I posted this to r/iPhoneography, but I figured I'd ask here as well.
I'm trying to optimize my photography workflow, and trying to figure out the best way to do so. My current workflow consists of this:
- Shoot photo
• ProRAW
• Typically using stock Camera app - Wait for photos to sync to iCloud
• It seems like I'm not making good use of my 15 Pro's 10gbps USB C port, but whenever I try to sync photos over a wire, I end up with duplicates when it finishes syncing with iCloud - Open them in the Photos app on my Mac, edit with Pixelmator Pro
• I use Pixelmator Pro's Photos integration, by going to Edit > ... > Pixelmator Pro - Make edits, save
This works great, but it leaves me with edited .dng RAW files. Not an issue if I'm sending them on iMessage, or if I have my Mac handy to convert them, but if I'm trying to use an app like Discord which doesn't automatically convert to png/jpeg, i'm out of luck.
What I'd like to avoid is taking a photo, having it sync to iCloud, copying that photo to my Mac's local storage, editing it, uploading the edited/exported PNG to iCloud, and having a RAW and a PNG duplicate of every photo
I could import the RAW photos to my Mac locally either via iCloud or via USB, but then I either have to manually pick out and delete those RAWs off my iCloud library, or deal with duplicates.
If I did go this route, I haven't tested it but it would only be viable if the edited/exported PNGs retained all the exif data such as date and location, because I'm particular about having as much metadata like that as I can and I'm not going to go through the hassle of manually tagging them.
The best option I've thought of so far is this:
- Shoot photo
- Sync RAW photos to Mac's local storage via iCloud or USB
- Edit in Pixelmator Pro/Lightroom/etc.
- Export edited photos as PNG, and upload to iCloud
- Delete RAWs from iCloud, but back them up on my selfhosted server
It's still a lot of hassle to delete the RAWs from iCloud to avoid duplicates though, so I haven't started doing this.
There's got to be a solution out there for this, but I feel like I'm missing something.
How do you guys handle this?