photos not displaying in My Media of iMovie

I'm running v. 10.1.8 of iMovie and v. 3.0 of Photos.

Has your current Photos library been enabled as the System Photo Library? Only the system photo library is visible in the Media browser.

The System photo Library is enabled in the Photos > Preferences > General. Click "Use as System Photo Library", if it is not yet grayed out. Then restart Photos.

The "Shared" album and "people" album should appear you click the "My Albums" menu in the "My Media" tab.

A good point, Rich. My Photos are in the cloud, but I am not using "Optimize storage". So all photos will be stored locally and available. But shared album should always be available, since the shared photos always have an optimized size.

In Photos 3.0 it is easy to force a download for the photos in an album, if it is a standard album.

Just ctrl-click the album in the sidebar and enable "Download to original this Mac".

That is why I wrote " if it is a standard album.". You cannot force the download for smart albums, and for shared albums the option is missing too. But Shared albums should automatically be download to the mac anyway. I would use a standard album to pass the photos to iMovie. Shared albums are downsizing the photos and video clips.

It seems to be new in High Sierra and is really useful. I am using it all the time, because Photos seems to be very reluctant to download any new photos from iCloud, even with the Optimize Storage option disabled.

I am seeing the photos in the shared albums in iMovie on High Sierra 10.13.3 . I Meant, Shared albums do not have the option to force a download from iCloud like the standard albums.

I am using standard albums to pass photos to iMovie, because I want to transfer them in the best possible resolution.Photos in Shared albums can have at most 2048 pixel at the longest edge, and videos will only have 720p.

If your Photos are in the cloud, I believe that they will not show up in the Photos app item in the iMovie sidebar. You would need to download them into your Photos app library.

-- Rich

Thanks, Léonie. I didn't know that. I don't use the cloud, so the Download Originals option doesn't appear when I control click the album in the sidebar. Never knew it existed.

-- Rich