Catalina Photos Problems

Since getting Catalina, I have had problems importing photos from my SD card to Photos. Only one photo appears in Photos the others are just icons and are invisible. If I drag the photos from the card to the Desktop, there is a workaround but seems a bit primitive. Also, the way Photos are named seems to not work. Photo extensions are not valid on eBay even when I have renamed them as ".jpg".

I have also had problems with Photos on my iMac since switching to Catalina. The main issue is that when I try to edit a photo it only displays a low definition version, and sometimes says it cannot load the image as it is an unsupported format (or words to that effect).

I have always kept my 500Gb photos library on an external 2x4Tb RAID drive. Before Catalina this worked perfectly with Phots and also with Aperture. The external drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It is not used as a Time Machine, only for data storage. In Photos preferences it is set as the Library Location. It looks as if my Photos Library on external drive has not updated since I installed Catalina. It is very frustrating when something that has always worked perfectly suddenly has problems that are not of my making.

I do not want to entrust my precious photos solely to iCloud; I want to keep copies on at least two physical drives, one working and one back-up. Those have to be external to my iMac because I do not have enough free hard drive space.

My MacBook Pro retrieves images from iCloud Photos and works normally as I would expect.

I have always been very happy with image management and editing on my Macs, but I am starting to lose the faith.

I am having similar problems since upgrading to Catalina. My Photos Library is on an external drive purely to save space on my iMac and has been for a while (pre Catalina). However since upgrading to Catalina, accessing the library is extremely slow when before it used to be lightning quick. It is taking an age to upload the library in order to access a file to upload to either Social Media or my website page. Is there any way I can fix this? Is it something to do with Catalina not being able to access the external drive as it was able to do before under Mojave and previous OS? I'm stumped and would appreciate a way ahead.

Have the same Problem and already get mad,. Tried everything including building up a new mediathek an syncing all Fotos from iCloud back to my mac. Nothing changed still can't add most of the fotos (all taken with an iPhone) to ebay oder other platforms where i access through the safari finder dialog, this really sucks. Sorry Apple this is so horrible. I pay premium for a premium brand and what I get is below the windows 1995 experience

I waited until two days ago to move over to Catalina on my MacBook Pro, having verified my most-used Apps were up to Catalina speed and the main glitches affecting what I need to do on my Mac had been sorted out. I never expected problems with Photos but I certainly have them. I have two libraries that use constantly. One is very large with 46, 500 images. I encountered no problems on Mojave or earlier Mac OS versions. But on Catalina it won't open and Photos stops working and has to be Forced to quit. I can revive this Photos library by using Repair but it takes hours (about six) allows me to work, but when I close it down again, that's it, I have to go through the Repair process all over again. I am so angry at Apple for putting me in this situation....! The smaller library opens and I can use it but it is very slow. I am so disappointed and am very concerned about how to access the images in the large Library. I do have back-up copies so can go to a friend's computer to work if necessary but that is plain daft. Anyone have any ideas?

You can use MS Office 2016 or 2019 which are one time purchases and not subscriptions.

Alternatives include the free LibreOffice and Pages. Both of which can open, edit and save Word documents as Word documents or as their own document type.

Or you an go back to your old system by following this Apple document: Revert your Mac to a previous macOS version

Download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

ALSO:

Then we can examine the report and see if there any of the usual suspects which might be contributing to the problem.

You shouldn't hijack this topic but create a new one with your particular problem. Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem in detail in the new topic: Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community.  This way you'll get responses geared specifically to your problem.

Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem: Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community

You would be best served by starting your own topic and spelling out your setup and problem in detail.

Also we are all users like yourself. Apple reps are not here. If you want to alert them to your problem use Feedback - Photos - Apple

You do realize that there are no Apple personnel or engineers here, right? We're all users like yourself and volunteer to help others with problems that we've encountered ourself or learn about here. So if we're not able to solve your problem then chill and contact Apple direct: Feedback - Photos - Apple or at the phone number at the bottom of this page.

Hey guys, I think I have a fix! I was having the same problem. Super slow Photos app since upgrading to Catalina! Here's what fixed everything for me, and made the app run fast again! You need to REPAIR LIBRARY! It's so simple, just takes the computer some time depending on your library size. You're welcome!!!!!!! :) While holding down Command and Option, click the Photos app icon. Then activate repair library! It's that easy!! I even included the official support page from Apple, link below!!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204967

What has been fixed by the repair? The slowness or the incorrect library size? I am trying to start a collection of situations when repairing actually helped:

When should we repair a Photos Library? - Apple Community

I have of course REFERENCED library because I don't want my photos as I have them organized in the external disk in folders as I want, to be copied to the Photo Library. I want them there at their original location.

You are aware of the dangers in using a referenced library, right?

Disadvantages of a Referenced Library in Photos for Mac

prvilela wrote:

Apple, PLEASE, stop "improving" Photos.

I have my pictures stored in this app since 2009, over the years I created multiple libraries to prevent a single one to be too large. And now every time a new version is published I have to update all the libraries. That takes me almost a week before I can use the app again.

With this new version I've had a similar problem as the one reported in this thread. One of my libraries is failing to open after the update.

It is so frustrating...

So, PLEASE, think about the old users and STOP "improving" the app!!!!!!!

Don't complain to us. We're just users like yourself. Complain to Apple via Feedback - Photos - Apple

CleanMyMac is considered by most of the experienced contributors here to be akin to malware. Uninstall it according the the developer's instruction. There is no reason to ever run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up" or anti-virus apps on your Mac.  This user tip describes what you need to know and do to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community.   

You can check to see if you've removed all of the files by downloading and running Find Any File to search for any files with the application's name  and the developer's name in the file name.  For example for CleanMyMac software you'd do the following searches: 

1 - Name contains cleanmymac

2 - Names contains macpaw

Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.

FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.