PHOTOS cannot find originals

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Level 1

4 points

PHOTOS cannot find originals

iMac running Seqouia 15.1.1, 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, 1.82 TB available of 2 TB.

I have read many answers on this subject but I have no technical expertise. The answers don't seem to make sense or fix the issue. I keep my Mac updated. I have not deliberately changed any settings in PHOTOS. It has always just worked. This past year there have been frequent issues when air dropping photos from my iPhone or downloading from an SD card. I 'see' the photos but if I try to share them, I get the message originals cannot be located. Today when downloading an SD card, they did not automatically land in Photos where I usually delete from the SD card after uploading. It appears I am losing access to an increasing number of photos. In layman's terms, how does one fix this issue?

iMac 27″, macOS 15.1

Posted on Nov 23, 2024 4:52 PM

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Answer 1

markwmsn

Level 6

15,647 points

Nov 23, 2024 9:57 PM in response to DragonflyTX

There are a few ways to trigger the "originals cannot be located" situation. The most common is to have changed the default setting of Photos > Settings > General > Importing > Copy Items to the Photos Library.

The default setting is "checked" - meaning that when a photo or video is imported the entire file is copied into the Photos Library where it is managed by Photos.

If the setting is changed to "unchecked" then only enough of the image is copied into the library at import time to preview the image, and you (the user) are responsible for keeping the original file available at the same location from where you imported it (such as the SD card) whenever it is needed for sharing, printing, editing, or whatever.

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