How do I find the actual photos on my MacBook Pro Photos app?

What Application? I ask as it makes a difference. Editors, for instance, can be accessed with the Edit With command which will send a copy of the file to your preferred editor. If you want to use the shot in another document - say a Word Processing document or presentation - you can share the image to it or use the media browser in that application to access the library.

As to the core question: the images are stored within the library package, that's by default in your Pictures Folder. This looks like a single file but it's not. It's just a special kind of folder, and within it are all the necessary and sufficient items needed to be a library - originals, previews, thumbnails, database files, caches etc - and they're all just folders and files in the Finder. Apple wrap this collection of interlinked files in a package because for years users were trashing the library by wandering in there and changing things. But you can look: simply right click on the Library package and choose 'Show Package Contents'. Make No Changes to anything within the library package. If you do you risk data loss.

As ever the protection against library corruption is a robust and comprehensive back-up.

Even if you look into the Photos Library package contents you will have difficulties to find the photos there. The originals are inside the subfolder "originals", but Apple is not storing them under their original filename but is renaming them internally.

This new structure of the Photos Library has been around since macOS 10.15 Catalina. Since then, we can no longer rely on a copy of the Photos Library as our only backup, because need to be able to run the Photos.app to restore the photos from it.If we cannot run Photos, for example because our new computer is not a Mac or after downgrading to a previous system version, it will not be possible to recover the photos with their original filenames or even with the original file creation date.

I am keeping exporting copies of my original image files as an additional backup to an external drive.

carine wrote:

it's extremely worrisome that all of the pictures are in one huge library file that could become corrupted.

That's why we have backups, usually with Time Machine so we have hourly backups.

If you want the original file outside of the library just select the photos you want and export them as Unmodified Originals to wherever you's like on your boot drive. The photo will still be in the library.

Even deeper-- the image you see on the phone is actually not stored in any file at all. Photos remembers the steps required to create an image, and when you export a picture a new file is created right then. The image you see on the screen doesn't exist anywhere else-- it was just created when you opened it.

As léonie and Yer_Man suggested, the original files still exist, but they are just the beginning step in creating the edited, cropped, commented image that shows up on the phone.

Also as léonie and Yer_Man said, we keep backups.

Depending on the other application, you may be able to use Share, or just copy & paste, to transfer pictures from Photos to other apps. Drag & Drop may not transfer what you want, however, since there are so many different versions of pictures that can be created, and you can't know which you'll get.

alfrichard wrote: … It´s indeed worrying that there is no real "original" within Photos.

As we had said, "the original files still exist." Sometimes, though, if a Library is accidentally altered from its normal mode of operation, the original files can be separated from the library. That's one of the reasons that Yer_Man was so insistent in an earlier post that we should not open the library, and we should "Make No Changes to anything within the library package. If you do you risk data loss."

As to léonie's script, she may be able to test it and alter it as necessary-- she'll probably see your message. But it may be that we could help recover your pictures if you can give us more information about the libraries that you're talking about. I'm confused, for instance, about "merging fotos from another (older) Photos resp. iPhoto library into a newer one." Details might help.

It´s indeed worrying that there is no real "original" within Photos. Now I understand, why I have had so much difficulties in merging fotos from another (older) Photos resp. iPhoto library into a newer one. It resulted in having a significant number of pictures of low resolution instead of original resolution.

To get rid of them, it would be good to collect them (according file size) in an album. Leonie had in a post from 2019 provided a script for searching according to size (Script: Search for Photos by the Dimensio… - Apple Community ), but it seems not to work on actual OS (15.4.1 on M1). Do you have a hint how to modify it ? Wold be great.

To get rid of them, it would be good to collect them (according file size) in an album. Leonie had in a post from 2019 provided a script for searching according to size (Script: Search for Photos by the Dimensio… - Apple Community ), but it seems not to work on actual OS (15.4.1 on M1)

I tested this script on my MacBook Air (2022) with M2 chip and 15.4.1 Sequoia. It is still running. But Apple has introduced two changes to Apple Script that might cause problems:

• The message "Add" to add a list of media items (photos or videos) to an album is now throwing an error message, when the list of items is empty. previously, the script would just do nothing for an empty list. This I could fix by adding a test, if the list of media items is empty. The fixed version of the script is here:

Script: Search for Photos by the Dimensions in Pixels Size 2025 Version for macOS Sequoia…

• Also, the Apple Script is now asking, if we really want to add hundreds of photos to an album. I found no way to suppress this prompt. We have to reply to it quickly or the script will terminate with a timeout. So we have to ensure that we can see the panel with the prompt and close all unnecessary windows before running this script.
• As the script is slow, select only a few thousand items at a time. I am usually selecting the photos to be checked in a top-level album, not an album inserted folders, as this could cause problems in the earlier versions of Apple Script.

Thanks to Leonie for updating the script, it works now perfect!

@ Richard: Its a long story; my wife had an old (iPhoto) and a new (photos) library (on an old iOS); and we both had some thousand pictures from travelling, we want to have in both her an my photos libraries. Several trials to the pieces together failed, and I had to learn (even following some suggestions from the support forum) that there is no way to merge the libraries, or at least I failed to find it. From your comments and others I now understood that the photos library is a highly complex thing and much more than just a storage of the pictures. Meanwhile I had an update of iOS to 15.5, and did run a repair; now I can't find fotos with low resolution anymore, but still a major bug is in the library as about 1/3 of the pictures (no systematics to recognise) is not exported to the desk while seen perfectly in the photos app.

Error message:

"18 (of 28) files were exported to: (folder)

No files were created for the 10 photos listed below during the export process:

DSCN3121.JPG, IMG_3019.JPG, etc.

Error:

Unknown error (0)

Thus I have still a significant problem and no idea what happened.