Apple has finally added RAW support for the Fuji X-Pro 2 to Mac OS X. The latest Digital Camera Raw Update released yesterday adds support for just two cameras, the Fuji X-Pro 2 and the Pentax K-7. It’s taken a while for X-Pro 2 support to come to Apple’s system level Raw services, but you should now be able to use X-Pro2 Raw files in software that uses that service, such as Photos, Affinity Photo or Aperture.

I’ve had a quick look at the files by importing a few into Photos and the quality seems pretty good. Images are sharp and don’t seem to exhibit any of the smearing artifacts that you get in Lightroom (Which are, to be fair of a lesser extent with the X-Pro 2 anyway) at the expense of a little more noise and a small bit of colour fringing (barely noticeable). Overall, I would be happy with the quality. It’s not too far off what you would get with Iridient Developer, at least based on my initial testing. (I’m not saying it’s the same, or as good, but it’s not far off it) I will do some more testing and report back. It’s probably a matter of personal taste whether you like the look or not.

I also tried it in Affinity Photo. You have to set Affinity to use Apple RAW for files or it won’t work properly (and it will crash). The results are also interesting. It’s a little different from Photos, but it still has the same look which you would expect as it’s using the same engine. It’s actually a little sharper and cleaner than it is in Photos. I guess this is due to the processing on the Affinity side. I’ll have more on this in the future too.

Just for the sake of it, I also tried a few files in Aperture. I didn’t have Aperture installed, so I had to go get it from he App store first. The results are broadly in line with what you’re getting from Photos. In fact, they may be a little better, and you have access to the raw fine tuning controls in Aperture, so you can adjust things like the sharpening and the boost (which is basically the tone curve). Also being able to use the extended range cubes lets you see how much highlight information is in the file.Considering how long it’s been since Aperture was updated, it does a surprisingly good job with the files. I need to do some more testing mind you, as I’ve only tried it on a small few images. Still it reminds me how much I miss Aperture, but lets not open that can of worms (And yes, I know it still works, for now)

The update is available now from the software update panel. If you have your updates set to install automatically, it may well already be installed.

Just one other thing. I almost missed it as it was hidden in the small print, but it currently only supports uncompressed Raw.

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