Where are edited photos stored? How to easily access them from my Mac via iCloud or Photos?

Discuss Photomator and photo editing.
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2022-03-05 23:16:04

While I wait for a Mac version of Pixelmator Photo, I am using it on my phone or iPad to edit each day's proRAW photos but then I'm not sure how to find the edited versions from my mac.

I did found a folder in iCloud for Pixelmator Photo and it contains a "Linked Files" folder with "*.photo-edit" files but nothing on my Mac can open them, not even Pixelmator Pro and there are too few of them to be all my edited photos.

This could be clearer in the user manual.
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2022-03-07 21:17:01

The final edited images are store within Photos itself, these are full res Previews that are displayed over the original image (which always remains untouched, regardless of file type). This works the same for Photos itself, if you edit in that, or any other external editor that links directly to the Photos library.

The xxx.photo-edit files stored in your iCloud (you can also choose to switch that to local storage on your device), are only editing data for that version of Pixelmator - in this case Pixelmator Photo. They are used in conjunction with the original image, so you can change any edits, by opening the original image, and the changes will be saved back to the .photo-edit file.

This file does get huge though, as it seems to store a lot of data, and probably an uncompressed TIFF type file. My 28MB NEF images can end up at 200MB as a Pixelmator file (there is another discussion covering this).

These files will only work with the specific version Pixelmator you are using, so no, you can open these in Pro or Classic, and vice versa. So, sadly, there is no way to use edits across the devices using Pixelmator.

As far as I can find, only Photos itself and Raw Power have that capability.

I agree, that the manuals are very sparse when it comes to some more technical details, although normally you shouldn't be needing to messagings round in that folder, Pixelmator automatically links the edit file to the original image when you open them.

Having said that, I delete all the edit files when I'm done editing, as they simply take up too much extra space.

It's also possible to turn on and off the ability to save these 'non-destructive' edit files, so when you're done editing, it can be saved as not re-editable. That might be why you're not seeing a full set, or you could have changed the storage location (or perhaps you've not had access to the cloud storage at some point).

All the best

Andy.
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2023-07-21 17:30:52

So my pixelmator was just updated and now I can't find the files I had open in various tabs? Do you know where those file are stored? I am missing a few files from the recently opened tab. Thanks.