Got a new “big camera” and found that macOS Quick Look, even latest update, won’t show my RAW photos as anything other than an icon.
TL;DR - Apple doesn’t update macOS with every recent camera-specific RAW file format. A quick fix, if possible, configure your camera to use an older RAW format.
For my workflow, I normally transfer photos directly into my photo DAM software, so this isn’t a big deal, but I wanted a solution for when I do mount a CF Express card and want to take quick peek at the photos.
I found there are various 3rd party add-ins/plug-ins for Quick Look, but the ones that handle RAW file previews are not kept up to date that quickly either.
For me, the solution was to use Adobe Bridge software. It’s a free (no subscription or even one-time fee) app from Adobe that provides a browser/previewer environment for files.
The key benefit is that Adobe Bridge does not use macOS built-in image handling and uses its own Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) which is the same image handling engine used in Photoshop and Lightroom.
ACR is aggressively updated in cooperation with all camera manufacturers so it usually has the new RAW formats added even before the new cameras have shipped.