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There is no option to download photos to my mac directly through the album.

iMovies is not showing all my photos and videos that are in my photos. I made sure everything is uploaded to my iCloud also. I tried to the steps where you add it to an album and download it straight to the mac there, but the option did not show up for me. What else can I do that will not waste my storage?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 12.1

Posted on Dec 22, 2021 1:36 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 22, 2021 8:17 AM

If you are using iCloud photos with optimized storage enabled, some of your photos and videos that have not been opened recently may be stored in the Cloud with only small sized thumbnails displayed in your Photos library. This is done to save space. iMovie will not recognize those photos and videos that are stored in the Cloud. To get them recognized you need to download the files to your Photos app library. Then, as long as your Photos app library is designated as the system photo library in the Photos app General preferences, you can access the files from the Photos item in the iMovie project sidebar. They remain in the Photos sidebar item as reference files, not the full sized files, until you actually use them in a project. So they won't take up extra space.


-- Rich

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 22, 2021 8:17 AM in response to weenmen

If you are using iCloud photos with optimized storage enabled, some of your photos and videos that have not been opened recently may be stored in the Cloud with only small sized thumbnails displayed in your Photos library. This is done to save space. iMovie will not recognize those photos and videos that are stored in the Cloud. To get them recognized you need to download the files to your Photos app library. Then, as long as your Photos app library is designated as the system photo library in the Photos app General preferences, you can access the files from the Photos item in the iMovie project sidebar. They remain in the Photos sidebar item as reference files, not the full sized files, until you actually use them in a project. So they won't take up extra space.


-- Rich

There is no option to download photos to my mac directly through the album.

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