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I was trying to edit a photo and received this error message after this popup:
I have my photo library on a NAS if that matters, but it's set up as the library in preferences.
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.12
If you keep your library on a NAS it is not guaranteed that Photos can work correctly. A Photos Library has to be on a locally mounted volume (Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support).
Make sure that your external storage device, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, is formatted for Mac: either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
You can't store your library on a storage device used for Time Machine backups. And to avoid possible data loss, don't store your library on a removable storage device like an SD card or USB flash drive, or on a device shared over your network or the internet, including over a cloud-based storage service.
The error message you are showing is suggesting that the photos have not been copied into your Photos Library but are referenced in a folder outside the library. Photos supports a referenced library, but it can break, if the referenced files are accessed over the network. In the long term it is is much safer to consolidate the referenced files.
If you keep your library on a NAS it is not guaranteed that Photos can work correctly. A Photos Library has to be on a locally mounted volume (Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support).
Make sure that your external storage device, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, is formatted for Mac: either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
You can't store your library on a storage device used for Time Machine backups. And to avoid possible data loss, don't store your library on a removable storage device like an SD card or USB flash drive, or on a device shared over your network or the internet, including over a cloud-based storage service.
The error message you are showing is suggesting that the photos have not been copied into your Photos Library but are referenced in a folder outside the library. Photos supports a referenced library, but it can break, if the referenced files are accessed over the network. In the long term it is is much safer to consolidate the referenced files.
"I am a bit concerned about the "photos have not been copied into your Photo Library..." "
You may want to have a look at this help page - that explains a bit about a referenced library: Where are the photos I imported into Photos on my Mac? – Apple Support (UK)
You wrote you were "importing a picture from a shared library". Have you been importing from another Photos Library? Photos has not been designed to share a library between users either. It is strictly a single user application. If you try to share a library, it needs to be on an external volume, where you can set the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag. And no two users can access it at the same time.
Apparently it's hung up on importing a picture from a shared library - the picture and shared library were both created by me, I have full rw access to the NAS, and the picture in question doesn't exist in my library, so where is it and why is import hung??
Probably because photos is malfunctioning due to the library being on a NAS. As stated by Leonie, this is not a compatible location, and can/does cause all sorts of glitches, up to and including library damage and loss of photos.
I'd strongly suggest you move the library onto a locally connected drive.
Thanks Leonie for the info and links!
I'll move it to an external drive, off of the NAS. Kind of annoying. I am a bit concerned about the "photos have not been copied into your Photo Library..." I'll have to dig into that a bit deeper but I thought I had imported all of the photos into the library before I moved it to the NAS - they were all on my laptop prior, and they're not there now, so somehow they too were copied to the NAS but not by me. :)
@leonie - I misspoke, the picture was from a shared album not another photo library. I have now created a new library on my Mac, imported all of the pictures from the NAS library. Now I don't have the People, Albums, or Shared Albums available in this library. How do I migrate those??
P.S. although I set this up on a NAS originally, I am the only one using the library from 1 MacBook. There's no other device or user accessing the library.
Thanks TonyCollinet, I'll be moving the library.
The operation couldn’t be completed. (PHPhotosErrorDomain error -1.)
