How to access photo files in Finder?

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.

Go to Photos Menu -> Preferences -> General. Click the "Show in Finder" button in the dialog box. Right-click and select "Show Package Contents", this will show a directory listing. Select and open the folder named "Masters" 😉

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.

IMO, best solution would be to create a new album > export, which lets you choose a place to save the images. You can then get to your individual photos.

.

Sorry LarryHN, Colm_moynihan was right; it worked for me. Also, you were waaaaaaay incorrect about not being able to access "Photo" files in finder. Check out jonnybgoode's answer above. Smh

You are welcome

LN

Okay thanks!

iMovie should be perfect for your project. I have made several quite successful mixes of photos, videos and music using iMovie.