How do I copy a photo from photos app to an external USB key

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Level 1

4 points

How do I copy a photo from photos app to an external USB key

It's all in the question. I want to be able to copy any arbitrary number of photos to a USB key (i.e., to jpg files) or external non-HSF disk. In other words, OUT of the photos app.

My preferred way would be go into a terminal, cd to the appropriate directory and use cp to copy the photo. But I suppose macOS will not let me do that. So something equivalent will be just fine.

TIA.

MacBook Air, iOS 10.1.1, In fact, Sierra 10.12.3

Posted on Mar 15, 2017 12:30 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,561 points

Mar 15, 2017 1:04 AM in response to joneall

Use the Photos.app to copy the photos to a folder on the USB stick.

In Photos, select the photos you want to save somewhere else, then use the command "File > Export".

You have to decide:

if you want the original image files as the have been imported to Photos, then use "File > Export > Export umodified original"
If you want the edited versions with the adjustments applied, use "File > Export > Export .. photos". In the Export panel set the size to Original and the JPEG quality to high. These settings are available, if you click the little "v" to the right of "JPEG".

In the File chooser panel select a folder on your USB stick to save the photos to. Do not dump them on the top level of the USB drive, or the file system may limit the number of files.

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Answer 2

Ian Leckie

Level 4

2,242 points

Mar 16, 2017 10:50 AM in response to joneall

Hi joneall! Just to amplify léonie´s absolutely correct post: bear in mind that if you export the original photos you lose all the keywords you may have assigned to these photos! This can be a real pain if, say, you export 175 photos (many carefully annotated with various keywords) and then re-import them later on to another library they´ve lost all their keywords. If keywords etc. are important to you then always export the edited versions, not the originals! I use keywords a lot to facilitate searching so I need to keep them.

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