How to use an external editor with Photos for OS X

Posted April 10, 20159 yr

If you're more comfortable in Photoshop, Pixelmator, Acorn, or another image editor, your instinct might immediately be to 'Edit with..."

That way you way you don't have to worry about photo-specific workflows, you can get right down to nudging pixels. Apple's new Photos for OS X, however, doesn't include support for external editors, at least not yet. So, if you really want to move your images out of Photos and into your favorite image editor for Mac, what can you do?

The answer is to manually round-tip them.

That's because not only is there now "Edit with..." option in Photos for OS X, currently you can't even drag directly from Photos and into another editor. You have to save out, open in, save out, and open back. It's inefficient, absolutely, but if there's a filter, effect, or pixel-level edit you can only make in an external editor, it's the only way to get it done. For now, at least.

How to move an image out of Photos and into Photoshop, Pixelmator, Acorn, or other external editor

Click on the photo you want to edit.
Go to the File > Export > Export Unmodified Original menu item. (If you don't care about the highest quality possible, you can simply drag and drop the photo to your desktop.)
Save the photo to your desktop.
From your desktop, drag the photo into your favorite image editor. (Or control/right click the icon and choose "Open with..." and then your favorite image editor.)

How to bring and edited image back into Photos for OS X

Save or Export the edited image back to your desktop.
From your desktop, drag the image back into Photos for OS X. (Or choose the File > Import menu item and then select the image to import.)