Edit Apple Photos On External HD

phendee wrote: ... I found that the standard practice of editing an image that is in a Library on an external drive with an application other than Photos is difficult.

I think that your problem is with the Acorn editor, not with an external drive. Photos doesn't care that a Library is on an external drive as long as it is probably formatted and properly connected.

Of course, some apps don't follow Apple's requirements for simple transfer of images. The "Edit with" menu item is there for apps that don't play well with Photos.

Did you ever hear back from the Acorn people?

Your guide on using an external editor on an external HD is very well written.

and helpful.

The error message about being unable to save the edits is indicating permission problems. I had similar problems with Luminar AI. I had to use App Cleaner to remove all traces of the previous installation of Luminar AI, before the editing extension worked well on my libraries on an external drives. It needed an update of Luminar AI to make it more stable.

Perhaps the editing extension does not have the permissions to save the edits on an external drive? Does Acorn have full disk access and access to your photos?

And just to be sure - the fiel system format of your external drive is MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS?

phendee wrote: ... Have you tried a library on an external drive yet? If so, what are your results?

Acorn Did finally get back to me. He basically said to do it this way because apps like Acorn do not work with the three dot system.

Yes, I use some of my Libraries on external drives-- it's a pretty common thing. Photos has always worked perfectly well that way. The extra editors that I use work well as extensions to Photos. There are some for which I have used "Edit with" as I had suggested to you.

I think that what Acorn was telling you was that they were not interested in making their software compatible with Apple's operating systems. I wonder what will happen with a new macOS-- will Acorn care about upgrading their system, or will they leave their users in the lurch?