Tip: How to find master/original photos in the Photos Library

John Purlia wrote:

I suspect this had to do with syncing a 500GB library across three iMacs simultaneously, perhaps?

John, do you have different system versions installed on the three Macs? I had a few problems with image files, that the Mojave Macs could still handle, but the Big Sur Macs not. The Big Sur Mac has shown the files in "Unable to upload". I exported the files on Mojave in a different image format, deleted them from all Macs and iCloud, and then reimported them. The files had the jpeg extension, but they may have used an older colour sync profile, that is not preinstalled on Big Sur.

Matti, there are many possible reasons for missing originals, who knows, what happened in this case?

• A damaged photos library: Originals may not be found, if the library is in a synced folder, has permission issues, a failing drive, inconsistencies after a crash, damages by cleaning software.
• iCloud: when I restore a library from a backup, there are usually a few images without an original, because iCloud Photos may not have have yet downloaded the original from iCloud, when the backup has been made. Photos does not have any status indicator to show, if all photos have been downloaded. It is showing, when it is downloading, but not, if the download is complete.
• Referenced files: If the original photo has not been imported to the library on import, it may no longer be accessible, if it has been deleted or moved, or modified.
• An incompatible filename: Photos may not be able to find files, if the file system format is case sensitive, if the filenames are too long, or contain special characters.
• Incompatible media formats: After the Big Sur upgrade some of my originals appeared as missing in Photos, because the older format prevented the download from iCloud.

There are probably more possible issues, depending on the system version, the history of the library in question, etc.

The most problem I had with my older Aperture Libraries, from the time before Aperture 3.3 - at that time the iPhoto Libraries have been migrated as referenced libraries to Aperture by default. Aperture referenced the originals in the iPhoto Library to save storage. But it created a mess, because the users have not been advised of this default, when migrating libraries. I am still coming occasionally across broken links from that migration, even after fixing all references at that time, when I noticed, how Aperture migrated the iPhoto libraries.

Yes, this is a don't try this at home and always operate on a backup thing.

Normally the contents of the library bundle is not intended for user access. If you change anything in the bundle, you are likely to damage your library, and in the worst case stop it from opening at all possibly losing access to your photos.

Obviously this is a bad thing.

In your case, you only looked, but didn't touch, and used the photos app to do the deletion of the image with missing master. For the benefit of anyone else reading, this is all that you should efver do if you view the contents of the library in finder. Never try to edit/delete/move anything in there using finder if you value your photos at all.

👍

A great idea to use the Terminal to reveal the unique internal, new names, that Photos created from the original file names. It will help us to find the originals, if we need to recover them from a backup.

Just a suggestion: It might be safer first to type

ls 

into the Terminal to start with the listing command "ls " followed by a space and then drag the thumbnail behind the command. If the filename is a command, the Terminal might try to execute it otherwise.

If you have the free trial of PowerPhotos installed, it will also be able to reveal the originals in the Finder, if they still exist. This varies from version to version, because Apple keeps changing the programmatic interface to Photos.

In PowerPhotos I am seeing my Photos Library this way:

That is interesting. I would have expected deleting the orphan would have deleted all references to it in the database, even if it couldn't find the original.

Thanks for the tip! Do you have any idea what workflow might have generated that orphan image having only a preview?