Raw files couldn’t open at Mac Photos

The list of supported cameras is here:

Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and visionOS 2 - Apple Support

To be blunt, adding raw support does not seem to be a priority these days for Apple. So, some cameras are never supported, so partially supported and some fully so.

Options: Convert the raws to DNG with Adobe's free converter.

or

Use a third party app to manage these (and if you wish) all you photos. Apps like Adobe's Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, CaptureOne, DxO Photo Lab, Mylio and others have their own raw support and tend to be faster and more complete in the support they offer, but then they ought to be as you pay for them. Also consider the software that the maker of your camera recommends, which is most likely free and there are also open source options too.

Convert .raw to .dng raw if macOS does not yet support that raw format.

https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/adobe-dng-converter.html

Yer_Man wrote: t hasn't been updated in quite a while. (2015),

I had seen that. I didn't need it for my Z5 NEFs-- they work fine on the Mac and in Photos. My Z8's "High Efficiency*" compressed NEFs (I bought a new camera!) just produce a generic icon and don't do QuickLook. But the app makes it work! I ran it months ago (in Sonoma,) a bit after I bought the Z8, and my NEFs continue to show image icons and QuickLook:

when they didn't before.

I can't see much advantage in using RAW files with Photos. I use Photos for jpegs, and I use other apps to edit RAW files to make nice jpegs that I then import into Photos for tweaks and organization. The biggest problem with unsupported RAW files is that you just get generic icons and Quicklook doesn't work.

I found the app Raw Right Away which makes RAW files from Nikon, Cannon, and Sony show icons on a Mac, and makes them work with  QuickLook.

As Yer_Man and Matti Haveri have said, you can convert your RAW files to DNG files which are nearly universal, and they work fine with the Mac and Photos.

Hi Richard

I checked out that app and seems like it hasn't been updated in quite a while. (2015), and it doesn't mention any of the Z range Nikons. Further, I haven't installed it an QL works just fine on my Z5 and z50 nefs

It's a heck of a camera! I found I was cropping pictures a lot, so I decided I needed more pixels. The Z8 has plenty of those, so that gives a lot of freedom. It's quite a bit heavier, but it's OK. The focusing is fast. I was shooting a horse jumping show, and I started taking pictures at 30 / second-- it was very cool, but so many pictures to curate! The hardware setup is much like the Z5, so it was an easy transition. The Z8 has many more buttons than on the Z5. I set them up the way I wanted, using what I'd done with the 5, but I can't remember what most of them do, now--but I have a list! It uses two memory cards like the Z5, but one is a CFexpress card that is blazingly fast. (And more expensive, of course.) I'm happy--it feels kind of luxurious!

Oh---I just did a search on the web page for "z" (luckily it's not an S5 or S8,) and there is a footnote mention of the Z-series cameras.

How nice is that Z8? looks like a wonderful piece of work.