EOS 6D MII Raw not supported by Photos on El Capitan

[mplawrence]

I just purchased 6D Mark II planning to use Raw & JPG.  My iMac computer is a little old and still running on El Capitan.  Everything works for the 6D MII except Raw photos.  Says it is not supported.  Called Canon and Apple.  They say it is an operating system problem.  I did report it to Apple.  It works on latest macOS High Sierra on my MacBook Pro.  Anyone else have the same problem?

[mplawrence]

I've tried a few times but did it again to please you.  When I click on the Free Upgrade and Download for High Sierra, it says "We could not complete your purchase.  This version of macOS 10.13.3 cannot be installed on this computer."  I only wish.

Thanks for the info.

Mary

[RobertTheFat]

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@TCampbellwrote:

Every camera model has a different RAW file.  The reason I asked which os came with your computer is because you mentioned it has El Capitan.  Generally any Mac capable of running El Capitan can also run High Sierra.  Have you opened the App Store to check for it?

Apple makes the Camera RAW updates part of the os because lots of apps use it....   Photos, Aperture, Preview, Finder, Keynote, Pages, etc. all use the same camera RAW and this means Apple doesn’t have to update every program separately.

Adobe doesn’t use Apple’s updates, they provide their own.  Word of caution... Adobe may encourage you to convert your RAW files to their .dng format.   I suggest you avoid that and stick with your native RAW files because if you convert them... then only Adobe software will ever be able to read them.  This would be a problem if you ever needed to use any other software.

As for Lightroom... yes, it does allow you to apply brushed on adjustments.  E.g. if you wanted to add more light just to a subjects face and not the whole photo, that’s easily done.  Last I checked, Canon DPP doesn’t support brushed-on adjustments.

But Lightroom is only available as a subscription that costs $10/month with 1 year plans ( so really its $120/year).  It also includes Photoshop.

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I guess I don't see it quite that way. The conversion to .DNG is harmless enough and may (I suppose) help you do a better job pf editing with the Adobe software. It's failure to save the underlying .CR2 files that can get you into future trouble.

[TCampbell]

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@RobertTheFatwrote:

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@TCampbellwrote:

Every camera model has a different RAW file.  The reason I asked which os came with your computer is because you mentioned it has El Capitan.  Generally any Mac capable of running El Capitan can also run High Sierra.  Have you opened the App Store to check for it?

Apple makes the Camera RAW updates part of the os because lots of apps use it....   Photos, Aperture, Preview, Finder, Keynote, Pages, etc. all use the same camera RAW and this means Apple doesn’t have to update every program separately.

Adobe doesn’t use Apple’s updates, they provide their own.  Word of caution... Adobe may encourage you to convert your RAW files to their .dng format.   I suggest you avoid that and stick with your native RAW files because if you convert them... then only Adobe software will ever be able to read them.  This would be a problem if you ever needed to use any other software.

As for Lightroom... yes, it does allow you to apply brushed on adjustments.  E.g. if you wanted to add more light just to a subjects face and not the whole photo, that’s easily done.  Last I checked, Canon DPP doesn’t support brushed-on adjustments.

But Lightroom is only available as a subscription that costs $10/month with 1 year plans ( so really its $120/year).  It also includes Photoshop.

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I guess I don't see it quite that way. The conversion to .DNG is harmless enough and may (I suppose) help you do a better job pf editing with the Adobe software. It's failure to save the underlying .CR2 files that can get you into future trouble.

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That really is the issue... not saving the original .CR2 files.  All the real data is in those .CR2 files.  

If you lose those .CR2 files, the next universal lossless storage format is TIFF files, but that massively increases the space needed to store a file (it becomes nearly 3.5x larger).  

The only advantage to a .DNG that I can think of... is you can share DNG files with people who use Adobe software (even older versions) who do not have the correct RAW decoder for your camera model.  But since you typically do have the RAW decoder for your own camera (that's the only way to make the .DNG file in the first place) it doesn't really give you any advantage.

The disadvantage is that I have never enountered a single non-Adobe software program that could read a .DNG file.  This creates a lock-in to use Adobe software because it starts to get painful to use anything else.

[mplawrence]

thanks for the info.  This morning I was attempting to edit Raw files in Photos on my MacBook Pro running High Sierra.  It keeps freezing up and have to do a Force Quit.  What the heck!  Apple is pushing me to Lightroom...

[RobertTheFat]

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@mplawrencewrote:

thanks for the info.  This morning I was attempting to edit Raw files in Photos on my MacBook Pro running High Sierra.  It keeps freezing up and have to do a Force Quit.  What the heck!  Apple is pushing me to Lightroom...

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Or to Windows.

[mplawrence]

Update:

After talking to six Apple techs over 3 days, we ended up repaired my photo library and all seems to be working OK.  We used the Photos library repair tool.  To use that tool, you hold down the Option-Command while you open Photos and it takes you to the Repair process.  Took a couple hours for 28,000 photos!  But Photos appears to be editing Raw images and doing OK on my MacBook Pro laptop running High Sierra.  

As for my (24" early 2009) iMac running El Capitan, only solution now is to use Canon's Digital Photo Professional 4 that came with camera for editing or purchase Lightroom/Photoshop.  I cannot upgrade my iMac from El Capitan.  That's the end of it!.  El Capitan does not support my Canon 6D Mark II raw files.  It is OK with jpg, just not raw.

Thank you all for your suggestions.  It was a big help. 

Mary

[Waddizzle]

I am glad you have found some type of solution. 

IMHO, if El Capitan does not work with the latest and greatest hardware/software, then that is an El Capitan issue.

[TCampbell]

2009 ... so it's a 9 year old computer ... that's pretty good to have a machine still taking care of you after 9 years.

One of the challenges of technology is that since newer machines are faster, the applications start to take thosse faster resources for granted... and older machines don't keep up.

You wont be able to use native Apple software to have RAW support on a machine that old.  You can likely use Canon Digital Photo Professional.  Also the latest versions of Adobe (those that have current Adobe Camera RAW updates available) would be able to deal with your RAW files.  But those "latest" versions are likely only available on Adobe's annual subscription model.

ON1 RAW would probably work.  They claim to support macOS versions back to 10.9 (you are running 10.11, High Sierra is 10.13).

Affinity Photo say they support the mac back to 10.7.5

Luminar says they support the mac back to Yosemite (10.10.5 ... one OS version prior to yours).

I think all of these have "trial" versions so you can see it actually does support your Mac & your 6D II to your satisifcation before you fork over your money.

[mplawrence]

Thanks for all that info!  I appreciate it.  I had hoped to get 10 years from my iMac, so other software will buy me some time.

[Ous]

SOLVED!!!!!!

I Have the same problem. 

I'm using an 2011 iMac 27, with OSX 10.11.6 El Capitan.

I can not update anymore so I have the last SO my mac can run. 

I just bought a Canon EOS 6D Mark II and i had the same problem. Apple doesent update anymore the Camera Raw SO setting, so i can work in my images using any software like CPP, LR, Photoshop, FastRaw Viewer... But I'm not amble to see the thumnails or the preview in finder. 

Since I found that:

Raw Right Away

http://www.flange.com/

It runs in second plane. And provides Thumbails and Image previews. Also.. the raw preview are faster than finder.
I'm very very happy I found that software!!!