Backups / Moving files between Files and Photos Library mode?

[HN43098]

I'm a bit of newbie, transitioning from Lightroom to Photomator, so I apologize if my question is a bit obvious or if I'm misunderstanding how Photomator works.

The old way I used to post-process with Lightroom Classic would be to store all my RAWs on my computer and then upload post-processed jpg's to my Photos Library for my family to view on our various iPhones and iPads. Backing up my LR library (both the library file and the xmp sidecar files that were generated) was relatively straight forward, but the biggest pain was keeping my LR library and Apple Photos library in relative sync.

The way I would like to post-process with Photomator would be to use the Photos Library mode, because I could just upload my RAWs directly to my Apple Photos library and sync my edits seamlessly between the different platforms. Also, I'd be storing the original RAWs on the cloud, as opposed to just the post-processed jpg's.

However, I'm fairly paranoid about backups and I'm not sure how I could backup all the adjustments I've made.

From what I understand, if I'm in Files mode and I edit a picture, it generates a sidecar file, which is either relatively small if you just move sliders around or relatively big if you use the cloning brush/denoise/super-resolution. I can see those sidecar files easily in their original directory so I can back them up pretty easily.

However, if I'm editing in Photos Library mode, the small sidecar file is somehow hidden inside the Photos Library database and the large sidecar files are stored in an iCloud folder.

If I store my Photos Library on an external drive and back that up with Time Machine, can I be sure that all my adjustments will be restored as well? I've hosed my Photos Library before, but it was no big deal because I created a new Library, filled it up with all my photos from backups, and and re-uploaded it to iCloud. I would really hate to lose hundreds of hours of edits because of something on iCloud's end and I couldn't restore the edits.

--

It would seem one way I could make backing up easier is if I could move RAW + sidecars easily between Library mode and Files mode.

For instance, maybe I could do all my edits in Files mode (keeping the RAW + sidecar on a local directory) and then upload that to my Library. But as far as I can tell, I can only share a baked-in .jpg to my Library, not a RAW with sidecar embedded which I can further edit.

Going from the Photos Library, it looks I can download a Photomator file, which seems to be the RAW + sidecar smushed into a single renamed file. It seems like it would be more useful if I could export the original RAW (not renamed) and a separate sidecar file named identically as the RAW file.

--

Anyhow, keep up the good work, developers. I really like this program.