locate original image after being edited in preview

Select the image in iPhotos and use "File > Export" and set the "Kind" to "Original".

Open a Terminal window (the Terminal application is in the folder Applications > Utilities):

Copy and paste this line into the Terminal window - all in one single line:

open Users/pennyfurseman/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library.photolibrary/Masters/2015/07/25/20150725-155952/

This should open a Finder window at the location, where your original file should be. Does this folder exist?

If the above does not work, try this command:

open Users/pennyfurseman/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library.photolibrary/Masters/2015/07/25

Are any original image files at all in your library from /2015/07/25 ?

All the other images from 2015/0725 are there...

That is reassuring.

I tried both entries and still get the response.. does not exist

If the image indeed is missing, something must have removed the original file. Did you run software to remove duplicates?

Then you can only try to restore the original file from your Time Machine backup.

When you try to restore from Time Machine, open the folder where the original should be, before you launch Time Machine.

With this folder the frontmost window go back in time, until you are seeing the missing photo.

when you drag-drop and edit a photo in Preview, it will edit the original image IF THERE IS NO MODIFIED VERSION OF THIS PIC, so it is better to end your edit with a "Save as", put on your Desktop, and then reintroduced into iPhoto, with just a letter added at the end of its name ( for instance "M", for "modified" ). Reintroduced to the same Event, it will then sit right beside the original.

when you drag-drop and edit a photo in Preview, it will edit the original image IF THERE IS NO MODIFIED VERSION OF THIS PIC,

Not quite. It will not edit the original file. It will edit the original Photo. A copy of the original file is sent to Preview, not the actual file. Therefore:

so it is better to end your edit with a "Save as",

This is unnecessary. Save it, Save As, makes no difference as the original is still in iPhoto.

and then reintroduced into iPhoto, with just a letter added at the end of its name ( for instance "M", for "modified" ).

Again, not necessary. There is no need to change the name at all if you don't want to. There is no way to overwrite the original.

Terence, you write : " There is no way to overwrite the original ". Obviously ( and unfortunately ) this is exactly what happened to Penny.

Please allow me to demonstrate :

-in iPhoto, choose a photo that is of no importance ( ideally, scan in a piece of paper )

-if you selected a photo, make sure it has no edited version ( File »»Reveal in Finder : make sure there is only an original file, and "modified file" is greyed out )

-drag-drop this pic in Preview

-using the annotating feature , draw a few big ellipses on the pic ( so they are visible easily even on the thumbnail

-click "Save"

-going back to iPhoto, click on that photo, then "File »» Reveal in Finder »» Original File, and lo and behold, the original file ( yes, scandalously, the one that sits in the MASTERS folder ) that original file is now decorated with a few big ellipses and there is no way to persuade them to move away !

The only path to getting back the "original" original was well indicated by Léonie.

of course if you do unsupported things and make changes to the content of the iPhoto library (which you should never do) you will get bad results

I guess there are millions of way to destroy your data by doing unsupported things you should never do - like directly accessing the contents of the iphoto libray

LN

As Larry says, once you break th workflow, anything can happen but this :

-going back to iPhoto, click on that photo, then "File »» Reveal in Finder »» Original File, and lo and behold, the original file ( yes, scandalously, the one that sits in the MASTERS folder ) that original file is now decorated with a few big ellipses and there is no way to persuade them to move away !

is not true, thanks to the miracle that is versioning. File -> Revert to...

TD and Larry, iPhoto and Aperture have a bug, that I have seen since iPhoto 9.3. and Aperture 3.3. and the unified library.

If a photo is only small, no previews are created, unless the photo has been edited. The original photo doubles as the preview. If we drag and drop thumbnails from the browser to an external editor, the original master file is passed to the external editor and not a copy. And if we save the edits, they will modify the original image file in the iPhoto Library.

That is what may have happened here, but in that case the original should not be missing from the Masters folder but only be modified.

When I tested again, the bug is still around in iPhoto 9.6.1:

I dragged a thumbnail from the iPhoto 9.6.1 browser to Preview, and edited it, then saved it with ⌘S.

The original in the iPhoto Library has been modified.

larry,

you write : "if you do unsupported things"...Well, i sure would NOT say drag-dropping a photo to Preview for editing is an "unsupported thing", since Preview is described by Apple this way : "In addition to viewing PDF and image files, you can edit them, convert them and add your comments ".

Penny's editing a photo in Preview was perfectly legitimate and as stated above, ending her edit with a "Save as" on Desktop will remove any problem of "original tampering".

The only thing here that's "unsupported" is your comment, unspported by the facts.

you write : "if you do unsupported things"...Well, i sure would NOT say drag-dropping a photo to Preview for editing is an "unsupported thing", since Preview is described by Apple this way : "In addition to viewing PDF and image files, you can edit them, convert them and add your comments ".

What is not supported is dragging the image from the iPhoto Window to the external editor and expecting it to work correctly. The supported method is to set the editor as an external editor in the iPhoto preferences. That way no problems arise.

No one said that editing a photo in Preview is illegitimate, all Larry said was that her problem arises because she got it from iPhoto to Preview in an unsupported way.