How to access photo files in Finder?

Terence, you know I appreciate your help when you provide it. But, without pulling in content from a dozen other threads/topics which cover the many shortcomings/crippled nature/weaknesses of Photos vs. iPhoto, my comment is based on many important functions which Photos does not have which iPhoto has had for years.

e.g. inability to locate an original file discussed in this thread here, or this topic, Does MacOS Photos iPhone Import Preview Not Differentiate Between Pictures & Videos?!

Just because you did not use a feature (Reveal In Finder) in iPhoto does not make you the authority on why that feature would not be regularly used by others or be of great importance to others.

As I see it, this particular comment from you, above, is actually more an "inaccurate editorial post" than what you called mine.

Thank you.

I.

No TD is totally corrrect - in fact it is very simple

Simple - you can not - and actually you never should have - directly accessed your photos inside the library - there are supported and very successful ways to access your photos - use them - either the Photo application, exporting from the Photos application or the media browser - although this is for iPhoto is is still most applicable to Photos - How to Access Files in iPhoto

Or use a different application that works like you want - Photos is nto that application and if you choose to use it then you should use it correctly - it is a bit off the wall to choose to use an optional application and then complain that you do not like the way it works

LN

LarryHN, your reference is to iphoto, it is different from Photo.

I have the same issue as Simonevm, and I guess Leonie is right. But Apple must have some idea on how people would work with photos in other application than photo. I mean Photo is super basic. For example, I want to use Final Cut Pro to mix Movies and pictures. I have an Album in photo with pics and video. Do I really have to export 191 photos and videos, then import to Final cut pro?

Also, if someone know of a simple software that can mix video and photo, let me know. Final Cut Pro seems like an overkill

léonie,

thanks for the reply, really helpful. I am new to Final Cut Pro (as you can tell). But, perhaps the Final Cut Pro was a bad example of my problem since it is an Apple product.

I have been playing around with different applications, and sometimes I can reach the Photo library, sometimes not. Haven't spent much time on it, so I don't know the details of this problem. But, it seems Photo and/or Microsoft don't play, is that right or is there something I'm missing? What about Photos and other third party apps? For example, If I go to MS Word for MAC (2011), or PowerPoint and try to insert a photo, I see the "photo" icon in my sidebar, but when I click it, there are no photos to pick from, in PPT it shows the library, but it is greyed out. I can export a picture, then import it, but it is extremely clunky. And yes, I have to use Word, PPT in my business.. unfortunately.

So it this a problem with all non Apple Apps, or just MS?

Tor

But, it seems Photo and/or Microsoft don't play, is that right or is there something I'm missing?

It is a problem with all applications, that have been built and compiled for an earlier version of OS X.

I can open and browse the Photos Library from Microsoft Word 15.19.1 or PowerPoint 15.13.4, but not from any older Office version, like my Office 2011 versions.

Photos has been developed using only the new libraries and frameworks in Yosemite and El Capitan, that are not supported by older programs. You will need to upgrade third party applications to versions, that are fully compatible with El Capitan, if you want to use them with Photos for Mac.

Easy use terminal. underneath an Apple Mac is Unix and you can use the terminal window to get access to everything.

Steps

Finder -> Applications -> Utllities -> Terminal

Then

$cd ./Pictures

$mv Scan*.* ../Desktop

First command changes director to Pictures using command line

Second command moves all images with Scan*.* to the Desktop

From there you can see the images in Finder -> Desktop

The joys of such a restrictive OS at least it is built on BSD Unix

My advice here is get used to Unix commands to have full control of your Mac

Unfortunately that will not work with photos as explained earlier since the photos may not even be present on the Mac hard drive

The management of original files in Photos is much more complicated than in iPhoto, so it does not make much sense to reveal the originals. Photos can contemporarily have several copies of them - in the Masters folder, in iCloud, or in a folder with temporary items. And if you are using "Optimize Mac Storage", there may be no file to reveal at all, because the only copy will be in iCloud and not on your MAc.

THe only support and safe way is to export the photos (file menu ==> export)

LN

The ideal way to do this is probably to have a virtual directory, via FUSE, that matches the Photos organization. Then even if a photo isn't local yet, it can be shown and navigated to.

I need photos not only for command line and custom development, including web apps, but also for Thunderbird for email attachments. I have always gone into the masters directory, but this is a pain. Photos keeps them locked for write so that I have to kill Photos to edit them with something else. In the end, while I like the auto-import and browsing with Photos, I end up killing it off and moving photos out of master to organize things myself. Some of the file handling philosophy here wasn't thought through well and storage management isn't clear. I would like to have a system that manages photos for edits and local storage, backs up, replicates, and protects them. However, the lack of foresight here is annoying. I'd rather build my own app and replication system than fight with this all the time.

scienteer wrote:

Let me be more clear about the obvious solution that is missing:

'Show these photos in Finder' even if that is a temp directory with temporary copies of the photos. You could even call it Pictures/scratch, allow photos to pile up and let the user modify or delete them as desired, noting that the originals are safely stored elsewhere. Perhaps 'Show temporary copies of these photos in Pictures/scratch'. How could you miss the need for this feature? Do your product design people use your own product? I imagine people taking screenshots of their images just to share them a lot of the time; not optimal.

The 'Show in Finder' in preferences is near useless since A) it takes so many steps and B) you have to navigate and browse to find the photos that you already identified in Photos. This is simply passive-aggressive against your users; not (usually) the Apple way.

That is not a feature of Photos

The correct answer to the question is you do not directly access photos within the Photos library - if you want to directly access yoru photos you need to choose different software as teh shoftware you have chossen to use does not support that

And of course no one here missed the need for anything since we are all users exactly like you and no one here had any input of any sort into the design of any APple software including Photos

LN

Additionally, copy (cmd-C) should copy the selected photo / photos in a standard way that can be pasted into suitable apps, i.e. Thunderbird, LibreOffice, MS Office, etc. or used by any program watching the paste buffer.

You may already be doing this, but I'd add metadata that could be used by Photos directly or indirectly to get back to the master image or related context, include or retrieve metadata, etc.

Really bad advice from someone who does not understand how Photos works or how to use it

Photos is not designed to have direct access to the photos and if that is what you want then you need to choose different software - the suggested method often will not give you the original photo but an optimized versions of it and if you use that method you may very well end up with poor quality photos

And if you make any errors, even small ones, you may damage your library and could lose all of the edits and organization you have done or even lose all of your photos

The proposed method does not work, is not supported and is very dangerous - if you choose to use it you are doing so at great risk to your photos It would be much smarter to use supported and safe access methods or to simply use software that works like you want to - Photos does not

LN

After reviewing this whole thread, nothing suggested gave me what I wanted: To copy my iPhone media files to my Mac.

in desperation I plugged my iPhone 5s into my old iBook G4 just to see what would happen. The result: an instant solution, thanks to Nikon's PicturePerfect Transfer program. I installed it when I bought a new Nikon SLR 10 years ago. It immediately prompted me to decide if I wanted to transfer the 1800+ media files from my iPhone to the old laptop. it even let me create a new folder on my Desktop. Next stops are external drive backup and Amazon Prime Photo.

It seems that Nikon's desktop software is still available. I cannot verify that you'll get the same satisfying result with the updated program, but it's worth a try versus the total frustration I've experienced for the first 75 minutes of this process.

http://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/download/sw/20.html

What doesn't make sense is that you can access your Photos when attaching a file to a chat, or a support forum as I just discovered, yet you can't access them in Finder. It's obviously possible to do safely. It shouldn't be this hard.

What you've just discovered there is the Media Browser, referred to multiple times in the thread.

It makes perfect sense that you cannot directly access the files in the Finder. Doing so risks corrupting not only the Library on your Mac but also the iCloud Photo Library and the Libraries on any device linked to the iCPL. How? Things like moving or even renaming files will do this. It's a simple protection against carnage caused by the inexperienced or unwary user.

If you don't use the iCPL then simply run a referenced library - referenced libraries cannot be used with the iCPL. But be aware that Photos does not have the tools to adequately manage such a library and your data remains at risk - especially for the inexperienced and the unwary.

Why do you want to access the original file?

Depending on what your intended use is, there are ways and means to achieve it.

Thank you Larry for clarifying the method NOT to use. I am currently using Photos, running newest OS Sierra, but am planning on moving all of my images over to Lightroom. I have 100,000 images. What would you suggest as the soundest way to transfer my images out of Photos?

Your help is appreciated!

There's no good way. There is simply no way at all to preserve the relationship between the master and processed images.

The best way is to use the iPhoto importer in LR. It's imperfect. See the Adobe forums for more.