where are the actual pictures in the photolibrary?

If you want to use the photos in a different application you can use the Share menu o the command "Image > Edit with" to pass the photo to another app.

Photos has been designed to store the photos in iCloud, not necessarily on your Mac, so the usual way to access your photos is letting the Photos.app retrieve them for you, from wherever they are currently stored.

Photos is renaming the original files inside the Photos Library package with unique filenames across all your devices. There is no easy way to locate them inside package in the "originals" folder.

1. You're not totally dependent on Apple. You can migrate on to other apps easily, or at the very worst, export your images from Photos at any time (file -> Export)
2. What's your budget? How many photos are we talking about? How many do you add annually? Raw or Jpeg? What features do you want - like say, sharing across devices and so on?

Of course there is... but why would you want to?

I'm not being difficult here ;) but the point of using Photos is that it is your Photo Manager. It is to your photographs what the Contacts app is you your addresses and phone details for the people you communicate with. You don't want, or need, to access the individual names and addresses in the background. To add, edit or delete one you go to Contacts.app

Well same with Photos. To add, edit, delete or whatever you want to do with your photographs, you do either with or via Photos. There is literally nothing you can't do via the application. But there is a consideration: the actual library is set up run a quite specific way in the background and it is protected (lightly, I'll get to that) from Users making changes within the library. Why? Because making changes there can and will cause you dataloss.

If you want to look inside the library - and here's how light the protection is - simply right-click on the library package and select 'Show Package Contents' and you can see inside. It won't make a lot of sense to you, but then there are no user-serviceable parts within. So, look, make no changes of any kind, and leave. `;)

You can set up a different kind of Library where your files are stored in the Finder. This is called a Referenced Library but I strongly urge you never to do this with Photos as it simply has not got the tools to manage such a beast competently.

So, what do you want to achieve by accessing the files directly? Let us know and perhaps we can explain to you how to achieve what you need with Photos, or, if you're determined to have the file stored loose in the Finder, we can suggest apps that are better at working on that basis.

To access the actual photos, File/Export them to your desktop. As yer_Man says, the Photos app is not designed for the user to work with the actual photos. You could go to the Originals folder and copy (copy, not move) a photo out, but that is risky business and is not recommended. As yer_Man says, look but don't touch.

For every photo that I have in the Photos app, I have an original full sized file of it in a Finder folder. For safety, it is unwise to have all of one's photos stored within any single app's system without a backup stored on another system on another disk.

-- Rich

For every photo that I have in the Photos app, I have an original full sized file of it in a Finder folder. For safety...

You're absolutely right about the importance of backing up, but you do understand that Photos simply stores those images in the Finder, right?

Ciao, Mentor and guru,

It's not storing the photos in the Finder that's important. It's storing the photos in a backup outside of the Photos app system and the Apple system that's important. Paranoia, perhaps, but I don't want my entire photo collection to be locked up in a quirky app that may go south, or stores my photos with unique file names that would make them hard to identify and retrieve without the app. I've seen too many "all my photos have disappeared" posts.

-- Rich

I am also crying my originals to a folder in the Finder, even before I import them to Photos. I am a bit spoiled by Aperture, where the backup of the originals on import has been built into the application. It is not just the original filename that I want to save, but also the original file creation date and other metadata tags. After a detour to iCloud in Photos not only the embedded file creation and modification dates may have been changed, but keywords as well, thanks to the duplicate detection in Photos, that will keep only one version of duplicate files in iCloud. when we export the original we may not get the same original back that we imported, but just a similar file uploaded to iCloud previously.

This continues a bit off-topic, but keeping original out-of-camera (or of-scanner) copies has been picture-saving for me. I have found a number of images (maybe 30 or so) in a Photos Library that can not be edited for whatever cryptic reason the program gives. I've even tried OT's rotation magic, and I think it helped with one of them. Some will export original, but most of these orphan thumbnails have completely lost their connection with the parent photo. (As far as I can see, there is no way of identifying them short of trying to edit--I don't know how many I'll find. Almost all of them were early-on rotated from horizontal to vertical-- weird.)

The point is that the only way I have fixed this is by finding the original files. I'm all in favor of Rich839's plan of saving originals separately.

Paranoia, perhaps, but I don't want my entire photo collection to be locked up in a quirky app that may go south, or stores my photos with unique file names that would make them hard to identify and retrieve without the app.

Nothing paranoid at all, frankly. A variety back ups both on and off-site are extremely important.

The back-up of these pictures I now have in the Apple photos library is actually useless as a real back-up in my opinion as it is not flexible for using on different platforms and with different apps.

That's not a back up. A back up is not meant to be used in different apps and on different platforms. It's meant to allow to restore to the status quo ante. What you're talking about there is a system neutral data store. That's also a very valuable thing. However, if that's what you want why use a database driven parametric editor like Photos? You can't access any data you add to the images - edits to the photograph, metadata - without exporting it from the application to the Finder first. (Not that this is a limitation of Photos. The same is true of far more capable and expensive apps like Capture One, Lightroom (both versions) and so on.) It strokes me that what you need is a file manager type app, like say, Adobe Bridge, and a variety of pixel editors (i.e Photoshop, Affinity) without version control.

Hi, Léonie,

I actually got the idea from you of storing photos separately in the Finder. I'm so glad that I did it. It gives me more control of what happens to the photos.

-- Rich