

This is asinine:

• Smart Folders has a “Photo is Raw” search, but this only works then the “Use as Original” source is raw (which has to be done manually, one photo at a time)
• Smart Folders “Filename ends with…” search also only finds the “Use as Original” source
• Thus there is no automatic way to identify raw+jpg files since they are by default treated as jpg files
• The only way to know which files are raw+jpg pairs after import is to look for the little “J” box in the corner

At least if you “Export Unmodified Original” it will export both the raw and jpg files regardless of which was marked as “Original”!

Raw Files in iCloud Photos

Apple Photos happily uploads both the raw and jpeg files to iCloud Photos for you, and will download them to any Mac connected to the account automatically. And Apple will generate a jpeg file for viewing on iOS devices too. This is good.

The problem is that these raw files can quickly clog up your iCloud account and there’s no way to get rid of them short of deleting the image from the library. This is bad. Considering that every raw image from my Leica Q is 41 MB, my 200 GB iCloud account quickly filled up!

There ought to be some way to clean out your library, exporting the unwanted raw files and removing them from iCloud without deleting the companion jpeg files. But that’s really hard to do.

Warning: The following processes can cause the loss of your precious photos if not done correctly! Proceed at your own risk and make a backup first! In fact, make two or three backups!

Frankly, since Photos can’t automatically select which jpeg images have a “raw companion” users of raw+jpg are really in for a tough time. The only way I can see to clean out your raw+jpg files in Photos is as follows:

1. Manually select all raw+jpg images you want to clear out, using the little “J” box in the UI as your guide
2. Export Unmodified Originals to an archive folder, giving you a copy of both the raw and the jpeg file but not any modifications you’ve done
3. Export (modified) Photos to another archive folder, giving you a jpeg with your changes so you can bring those back into your library
4. Delete these photos from your library using Command-Delete (why is there no corresponding menu item?)
5. Really delete these photos by clicking on Delete All in the Recently Deleted folder
6. Wait for iCloud Photos to sync, then exit and reopen the library and wait for it to really remove the photos which strangely only seems to happen after reopening (Is this a bug or a feature?)
7. Watch the size of the library in Finder to make sure the photos are really, really deleted from the library, then wait some more to make sure they’re really, really deleted from iCloud
8. Import the modified jpeg photos from step 3 and manually tag them, add them back into your albums, and so on

This process is painful and incomplete: There’s a lot of manual juggling and you will lose your tags, albums, and categorization. But at least your iCloud library will be smaller.

A (Somewhat) Better Way With PowerPhotos

I’ve long used Fat Cat Software’s PowerPhotos (formerly iPhoto Library Manager) to split and merge iPhoto and Photos libraries. Although it doesn’t solve the problem of finding and exporting raw+jpg images, it does automate the tagging and photo import process so you won’t lose as much when you jump through these hoops.

Here’s my improved way to clean raw+jpg files out of Photos, leveraging PowerPhotos:

1. Manually select all raw+jpg images you want to clear out, using the little “J” box in the UI as your guide, and put them in a (dumb) album called “Raw Photos To Archive” or something
2. Create a Smart Album with “Album is not Raw Photos To Archive”, then create another (dumb) album called “Photos Not Archived” or something so this selection will persist after you delete the others
3. Make a copy of the whole Photos library by holding down Option while dragging the library to an archive folder then rename this something like “Raw Photo Archive”
4. Close Photos and open the copy Raw Photos Archive library, then select all Photos Not Archived and delete them using Command-Delete, then clear them from Recently Deleted by clicking “Delete All”
5. Exit Photos and reopen that library and wait to make sure they’re really deleted
6. Back in your original iCloud Photo Library, select all Raw Photos To Archive and delete them using Command-Delete, then clear them from Recently Deleted by clicking “Delete All”
7. Exit Photos and reopen that library and wait to make sure they’re really deleted
8. Watch the size of the library bundles in Finder to make sure the photos are really, really deleted from the library, then wait some more to make sure they’re really, really deleted from iCloud
9. Fire up PowerPhotos, click “Merge Libraries”, select the following:
   • Drag the Raw Photo Archive library to the “Choose Source Libraries” box
   • Drag the Default iCloud library to the “Choose Destination Library” box
   • De-select “Eliminate duplicates while merging” since you deleted the duplicates earlier
   • Select “Copy edited JPGs” so your lovely edits will be saved in your iCloud library
10. PowerPhotos will restore your photos, including tags and albums, and Photos will send these back to your iCloud Photo library

This process results in a complete library of only raw+jpg images, complete with the tags you added and edits you performed, along with a complete library of jpeg images in iCloud for you to enjoy and share. It’s painful but functional. The only issue is that every time you repeat the process you get another Raw Photos archive.

I’ve asked Fat Cat to add a feature to handle this better in PowerPhotos and we’ll see what they come up with.

Stephen’s Stance

Here’s my ideal scenario for Apple Photos or Fat Cat PowerPhotos:

• Allow me to automatically select all raw+jpg files in my library
• Allow me to export and import raw+jpg files with edits and tags
• Allow me to archive unwanted raw files without losing the jpeg images in my library, perhaps allowing me to re-link the raw files in the future

I suppose I should just switch to Lightroom. But barring that, I guess I’ll have to use the process above.