Manatee

How to convert RAW photos (CR2, NEF, ARW, DNG) to JPEG on a Mac

· 7 min read

If macOS recognizes your camera, the fastest route is Preview: open the RAW file, choose File > Export, set Format to JPEG, and save. For a batch, select the files in Finder and use Quick Actions > Convert Image. If Preview shows a blank canvas or “could not be opened,” your camera is newer than your macOS version’s RAW support, and Manatee can convert it with its own bundled decoder. Keep the RAW files regardless; the JPEG is a convenience copy.

What a RAW file is, and why conversion is not a simple copy

CR2 and CR3 (Canon), NEF (Nikon), ARW (Sony), RAF (Fujifilm), ORF (Olympus), RW2 (Panasonic), and DNG (Adobe’s open container used by many phones and cameras) all store the unprocessed sensor data plus the camera’s settings. There is no finished picture inside. To show you anything, software has to “develop” the file: demosaic the sensor grid, apply white balance, map the tones, and correct the lens.

That means every RAW-to-JPEG conversion involves a rendering decision, and different tools render differently. Preview, Photos, and Manatee each produce a reasonable default rendering, but none of them reproduce exactly what you would get from the camera maker’s own software or from a full RAW editor, and none of them let you change exposure or white balance during the conversion. If you want control over the look, develop the photo in an editor and export from there. If you want a normal JPEG that looks like the picture you took, the methods below are enough.

Most RAW files also contain a full-size JPEG preview that the camera embedded at capture time. Some tools extract that instead of rendering; the result looks exactly like the camera’s JPEG would have.

Convert one RAW file with Preview

Preview relies on macOS’s built-in RAW support, which Apple updates with each macOS release. Cameras released after your version of macOS may not be recognized.

  1. Double-click the RAW file, or right-click it and choose Open With > Preview.
  2. Wait a moment; RAW files take longer to render than JPEGs.
  3. Choose File > Export.
  4. Set Format to JPEG and drag Quality to around 85 to 95 percent for a high-quality copy.
  5. Choose a folder and click Save.

Preview renders the full RAW data, not the embedded preview, and writes a new .jpg alongside the original.

Convert a whole shoot at once

With Finder. Select the RAW files, right-click, choose Quick Actions > Convert Image, set Format to JPEG, choose Actual Size, and click Convert to JPEG. The same RAW support applies: if Preview cannot open your camera’s files, this will not either.

With Photos. The Photos app also renders RAW and offers a batch export with a few more controls.

  1. Drag the RAW files into Photos, or choose File > Import.
  2. Select the imported photos.
  3. Choose File > Export > Export [number] Photos.
  4. Set Photo Kind to JPEG and pick a quality.
  5. Decide whether to include location information and other metadata, then click Export and choose a folder.

Photos keeps its own copy of each RAW inside its library, so delete the imports afterward if you do not want the library to grow.

With Terminal. sips handles RAW on supported cameras:

for f in *.ARW; do sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 90 "$f" --out "${f%.*}.jpg"; done

When macOS does not recognize the camera: Manatee

This is the common failure. You buy a camera released this year, shoot RAW, copy the card to a Mac that has not been updated, and Preview shows a gray square or a “file cannot be opened” message. Finder’s Quick Action fails the same way, because it shares the same system decoder.

Manatee accepts DNG, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2, SRW, PEF, ERF, MRW, and 3FR as input, and converts them using a bundled engine that does not depend on the macOS RAW list. It runs on macOS 12 Monterey or later, Apple silicon and Intel, entirely offline.

  1. Open Manatee and choose Convert.
  2. Drop the RAW files into the window, or drag the whole folder. You can also drag files onto the menu bar icon.
  3. Choose JPEG as the target (PNG, TIFF, and HEIC are also available if you want a lossless or higher-range copy).
  4. Click Convert and watch the job list. Each JPEG is written next to its RAW file; the original is never modified.

What Manatee gives you is a straightforward development of the file with default white balance and tone. It is not a RAW editor: no exposure slider, no lens profiles, no noise reduction, no highlight recovery. It will not batch-rename, and its Shrink mode is for video and PDF, not photos. For a camera-accurate look, the camera maker’s own converter, usually free, produces the closest match. For creative control, use a RAW editor. For “I need JPEGs of these 400 files that my Mac refuses to open,” Manatee is the right tool.

What you lose, and what you keep

Dynamic range and bit depth. RAW files hold 12 or 14 bits per channel; JPEG holds 8. Shadows you could have lifted and highlights you could have recovered are fixed in place once the JPEG is written. This is why the advice to keep the RAW is not just caution.

Rendering. Color and contrast will be whatever the converting tool chose. Two JPEGs of the same NEF, one from Preview and one from Manatee, may differ slightly in warmth or contrast. Neither is wrong.

Resolution. Stays the same unless you pick a smaller size in the Finder action or Photos.

Metadata. Camera model, lens, exposure settings, and GPS coordinates are copied into the JPEG’s EXIF by Preview, Photos (if you leave the option on), and Manatee’s Convert mode. If you are posting the photo publicly or selling something, strip it first; see how to remove GPS location from photos before sharing. Manatee’s Clean mode does this in one drop.

Edits made in other apps. A RAW file’s sidecar (.xmp) holds edits from RAW editors. None of the tools here read sidecars, so the JPEG reflects the unedited capture.

Questions

Is DNG different from the others?

DNG is an openly documented container, so it is the most widely supported. Phones that shoot RAW, including iPhones in ProRAW mode, produce DNG. Preview has handled it for years. A DNG from a very new sensor can still be unreadable if it uses a compression scheme your macOS version lacks, in which case Manatee is the fallback.

Why is the JPEG so much smaller than the RAW?

A 24-megapixel RAW is typically 25 to 50 MB because it stores uncompressed sensor data. The same image as a quality-90 JPEG is 5 to 10 MB. That is the point of JPEG.

Why does the JPEG look flatter than the preview on the camera’s screen?

The camera applies its own picture style (sharpening, saturation, a contrast curve) to the preview. A plain RAW development does not. If you prefer the camera’s look, use the camera maker’s converter, or the embedded preview if your tool extracts it.

Can I convert HEIC from an iPhone the same way?

Yes, and it is easier because HEIC is fully supported by macOS. See how to convert HEIC to JPEG on a Mac.