What happens to imported images in Photos?

Normally the import function from my iPad to Photos is a breeze and works without any further thinking. But unfortunately while selecting the pictures I wanted to import I selected also all the images in a smart album. All these pictures and those from my iPad are in the Imported album now.

Is there a workaround to undo this action? Are the images in the Imported album copies or "the real thing", so my question is: will deleting the imported images delete the original images as well?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Hans

iMac 27″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Oct 2, 2022 3:07 AM

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6 replies

Oct 2, 2022 11:53 AM in response to hanyvo

hanyvo wrote:

Really? So how can I understand this: importing means these photos are part of the library now. But what happens when photo's -which were in the library already - are "imported"?

Photos should detect those duplicates and not import them. However, it's not a perfect world and when that occurs they well be in the library as separate image files.


Then can be deterred and identified for deletion as follows:


You want an app that will identify the potential duplicates, put them in an album or mark them with a keyword for easy retrieval and deletion by you. You don't want one that does the deletion itself for obvious reasons. 


I've run tests on the these two apps with the following results and found them to be safe to use:


PowerPhotos - $29.95  

PowerPhotos is the iPhoto Library Manager version for Photos and is very powerful. Although more expensive I would recommend it as it has more capabilities than the others like the capability to merge Photos libraries or copy photos, both original and edited versions, along with their metadata between libraries.


PhotoSweeper - $9.99 - Demo version available.

PhotoSweeper compares bitmaps and/or histograms so it can detect duplicate images even if they have different file sizes, file names, image sizes and capture dates.


My preference between the two is PhotoSweeper. It's probably the premier 3rd party tool for Photos libraries.

Oct 4, 2022 3:57 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Thanks for your answer. I was abroad for some days (Sweden) so couldn't react sooner. The images I was referring in the beginning of this posting, to, were scanned images waiting for further processing. So none of above mentioned characteristics were changed whatsoever. They were imported anyway...

So this "misbehaviour" of Photos is what Old Toad meant.


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What happens to imported images in Photos?

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