The short answer
Copy, open, choose, then finish and share.
Copy the whole folder somewhere safe before you do anything else. JPEGs open anywhere, and on a Mac, Apple Photos and Preview open RAW files from the cameras macOS supports. Choose the keepers before you edit, because a full day can run to thousands of photos. Then finish the color of the ones you keep, export them as JPEGs for sharing, and make an album from the best.
01Keep a copy first
A pen drive, a hard disk, or a download link is often the only copy you will get. Copy the folder to your Mac and to one more place, such as an external drive or a cloud backup you trust, before you open, rename, or delete anything. Keep the originals as they came, and work from the copy.
02What's in the folder
Look at the file endings. A handover can mix finished JPEGs with RAW files, sometimes both for the same moment.
| Files ending in | What they are | Open them in |
|---|---|---|
| .JPG, .JPEG | Finished photos. | Anything: Photos, Preview, your phone, a browser. |
| .HEIC, .HEIF | Finished photos in Apple's compact format. | Photos and Preview on a Mac, and on iPhone. |
| .ARW, .CR3, .CR2, .NEF, .RAF, .DNG | RAW files: what the camera's sensor recorded, not a finished photo. | Apple Photos or Preview on a Mac, or a RAW converter. |
| The same name twice | A RAW and a JPEG of the same moment. | Apple Photos keeps the pair as one photo and uses the JPEG as the original. |
RAW files often look flat until something renders them, and that is expected. As Fstoppers put it in a piece for photographers, "raw files are unprocessed and lack the color correction and retouching that give them life." The guide to flat camera photos explains why.
One more thing: people often say "raw" when they mean unedited or full size. A photographer answering a question about wedding photos on Hacker News wrote: "I can't tell you the number of people that ask for raw when what they mean is high resolution." If your folder holds only JPEGs, you have full-size photos, and the rest of this guide still applies.
03Choose before you edit
A whole day is a lot of photos, and many are near-duplicates. Fstoppers again: "Shooting a wedding often results in thousands of images, many of which are duplicates, test shots, or missed-focus frames." A consumer commission in Chennai recorded the complaint of a bride's father who was sent more than 15,000 photos and asked to pick 400 for two albums:
"It is practically impossible to select 400 pictures from a collection of more than 15,000 photos."
Two passes make it manageable:
- Set aside the misses: blurry, eyes closed, too dark, and the extra frames of a burst.
- From what is left, mark the ones you love. Those become the album and the prints.
For free, Apple Photos lets you mark favorites, and Finder tags work on any file. Graycard's Auto-cull does the first pass for you: it flags blur, closed eyes, bad exposure, and bursts for your review, and deletes nothing.
04Finish the keepers
Unedited photos from a long day drift: warm under lamps, cool in shade, a little dark indoors. Apple Photos can adjust them after it imports them. Graycard finishes the color on every keeper with Graycard Auto, which balances faces, tone, and color, and can lock one white balance across the day so the photos match. It writes new JPEGs; the camera files stay as they are.
06Make an album from the keepers
If an album is why you asked for every photo, make it from the keepers, not the whole folder. Pressbook, our album app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, lays out the photos you choose as an album on the device and exports a print-ready PDF. Make it on your Mac, or AirDrop the finished JPEGs to your iPhone or iPad and start there.
07The routes, side by side
| Step | Free on a Mac | With Graycard |
|---|---|---|
| Open RAW and JPEG | Apple Photos (imports them) or Preview | Opens the folder where it is, no import |
| Set aside the misses | By eye, with favorites or Finder tags | Auto-cull flags them for your review |
| Finish the color | Adjust in Photos | Graycard Auto on every keeper, white balance locked across the day |
| Export for sharing | Photos, with size and color profile, or Preview, with format and quality | The For sharing preset, then Share |
Graycard is free to download, with every tool, and your first 80 photos are free to export. It reads RAW from Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, and other cameras, plus DNG, JPEG, and HEIF, and nothing is uploaded.
08Sources
Each source was opened and checked on October 8, 2026. Quotes are exact.
- Alex Cooke, "The Best Way to Respond to Clients Asking for Raw Photos", Fstoppers, September 13, 2024. fstoppers.com. RAW files unprocessed; volume of a wedding.
- S. Venkataraman v. M/s. Athea Wedding Portraits, District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Chennai (South), order of October 1, 2024. casemine.com. Selecting 400 from 15,000.
- helen842000, comment on "Ask HN: Tips getting RAWs from wedding photographers?", Hacker News, June 13, 2013. news.ycombinator.com. "Raw" meaning high resolution.
- Apple Support, "Use a RAW file as the original in Photos on Mac". support.apple.com. RAW and JPEG pairs.
- Apple Support, "Convert image file types using Preview on Mac". support.apple.com. Exporting from Preview.
- Apple Support, "Export photos, videos, slideshows, and memories on Mac". support.apple.com. Exporting from Photos.