Photos: can't "Show Referenced File in Finder"

I'm not mad at anyone here, I'm just saying my peace that it'd be nice to be treated like a moderate power user that's been using Macs since 1996 and not be told what I am actually capable of.

Apple does not offer "Reveal in Finder" to power users either. In Apple's professional application Aperture this feature is working exactly as it is now implemented in Photos. Aperture also lets you only reveal referenced original files, but not the files managed in the library.

Wow - so you believe that because you are an expert that the millions of users you read and trust your advice as as expert? Not so - in fact for the most part the users here are very inexperienced which is why any one who is truly experienced does not give them dangerous advice and does tell of the negative possibilities of any advice they do give

You do what ever you please to your photos

BUT

your advice should not tell other people to put their photos at risk - especially without warning them of the dire potential consequences of following your ill placed advice

LN

"Apple does not offer "Reveal in Finder" to power users either."

BUT THEY USED TO IN IPHOTO! It was USEFUL. It WORKED. It worked WELL for YEARS. I don't care how it worked in Aperture. If Apple can allow this feature for FCPX and iTunes, then surely they can allow it for their image editing app.

Yours and mine is a difference of opinion only Larry. Apple once upon a time agreed with me, and apparently now they agree with you. There was never a right or wrong. There was only a matter of deciding if you can trust a person to use their knowledge properly.

There was only a matter of deciding if you can trust a person to use their knowledge properly.

Exactly we agree

that is why you MUST warn them of the potential consequences of the actions your are advising - unless you give them complete knowledge then they can not possibly use it properly - since you agree I have no idea why you failed to warn people and why you continue to argue

your advice should not tell other people to put their photos at risk - especially without warning them of the dire potential consequences of following your ill placed advice

LN

"unless you give them complete knowledge then they can not possibly use it properly"

Fair enough.

I actually thought about editing the post with a catch-all disclaimer, but the edit option had already timed out. Ah well. Obladi, oblada, life goes on. ^_^

Okay, everyone calm down. Go get a cup of tea… 😉

Apple needs an expert mode or something if it's going to try and make these all things for everyone applications.

A photo app that doesn't have a sort is a step backwards, no way around it.

The reveal is useful for more advanced users, but you can see how it would get new users into trouble. I'm sure Apple removed it after going over their own support data (you can imagine how many calls this would have generated for them over the years).

Personally I feel lost in the desert by the new Photos. Now trying Lightroom after exporting my events, but of course they sort alphabetically so I can't find anything. Sort by date is too much with 80,000+ photos and of course the camera has rolled over a number of times, so file names aren't helpful. And I don't have GPS data (and can't edit that in Photos, I might point out).

I just hope Photos grows up fast, I can't have multiple archives of all my photos. Eventually I'll make a mistake and something will get lost.

"Okay, everyone calm down. Go get a cup of tea…"

Kill the unbeliever! LOL 😁

Loavenbruck wrote:

It does not allow access to the files. Not by searching in its finder. Not by referencing them from the app.

Wrong. The app provided for referencing files not copied into the Library. It's your choice to use that feature or not. There are also ways to use Finder's Spotlight based search to find originals or its "Show package contents" option to find them.

It will "export" my file - i.e. take a photo of my photo and give that to me. How about just give me my photo?

How about you just not put it in the Library if you don't want it there?

It will reference other apps which will give me my photos. How about I just use those other apps then?

No, it doesn't "reference" other apps; however, the OS provides other apps direct access to files in Photos, iPhoto, & other libraries through the media browser.

Photos is a library which will not give you access to your files, except indirectly, with workarounds and rigamarole. As a standalone, the way it is intended to be used by the huge majority of people, it is a black box with no way to get inside. The new standard at Apple.

As a standalone app, among other things it is intended to provide non-destructive photo editing capabilities, allowing users to enhance, crop, or do whatever else they want using the editing tools it provides (which are substantially more extensive than the meager editing tools iPhoto provides), yet still "undo" all of that, even years later. That's what all the "rigamarole" is designed to protect. But if you don't care about that, you don't have to use the app. You can also use the media browser provided by the OS to use other apps to make destructive edits on the originals stored in the Library, even if you do use the app.

Apple gives you lots of choices. It is up to you to decide which ones best fit your needs.

BUT THEY USED TO IN IPHOTO! It was USEFUL. It WORKED. It worked WELL for YEARS.

I know, and i used it for troubleshooting the iPhoto library, when I suspected corrupted image files.

If Apple can allow this feature for FCPX and iTunes, then surely they can allow it for their image editing app.

The management of the Photos library is more complicated than it has been for the iPhoto Library. When you revealed the original master file in iPhoto, you could be sure, that this particular copy was the one that iPhoto has been using. Now we have the added complication that the original master files may be syncing with iCloud, and it will be hard to tell, when it will be safe to access the originals or edited versions, even if you quit Photos, before you try to read the original files.

After I migrated my photo library to Photos, I noticed, that some of the original image files had missing EXIF tag and I wanted to add them with exiftool. In iPhoto I could simply reveal the originals and tag them with exiftool right in the Masters folder.

In Photos it does not work to edit the EXIF or IPTC of originals, once they have been imported. It is easy to find the original files in Masters, if "Download original files to the Mac" is set, but modifications to these files do not take most of the time, because it is hard to tell, if and when the files will be read or overwritten by synced files from iCloud. I think, Apple discontinued the "Reveal in Finder" option, because the location of the original file is uncertain, if syncing with iCloud Photo Library is active. And if you do not enable "Download original files to the Mac", there may be no original files to reveal at all.

"I think, Apple discontinued the "Reveal in Finder" option, because the location of the original file is uncertain, if syncing with iCloud Photo Library is active."

Now this is a great bit of info. Thank you Leonie. It offers an actual reason and the trade that is being made for the reveal feature now not being there.

Thanks for taking the time to write it up. :-)

You're welcome 🙂

X

Suggestion to Apple...maybe they should eliminate any reference to your original file. In fact, Apple should prevent any information about the file size of your image or better yet, library. That way, when your photos and videos are synched with iCloud and you run out of space you simply hit 'purchase more icloud space'. On your computer, you should be unable to delete photos or videos at all. That way, you'll have to buy a new computer when your hard drive Is too full!! Problem solved!

All the while telling people they're too stupid to know this information. Just spend more money on a new product...

appologies to the overly satcastic response here, but I can't help thinking this is an economic reason. Plus eliminating the annoying people who mess with their root level without knowing what they're doing (I get that). But still, I'd like to think of Apple as having some of the individualized spirit it startEd with (pirates) and it not just completely catering to the iPhone crowd. As a user since 1989, I can say I've seen these changes take place.

léonie wrote:

It is easy to find the original files in Masters, if "Download original files to the Mac" is set, but modifications to these files do not take most of the time, because it is hard to tell, if and when the files will be read or overwritten by synced files from iCloud.

There is even more to it than that. Reading & particularly writing metadata embedded in photo & video files is not as simple or straightforward as it seems.

There are thousands of metadata tags defined in Exif, IPTC, XML, & a few other more obscure standards, plus a number of manufacturer specific ones that are not publicly documented at all. As you might imagine, there is a lot of overlap among these standards. They are mostly compatible & consistent with each other, but not entirely so. For instance, the same info can be embedded in multiple places in the files using different tags or different schemes to denote how they are encoded.

To get an idea of just how difficult this makes writing metadata to files without causing problems, check out Writing Meta Information, written by the author of the exiftool. If nothing else, consider this excerpt (emphasis added):

It is possible for you to write nonsense into a file, which could cause other image readers to throw up their hands in despair and refuse to read the image. For this reason, it is best to always preserve the original copy of your image file. The "exiftool" script does this for you automatically by renaming the original file and always working on a copy.

If anyone is still wondering why Photos does not make it easy to access original files directly through the Finder, I hope this will help explain why that is. In fact, in light of that, I have to wonder why they made it so easy to do in iPhoto.