Another new feature in Photos for Mac OS High Sierra is the ability to edit your photos
in external editors.
Now you could do this before with a special external editor's extension but now it's native
functionality.
So let's look at how it works.
So if you select a photo you'd think you would go to Edit and then somewhere in here is where
you would edit the photo.
But that's not how it works.
The idea is to do it before you enter the editing mode.
You go to Image and Edit With.
You'll see a list here of apps that support images.
But it's not a complete list.
Let's look at one example.
Let's look at the popular image editor Acorn which you can buy in the Mac App Store.
If I select that Acorn runs and opens the image.
Now I can draw on the image just to demonstrate editing it.
I'm going to actually move the window down a little bit and you can see behind there's
the Photos app and there's the image there just as we left it.
Here in the front window is Acorn.
If I just draw a bunch of circles in the background here, you'll see, after I hit Command S, that
it saves and the image is updated here in Photos.
So it's live.
You actually see the changes here.
So if you actually had these in split screen or a different desktop or something you would
see it happening as you made changes here.
So let's undo that and let's do something much more useful like create a filter.
So let's do something like Stylize and let's create the crystalize effect.
Adjust it a little bit.
Hit flatten.
So this is something, a pretty advanced filter that you won't find, of course, in Photos.
But now when I Save you'll see that it saves and without having to do anything else it's
here inside of Photos.
So let's quit Acorn and I'm back in Photos and you can see the changes.
Just like with any other change you're going to make to Photos you can Undo it.
You can always revert back to the original.
Nondestructive editing is what it's called.
Now when I hit Edit on a photo that I've edited externally, at least if I do it immediately,
I'm going to get a message here saying the photo is in use by an external editor.
It seems like Photos isn't able to figure out whether or not I'm done working with it
in an external app.
Like I may still have it open.
So it wants me to confirm that I am, in fact, done working with it.
Which makes sense because if I make changes here then it confuses the external editor.
So I'll hit Yes.
Now I can continue to work with it here or just hit Revert to Original to go back to
the original.
So you don't have to worry about making changes.
You can always go back just like you can with any other edit.
Now let's look at using another app.
With the same image I'm going to go to Image, Edit With.
Notice Pixelmator is there.
But Pixelmator doesn't yet work with this.
According to the website there's a version that's about to come out that will be compatible
with High Sierra.
So Pixelmator won't work with it.
Other apps I've tried, most of them do even if they say they're not compatible.
But one app you may want to use is PhotoShop.
I have Photoshop installed but it doesn't show up here.
I'm going to choose Other.
In my Applications folder I can see there's Photoshop.
Probably because it's in a subfolder is why it doesn't see it.
But I can easily select it manually, open it up, and edit in Photoshop.
So here I am in Photoshop and I can do the same kind of thing.
So I can draw with a brush and hit Command S to save.
It's going to give me JPEG options when I save because it's saving out of JPEG.
You'll see that it will actually reflect the change there.
I can undo that in Photoshop, or it's called Step Backwards.
I can do something else.
I can apply a filter.
So let's do something like Pointilize and hit okay.
There's my change there.
I'll hit Command S for save and now I can see that change there.
I can close that Photoshop, Quit Photoshop, and go into Photos, Edit, get that same message,
and Revert to Original.
So now you have this easy way to Edit your photos directly from the Photos app in apps
like Photoshop, Acorn, and so on.