If you have a camera that writes a RAW file that is currently unsupported by Aperture, you may not be entirely out of luck. First, it is very likely that the team at Apple is busy trying to come up with the best possible solution for your RAW format, and it may be only a matter of days or weeks before you see an update. Apple seems to very seldom overlook a RAW format entirely, so just be patient.

However, while you wait you have a number of possibilities to continue using Aperture as your workflow focal-point. The first thing to do is to find out if your camera supports writing in RAW+Jpeg mode. With this setting your camera will produce the native RAW files, as well as a separate Jpeg which you can utilize while you wait for RAW support.

Most cameras that shoot RAW have a RAW+Jpeg setting, and you should take a look and see what options your camera might provide in this mode. The unsupported camera I am currently using is the Panasonic LUMIX LX3. With the LX3 I can write RAW+Jpeg and the Jpeg is a full resolution file, compressed pretty mildly. This camera also offers the option of writing a RAW+Jpeg pair with a smaller resolution Jpeg, but I of course chose the larger size.

In RAW+Jpeg mode on this camera, which makes about a 10 megapixel file, I can store nearly 1000 images on a 16-Gig SD card.

When importing I have found a couple of minor anomalies. I still haven’t really figured out just what is happening here, but it seems as though if I use Aperture’s Import panel ( Command-I ) the RAW files and the Jpegs get imported as individual files. This is actually quite convenient if all you want to do is work with the Jpeg files, but ideally I would like the RAW+Jpeg pairs to appear as a single entity.

I was able to get Aperture to achieve this by importing via drag and drop. I just create a new project in Aperture, navigate to my files with the Finder and drag the folder of images to the new project. Aperture seems to recognize these as RAW+Jpeg pairs and imports them each as a single image.

Once I have imported in this manner I need to get access to the Jpeg file. To do this I can either select New Version from Jpeg Master in the menus, or I can just hit Option-J. This will create a new version, stacked with the original image, which I can view full size and use for editing and output. Of course I am editing a Jpeg file now so I loose a good deal of information that I can manipulate, but I can still use these files for publication online, or for making small prints.

I can also maintain my Aperture-centric workflow and pass these Jpeg files to all of my favorite Edit and Export plugins. As well, I can send these files as a PSD or TIFF to Photoshop as usual. Sometime in the near future, when Apple adds support for my camera, the original RAW files should automatically become accessible. Any work I have done with the Jpeg files will remain in my Aperture DB, and I can use those as points of reference for creating final edits from the original RAW files. By going down this path, and making sure everything is stacked together where it should be I can stay organized, and enjoy my new camera in my favorite photo application.

PS - The image above was taken on Thanksgiving with my LX3, imported into Aperture, adjusted and edited with Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro, and uploaded to flickr with Connected Flow's FlickrExport plugin for Aperture.