Photos Masters folder os catalina

I read through a previous thread about this but no updates since January. Where are the originals that were in the Masters folder under previous versions of Photos and iPhoto? Under Mojave, you could find the originals under Users>Pictures>Photos Library>Show Package Contents>Masters. The new version of Photos in Catalina there is a Masters.legacy folder which is basically empty for me and an Originals folder in which all of the files have been renamed 0-9 and/or A-F. I have 20+ years of photos and videos I would like to backup to external hard drives and cloud storage.

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 14, 2020 10:08 AM

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léonie

Level 10

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Posted on Jul 14, 2020 10:38 AM

The original image files from the Masters folder have been renamed and are now in the originals folder. It is hard to recognise the originals there.

See: How Photos 5.0 on Catalina Manages original Files and Filenames

To make a backup of the originals with their original filenames you may want to export them from Photos. Photos is saving the original filenames in the library and can restore the original filenames, when you export the photos with "File > export > Export unmodified Original". Use this command to save your originals with the original filename.

I am making a backup copy of the originals, before I import them to Photos. Since the originals never change, this one backup before importing them suffices.

Phots 5 on Catalina is the very first of Apple's photo applications that is breaking with the tradition to store the original master image files unmodified in the photo library, so we can recover them from there, even of the photo application, that manages the library, can no longer be opened. You really need the separate backup of the original image files.

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Photos Masters folder os catalina

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