I have a friend who uses I-Photo with his Apple and is looking to switch back to a PC and use Lightroom. He has been importing RAW images into I-Photo and then wants to take them out of I-Photo into another program. The issue he has is that I-Photo will not allow him to export his images in their RAW format and converts them to JPEG. Is that true with I-Photo? If not, how do you export a RAW image and keep it that way when using I-Photo. Thanks.

Steve

they are stored in folders, but it is a bit of a cryptic system iPhoto uses. However they still reside on the HD.

It is not designed to easily export your RAWs and meta data. Maybe downloading the demo of Aperture and importing form iPhoto, then export out of Aperture for a more automated process?

in the export dialog of iPhoto, selecting the image type "original" will export the images in whatever format they were imported in, it sounds like in this case it will produce the RAW images.

As has been said above, it's actually very easy to export the raws and work with them. File | Export | Original, done.

What iPhoto doesn't do is easily manage all your outside edits like Aperture or Lightroom will.

Depending on what he's looking for he may want to move up (both offer a 30-day trial), but if he just needs to get the files out easily, iPhoto will definitely do that.

Thanks everyone for the help. I will let him know.

Steve

Why not use LR on the mac, unless he is switching platforms for other reasons. I do not know much about I-photo

There is no generic software in existence that "exports" RAW files, certainly not LR. This is a point of nomenclature. When I say "export RAW", I take that to mean exporting the file in RAW format with all editing changes incorporated. LR imports the data from the RAW files and saves the editing changes in the database. It can save the changes in sidecar files and export in a variety of formats besides JPEG. The RAW file exists separately on your hard drive and is unchanged. Although this is a bizarre, idiotic, concept that is intentionally designed to screw the customer - that is life in the world of all commercial software.

The reason I say "intentionally Screw the customer" is that, in the future, if some better, non-Adobe product is created, you will have difficulty migrating your edits to the new platform. Having said that, I use LR because it is the best option for my needs.