Finding RAW Photo Files

Are all photos in Photos now RAW&JPEG pairs, or only some of the photos?

To find all photos with a RAW original file create a smart album with the rule "Photo is RAW".

File > New Smart Album:

Then select all photos in this album and use the command "File > Export > Export unmodified original files" to write the RAW files to an external drive.

This will export both the JPEG and the RAW files. Sort the files in the Finder by kind to be able to delete the JPEGs at once.

Do the thumbnails of your RAW%&pairs show a "R" badge or a "J" badge overplayed on the thumbnail? The "R" badge shows, that Photos is using the RAW file as the original image file, and the "J" badge, that the JPEG of the pair s used as the original file. If the JPEG is used as the original, the photo will not be showing in the smart album. You can switch between the RAW and the JPEG in EDIT mode. Use the the command "Image > Use RAW as Original". Then the pair should be showing in the smart album.

If neither "R" nor "J" should be showing, enable it in the View menu - Meta data.

thanks they do show the j as you describe and if you open it and edit the photo you can change it to an R and then it does pop up in the smart album. Issue is how do you do this to all the photos I have 2000+ images and don't want to have to open each one individually select edit raw and close it. Any tips ?

The big problem is, that you can only switch between the originals in Edit mode. it is one of the major usability issues with photos, that it still needs a better support for batch processing. Quite a few commands are only available after enlarging photo.

A quick way to get all Raw files out would be to simply export all your originals (from the All Photos album) to a folder on your external drive and then sort the exported folder by filename extension.