photos cannot find the system photo library

You haven't accidentally deleted the Photos library have you?

Assuming you used the default library and didn;t create a new one on an external drive or alternate startup drive location it should be in the Pictures folder for your user.

If you restart Photos by holding down the alt key does it give you any options to select a library?

Check your trash just in case!

If Photos migrated an iPhoto library, it should share the images between iPhoto and Photos.

If you've gone into your User's Pictures folder in Finder and started deleting things and also emptied trash you might be in trouble unless you have a time Machine or other backup.

Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries - Apple Support

davidpotterdp wrote:

You absolute genius. When I pressed alt and photos it gave me the option to open the ‘old version’ of iPhoto!!

Just so I don’t mess up again. How do I now get the old iPhotos back into photo?

I did try to look on my time capsule but when I viewed the last back up from this morning, there was no photo in the sidebar to even open?

I’m new to the forum. I did call Apple but probably not wise for me to articulate on this forum what they said!

The iPhoto migration to Photos would have been automatic when you upgraded - there is presumably a way to kickstart that again though I'm not certain how as I've not done so.

If you have a Time Capsule that's great.

I'll see if I can get some others to chip in.

Also, if you can still open iPhoto you can of course continue to use that for the time being.

davidpotterdp wrote:

I’m in trouble. I was deleting photos in ‘pictures’ as I wanted to clean up some space on my iMac.

Can you clarify what you mean by that - both iPhoto and Photos store their libraries in the Pictures folder in Finder.

(Ignore ScanSnap which is a folder for images from my scanner)

Thanks for the kind comments - have you solved the problem, or is there still work to do?

We are for the most part fellow Apple product users here, and try to help out where we can.

There are Apple community specialists more recently who will chip in too though help tends to be a little more official and scripted.

Pictures is just a folder, it just happens to be where the iPhoto and the Photos libraries get placed by default - nothing temporary about it really.

If you select 'David Potter's Mac', and then open the startup drive (you may just have one drive), then under Users folder open the folder with an icon which looks like a house.

Do you then see the libraries I've shown above?

The photo files are normally stored in the iPhoto Library or Photos Library as a special folder called a package - it is wise not to alter things inside a package manually and let the relevant application do it.

I confess I do not understand the ins and outs of Time Machine either - primarily as I've never had to use it!

That said, so long as you have a backup strategy, even if you'd deleted something on the Mac, hopefully the Time Machine expert users here would have been able to help recover things.

If you have time, this site may provide some help with Time Machine - sadly Pondini, a fellow user here has now passed away, but the site is recognised as a great resource:

http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

This what I now see. Are you saying that this is correct?

Thanks for the time machine link.

Where are you seeing this screenshot, David? Is that your your Pictures folder, or are you looking at the Time Machine drive?

Looks as though you have the original iPhoto library and 2 for Photos application - I'm not sure if you've managed to restart work in iPhoto or if it was Photos application but as you have libraries there things should be good for you to get your work done for now.