I'm unable to share RAW photos to shared albums in Photos

Question

I'm unable to share RAW photos to shared albums in Photos

This issue cropped up (as in I only encountered it once in while) during last fall and it now it seems to be completely disabling me from sharing RAW photos to shared albums in Photos.

Situation:

shooting RAW photos with a Canon 5D mk3 (and don't tell me to shoot jpeg, as the RAW files are so much better in post-processing
photo library is located on an external hard drive, housing 10 262 photos & 213 videos
editing every RAW file in Photos on an iMac 5K 27" 2017
- MacOS 13.0.1, Photos 8.0
trying to share these photos to two shared albums, which of both return the same error message

Symptoms:

after editing a photo, if a pull up a photo to preview (double click to fill the photo area of Photos) it comes up with very low resolution (blurry)
if go into editing from there, it snaps back to full resolution & sharp
- if I exit edit and try preview again, it comes up with low resolution again

Issue:

when I try to share an edited RAW photo into a shared album, I get an error message saying "Error encountered while trying to add selected items to shared album "name here"" (a rough translation from my OS language).

Previously (during last fall) I remember being able to go around this issue by going repeatedly into edit and saving a photo (making a minor adjustment while in edit so there is something to save) until a proper "preview" image came up and then it was shareable to shared albums. Right now this doesn't seem to do the trick.

I could go around this by either 1) sharing the files unedited, which doesn't provide the end result I want or 2) exporting the files to jpegs and then syncing those files into the shared albums, but that is a hassle I'm not willing to include into this workflow. This is Apple software on Apple hardware, after all. Any ideas how to correct this?

Oh, how I miss the good old days of Aperture...

iMac

Posted on Jan 16, 2023 09:37 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

JukkaHarkonen Author

Level 1

13 points

Feb 1, 2023 10:54 AM in response to JukkaHarkonen

I cracked it!

Making small changes in edit doesn't solve it. However, by reverting back to original and then making adjustments again (even just pasting the edits which were already on the file) makes it possible to share the problematic photos into shared albums.

There's something fishy about RAW editing in Photos.

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Answer 2

Jan 19, 2023 11:05 AM in response to Shannon_DN

Neither of those articles provided any assistance.

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Answer 3

Shannon_DN

Community Specialist

Jan 17, 2023 04:46 PM in response to JukkaHarkonen

Hello JukkaHarkonen,

Thank you for posting in Apple Support Communities.

As seen in How to use Shared Albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Apple Support RAW is a supported format so it should be able to be stored in shared albums.

Let’s start by looking into that article and see if there are any steps there that will help.

If that article does not help, follow the steps found here: If Shared Albums aren't working - Apple Support

If you are still unable to add RAW photos to your shared albums, we recommend reaching out to Apple Support so they can look into this in more detail. You can do that here: Contact - Official Apple Support

Kindest regards.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

199,927 points

Jan 18, 2023 02:14 AM in response to JukkaHarkonen

I just tested sharing edited RAW images to a shared album and it still worked. As to be expected, the edited version has been shared as a downsized JPEG, 2048pixels at the longest edge, because Photos is rendering downsized JPEGs for sharing.

The errormessage you are getting when trying to share the image seems to indicate, that Photos cannot access the edited versions of your RAW files. Perhaps there is a problem with your external drive, where the library is stored. Photos 8 on Big Sur is more critical about the external drives used to house the library than the previous system versions have been. Can you tell us more about your external drive? Has it been prepared as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support ?

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Answer 5

Jan 19, 2023 11:08 AM in response to léonie

The external hard drive is a 1TB SSD formatted in Mac OS extended (journaled), and apart from this problem seems to be working just fine.

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I'm unable to share RAW photos to shared albums in Photos

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