iMovie won't move back to top level photo library

So I'm trying to create my first ever movie in iMovie, and it's not very intuitive. I selected a photo from my Photos library via iMovie's My Media area and dragged it onto the timeline, but now that I've selected a specific photo, I cannot move back up to the top level album the photo is from to choose another photo. When I click on Photos Library, it shows me only the photo I've previously selected, and there's no options to move back to the top level. At least, not that I'm able to find, and nothing's leaping out at me.


Yes, I KNOW I can drag/drop photos to iMovie to create a whole new library, but why duplicate things when iMovie is able to access my Photos library? How can I move back to the top level of the albums and choose another album & picture from it? Help shows nothing. Multiple searches on Google only show how to choose an iPhotos library, which does no good & doesn't do anything in iMovie.


This is all iMovie shows, that one cat picture, & no available way to move back up to the top-level Album it's contained in. iMovie showed the entire album & all the pictures before, right up until I selected this particular picture, and now there's no way to move back:


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MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch,Early 2015), macOS High Sierra (10.13.3), 16GB RAM, 3.1ghz intel core

Posted on Jan 27, 2018 2:29 PM

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Posted on Jan 27, 2018 11:09 PM

Did you try clicking on all my albums to the right of the My movies text button? It looks grayed out but it works.

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5 replies

Jan 27, 2018 2:50 PM in response to Rich839

Nope. Doesn't work. I'd already tried that & the other drop-down menu options. "Years" initially showed all my albums, sorted by years, until I chose a specific photo from that, too. Now it shows ONLY that particular album, with no way to go back up to the top level, just like the "Albums" selection. Ditto for all the other choices in that drop-down. Once a picture is chosen, that's it. It only shows that picture, & no means to move back to the top level. I want to move back to the top level album in any of those given options -- the albums FROM Photos.


Rich, all I WANT is to display the Photos albums. That's it. But it's not doing that. It's stuck on one photo in one album with no means to move back to the top level album in Photos.

Jan 27, 2018 11:19 PM in response to Rich839

Rich, that does temporarily bring back the top-level albums, but the moment I drill down to a specific pic, there's no apparent means to get BACK to the top level album. I'm using iMovie 10.1.8 already, and re-downloading is not an answer.


See the screenshot I posted? That cat picture shown under the My Albums drop-down is at Top Album>>Specific Date Album>>CatPicture. It's one of many pics in that specific album. I want to easily go from CatPicture back to the Top Album (where it's stored) and the list of all the pics in either Top Album or Specific Date Album. Having to constantly delete prefs in order to go back to the Top Level Album is not only a pain, but counter-productive and counter-intuitive. Is there a way to go back to the top-level photo album & the listing of all its sub-albums/pics after selecting a specific pic? Like, a command I'm overlooking?


I don't know how to make my question any more clearer than that. You're treating this like it's a "problem". All I want to know is what command am I missing, and where do I find it, in order to do what should be an easy-to-find basic function of any file-finding system!


Jim, thanks for the helpful response! Could you post a screen cap? I'm not seeing what you're talking about. There's no "All My Albums" that I can see anywhere on the workspace, nor do I see "My Movies". I've got a My Media tab that takes me to the media libraries I've created, but I don't think that's what you're referring to.


edit: Jim, never mind. I found it. I discovered a "Revert to Original Layout" command under the Window menu, used it on a hunch, and that turned up the All My... button you're talking about (though since this is my first time using iMovie, I have no clue why it wasn't on Original Layout to start with) -- somehow in the time from me posting that first cap to your response, the All My... button space had collapsed, hiding the command. Thanks again for the help!

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iMovie won't move back to top level photo library

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