How to edit a photo in photos app of Mac without importing the photo in the app?

budhadityachat wrote: … Thus I was wondering if one can edit a photo in photos app without importing it in the mentioned app?

I think that you have misunderstood the Photos app. While Photos has an excellent image editor, its function is an Image Management System. As with other Image Managers, Photos' editor is Non-Destructive-- it never changes the original picture file.

If you edit or crop a picture, maybe cutting off the sides or intensifying the color, the original file is never touched. Instead, your editing steps are stored in the Photos Database. It's the same for every kind of edit, keyword, comment that you do-- the original picture is not altered, but the information is stored in the Database. So the "edited" picture you see on the screen never existed as a file-- it is constructed on the fly from the original plus the information in the database. The edited picture doesn't become  a file until you use "File>Export nn Photos" from its menu. Even then, what you get depends on the parameters you indicate-- always a fraction of all the information that's in the database. That's why when you export a picture from Photos, you have to make lots of decisions.

Finder is a File Management System which lets you change file names and keeps track of modification date and stuff associated with files, but images are way more than files, and Photos organizes pictures with creation dates, captions, GPS locations, faces, and more. To do this, Photos needs to have control over the pictures, so they are Managed by being copied into the Photos Library where the database is stored. It's possible, as you've tried, to hold the original unmodified originals outside the Library by using a Reference to their location, but this leaves them susceptible to file manipulation that can destroy the database references, and a Referenced Library is strongly discouraged.

If you want to modify your original files with pixel manipulation, then you can use the more basic but sophisticated app Preview, although you not only lose the powerful organizing tools of Photos, but it's not as strong an editor. Many of us have used the app GraphicConverter ($40) for, well, decades, and it does lots of good stuff. Apple now offers the very versatile app Photametor for a monthly subscription through the App store.

But if you have lots of pictures, perhaps you should look at a powerful Image Manager like Photos. I import my camera's pictures to Photos, and I archive the original files as a backup to the original files in the Photos Library. I think of it as "backup," not "creating a duplicate."

What do you think?

Thus I was wondering if one can edit a photo in photos app without importing it in the mentioned app?

Short answer: No.

In addition to Richard's excellent response I would suggest that apps like Photos - for instance, Adobe's Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic, Mylio et al are not pixel editors, like, say, Photoshop. With a pixel editor the actual photos and the file are altered. Photos, and these other applications, are parametric editors. Thye record your decisions for processing the images in their database, but never touch the original file - a bit like the way a film shooter would protect his negative.

So in a simple example: use a pixel editor to transform your image to black and white. Save it. The colour information is thrown away. Change your mind? Unless you kept a copy (with the added disk space that involves) you're out of luck. Your photo is not becoming full colour again.

The advantages to parametric editing are several, not least the ability to undo what you did, or to try multiple versions of the same image - and not using any extra disk space. If you want to use the image in another document, or print it and so on, then, at that point, you produce a version of the shot - and again your original is untouched.

As for this:

Since on importing a photo in Photos app it creates a duplicate of it, so as per guidance I got on the internet, I deselected the option "Copy items to the photos library".

This is a recipe for dataloss. It refers only to storage and nothing else. Unless you have a fondness for pain and despair, never run Photos in that mode.

budhadityachat wrote: … So based on what you and Richard have mentioned I should change the settings and use photos app as back up and edit photos in some other app like you mentioned.

This is rather backwards. The idea is that Photos is the app to use to keep your pictures organized and to edit them. In addition to that, you can (and I do) keep another copy of the original picture files someplace safe as a backup.

Most of us learned to edit pictures on the changing-pixel level, because that's the first and easiest way to go. But most people, after thinking about it, don't want or need to use a pixel editor like Photoshop unless they want to do drastic stuff like turn their pictures into alien landscapes or give the people six fingers or something like that. Parametric editors like Photos are the choice of photographers. But Parametric editors need full control over the pictures, so that's why Photos imports the pictures into its Library.

We always recommend against unchecking the "Copy Items" box-- doing so circumvents the process of Photos and is asking for disaster and for, asYer_Man says, "pain and despair." Don't do that!

While File Management may be what we're all used to, File Managers just don't take advantage of the attributes of Images. Image managers benefit from a different kind of organization, and that's what Photos offers. And, yes, you may have "to change my way of working."

budhadityachat wrote:

...

Also, it appears that the photo is synced to iCloud as in "Photos" app I see a message at the bottom of all photos present in the library that count of all photos are synced to the iCloud even without consolidating it.....

That is strange and should not be possible. Which system version is currently installed on your Mac?

A referenced library - without importing the originals into photos cannot sync with iCloud Photos, at least in the more recent versions of Photos. When I tested it by importing a few photos as referenced, these items have been blocking the syncing with iCloud, until I consolidated them into the library. If you want to sync your photos with iCloud Photos to store them in iCloud or sync them to your other Apple devices, you have to copy the originals into your Photos Library.

You can see this in the Photos > Preferences > General pane:

[Edited by Moderator]

Yer_Man wrote: …Unless you have a fondness for pain and despair, never run Photos in that mode.

And all I could manage was "a Referenced Library is strongly discouraged."

Nice addition!

So based on what you and Richard have mentioned I should change the settings and use photos app as back up and edit photos in some other app like you mentioned.

I'm not sure why you would use Photos as a back up. It's a media manager designed to work with photographs. It allows you to manage your photographs and to edit them non-destructively, and share them as you think fit. As an added bonus you can share your images across all your compatible devices.

If you don't want that, why use Photos at all?

Well, I've wondered why that was there! I'm not sure why it's still there, though…

We've run into people who purposely use Photos as a Referenced Library. This can be done, I guess, if you're very, very careful-- but I can't see what the advantage is. I think it must have to do with a reluctance to give up the "File Management" paradigm. (Gee, that word used to be very popular, but I haven't seen it in years. I don't think I ever used "paradigm" when it was everywhere.)

I'm using macOS Tahoe (version 26.0.1). I think it is the latest one.

By now (since November 3, 2025) the current version is 26.1. Consider to update the system.

Some notes on the recommendation to use "Importing: Copy items into the library". Yer_Man has pointed out that the a referenced library may result in data loss, which makes one wonder, why Apple is offering this option at all.

It has been necessary in the early versions of Photos, when we wanted to be able to migrate iPhoto Libraries and Aperture Libraries to Photos, after Apple stopped the development of Aperture and iPhoto. Both apps had been designed to handle very large photo libraries, even distributed across several external drives. To store the library across several volumes, we could use a referenced library.

So the Photos.app needed to be able to migrate a photo library with referenced items outside the library. But the first thing we should do after the migration to Photos would be to consolidate the referenced originals into the Photos Library and turn the library into a managed library.

Keeping the library referenced is a disaster waiting to happen. There are no elaborate tools to help us to reconnect broken references easily. Sooner or later any external drive will need replacing because it will starting to fail or become too small. Then we will have a lot of work to move and reconnect the originals images to their version, also when we need to restore the library from a backup. Reconnecting may not be possible at all, one of the sources for the dataloss mentioned by Yer_Man.

Starting with macOS BigSur Apple does no longer support the migration of iPhoto and Aperture Libraries to Photos, and there have been some bugs related to referenced items. For example, they did no longer appear on the Places Map or failed to be reconnected if the reference became broken.

The Photos.app has been designed to work well with iCloud as the central storage for our Photos Library, to provide a uniform app and seamless syncing experience across all our Apple devices. And this cannot work with a referenced library.