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Trying to edit a photo in Sequoia's Photos app--brand new machine, just installed two days ago, iMac--and nothing will save. It will always revert. Of course this is my 87 year old father's machine and he uses exactly two apps--Photos and Mail. We've rebooted, etc. etc.
Perhaps a known new operating system issue that a patch is to fix?
Or somebody has a fix?
iMac (M3, 2023)
Dear Richard.Taylor,
I have the same problem. I own an M3 MacBook Pro 14-inch since November 2023. There is over 600 GB available space on my hard disk. Photos worked perfectly until I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Sequoia. Now it would not save any edits, even the most basic cropping and/or rotating. I am an old-fashioned guy, so I open Photos by clicking on the Photos icon in the dock. I double-click on a selected photo in my library, then click on edit button. I crop, straighten, adjust light, colour, white balance, etc. I even tried a new Clean Up tool since Retouch tool disappeared with this upgrade. When I am done, which often takes up to a 20 minutes per photo — I click Done; the photo still looks fine even when I minimise it to a thumbnail size in Library. My Library instantly synchronises all photos. Next time I double click on the photo I edited, to enlarge it — it is reverted to the original unedited version and I have wasted 20 minutes for nothing. My machine is new, I had no problem with Photos until this upgrade. I do not use "Optimize Storage" as I have plenty of space, which I mostly use to keep photos on my hard disk in its original size. My Photos Library is in the Pictures folder on my hard drive. There is still more than 60% of disk storage free.
I am getting increasingly frustrated with Apple's "improvements". Every time they come up with something new, we will have lost something that we liked and were happily using up until the "improvement"...
Dear Richard.Taylor,
I have the same problem. I own an M3 MacBook Pro 14-inch since November 2023. There is over 600 GB available space on my hard disk. Photos worked perfectly until I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Sequoia. Now it would not save any edits, even the most basic cropping and/or rotating. I am an old-fashioned guy, so I open Photos by clicking on the Photos icon in the dock. I double-click on a selected photo in my library, then click on edit button. I crop, straighten, adjust light, colour, white balance, etc. I even tried a new Clean Up tool since Retouch tool disappeared with this upgrade. When I am done, which often takes up to a 20 minutes per photo — I click Done; the photo still looks fine even when I minimise it to a thumbnail size in Library. My Library instantly synchronises all photos. Next time I double click on the photo I edited, to enlarge it — it is reverted to the original unedited version and I have wasted 20 minutes for nothing. My machine is new, I had no problem with Photos until this upgrade. I do not use "Optimize Storage" as I have plenty of space, which I mostly use to keep photos on my hard disk in its original size. My Photos Library is in the Pictures folder on my hard drive. There is still more than 60% of disk storage free.
I am getting increasingly frustrated with Apple's "improvements". Every time they come up with something new, we will have lost something that we liked and were happily using up until the "improvement"...
Hello,
I am facing the same problem after the update to Sequoia.
The workaround that I am using that has solved the problem for me is to convert the pictures to JPEG using the built-in utility in the finder before the import to photos app.
I select all the pictures in the folder, right click, quick actions, convert image, convert to JPEG.
If I import to the photos app the converted files (virtually equal to the original ones) everything works fine for me.
Maybe this workaround can fix the problem also for you while we wait for updates.
Update--this still doesn't work.
Sequioa has been updated to 15.0.1, and Photos remains 10.0 (791.0.230)
No photos edits save. Everything is stored locally, nothing on the cloud. Any new photo coming down can be added to library but no edits save. Not using optimize storage.
Following the same workflow path as you--make the edit, hit "done." but then when you go back to the library it is the original, and when you open again, it is the original
Since this works for me and not for you, I think that we can't expect an OS update to make a difference.
To get back to square one, I suggest you try these things:
Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support
The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.
I also have this problem, and it's happened with photos that I imported AFTER the upgrade as well, so it's not a migration issue with the specific photos. If Apple isn't going to release a patch, this is highly problematic, since I have nearly 70K pictures.
I reported this to Apple today - they did not know about this- for me, its just unable to edit new or older photos taken on Android since the update to sequoia. Besides downgrading to previous operating system, does anyone have any fixes for this
Wow this works for me too as a quick fix - amazing. I had issues with photos taken on Android phone - old and new (ie before or after upgrade) and no edits would be saved. Now it seems to work after exporting those photos from Photos to a folder (they are jpeg photos, doing this convert as a quick action and reimporting to photos) - thank you!
And it gets worse. After trying all the work-arounds I could find, I was ready to make a copy of my Photos library and start from scratch. But I get errors when copying my library just in Finder. Even duplicating 200 photos in Photos yields errors. Very frustrating. I hope Apple will acknowledge and fix this soon.
Update: Today on my MacBook Pro (15.1.1) I created a new library and imported a handful of photos from my previous library. The problem persists. When I crop a photo, it will show the cropped photo, and then immediately revert back to its original state.
However, if I crop the photo on my iPhone, it will "take" and sync with my library.
POSSIBLE WORKAROUND?
Luckily I have my original 200 photos still on my camera. I deleted the photos from Photos on my Mac, then downloaded the photos from my camera to the desktop. In Finder, I selected all files and used File>Rename to batch rename them. Prefix "photoxyz" and a numbered suffix. Then I right-clicked all photos in Finder and used Quick Actions > Convert Image. I converted all of them to .jpeg even though they already were jpegs. When I imported the photos into the Photos app on my Mac, I can edit them all and the edits will stick – at least in the last 24 hours!
I am not sure if edits will save with the other 20,000 photos in my library. But this is helpful in the short term.
You may want to look at the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($30) that makes importing Libraries much easier. It preserves the album structure, as well. I bet it would work. The free trial may support this, but I don't remember back that far.
I asked those last questions for these reasons: iCloud Photos is great for synchronizing my iPad and iPhone with my Mac, but Optimize Storage comes with some complications. For instance, Optimize may keep smaller images locally to save space, so the full Library can't be backed up. I don't use Optimize on my Mac, but I do on my phone and iPad where space is more limited. But I want to keep one Library "optimize" free.
On an iMac, it's very reasonable to keep the Photos Library on an external drive to save space on the internal drive, if you need to. But the drive must be properly formatted. If you intend to use an external drive, see this:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
For a laptop, however, using an external drive for an iCloud synced Photos Library has its own issues.
Photos works normally for me on my M3 MacBook with Sequoia.
Can you tell us the steps you go through? For instance, when I edit a picture, I hit the spacebar to get a full preview, and then I hit Return to go into Edit Mode. I make adjustments (mostly the Levels curve and the Light bars,) and I might hit the weird little dark/light icon to see what changes I made.
If I like it, I hit Done. The editing tools go away, and the picture looks like my adjustment. Hitting "Revert" will always return to the original look.
What do you do?
It's a new machine, so I imagine nothing odd, but do you use iCloud Photos? If so, do you have "Optimize Storage" checked? Is the Photos Library in the Pictures folder or on an external drive? Is there plenty (more than 20%) of disk storage free?
Make changes, hit "done," and then it didn't save. Not iCloud photos, all local. Plenty of storage in a 1TB free, internal drive.
Apple tells us it is now an issue of migration of older images et al from a machine running Sierra; so I've had to wipe all clean and manually move items. That means, however, none of the folders the old man made for the images have moved over, but we're dealing with that. Blaming the migration is odd given the destination software of Photos is new, but that's what they said.
I will be able to check the new install this weekend, noting your comments on optimizing storage, etc. and will advise!
fr_sp07 wrote: …I am facing the same problem after the update to Sequoia. The workaround that I am using that has solved the problem for me is to convert the pictures to JPEG
Interesting! What was the format before you converted to jpg?
Well we gave up, wiped the machine, didn't upgrade to Sequoia, re-did the migration, and all works just fine now. Of course I believe it is the update to Sequoia and Photos. For now, we're staying in Sonoma
New Photos with Sequoia will not save edits
