Unfortunately some photos were deleted so the reference pictures I have for a bunch of pictures are gone. They still show up in Photos but I cannot back them up to iCloud from there as they ask for the reference picture location. Is there any way to save the lower quality iCloud copy as the reference copy so it will let me save what is there to the cloud?
Thanks
*I mean lower quality local Photos copy, not I could copy. The pictures that show in Photos as needing to find reference copies.
Two points for you to be aware of.
1. iCloud Photo Library doesn't work well with referenced libraries.
2. iCloud Photo Library is not a backup service.
1. The referenced library was a mistake, I thought it was importing them. Will definitely not work with referenced libraries in OSX.
2. I'm not using it as a backup service - I want my pictures to sync across my Macbook, iMac, and other apple products. Right now these pictures are on my iMac and I can't find any easy way to copy/transfer them.
My suggestion...
Log log into your account at iCloud.com. Copy the affected images to your computer. Change the file name just slightly then add them to Photos on your main computer. As new additions they will be uploaded to iCloud Photo Library, then percolate down to your other devices. You can then safely delete the once that Photos lost track of (ie, those that it can't find the referenced originals for).
If you have Time Machine or other backups, check if you can find the full-resolution images there.
2. I'm still not clear on what you have and what you want to accomplish, so I'll try this from a different direction.
At least one of your computers should be set to Copy Originals, full-resolution images to your local library. iCloud Photo Library, by definition, keeps everything at full resolution, too. All other devices can be set to Optimized library, if you need to conserve storage space.
Once you enable iCloud Photo Library on all your devices, all contents will be synced together to iCloud, then down to all devices. This should not duplicate the images, unless their metadata tags were changed.
Even a moderate-sized library will take many days to go thru this upload/download/sync process, so don't be concerned if you don't see the results right away.
And please make sure you have fresh backups.
iMore has a very detailed, well illustrated article on iCloud Photo Library:
http://www.imore.com/how-use-icloud-photo-library-ultimate-guide
Reference photos missing - fix iCloud backup.
