Although the iCloud and Photos app works great when it comes to managing and displaying your photos, figuring out where they are stored on your Mac is a more confusing task. If you want to copy or edit your photos, you will first need to locate them on your hard drive.
In this article, we’ll show you how to find all your pictures on your Mac, explain how they’re stored, and how to locate them after downloading them from iCloud.
How to find your photos
As mentioned above, you can easily view your photos using the Photos app. However, to see the actual files, you’ll need to dig a little deeper into the Finder. Follow these steps to locate your image files:
- Open Finder, then go to Start.
- Find and open the Pictures folder.
- Find Photos Library.photoslibrary, right-click on it and select the Show Package Contents option.
- Open the Master folder.
With this method, you will be able to view all your photo files and manipulate them as you wish: you can edit, copy, move or delete the photos. Please note that any changes you make to image files will reflect how photos are displayed in the Photos app.
The alternative method
Another way to find your photos is to use Spotlight. The advantage of this method is that you can search for images by type. Here’s how to do just that:
- Launch Finder Spotlight by pressing Command + Spacebar
- Click the More button in the upper right corner.
- Press and hold option and you will see the More button turn into three dots. Click on it to add search criteria.
- You will see a menu called Any. From there, select Type, Image, and an image format like JPEG or PNG.
- At the end of that line, click the More button and add another set of criteria. Keep the Type and Image options, but change the format. Do this for every image format you can think of or for those stored on your Mac.
- Click Save in the upper right corner to save the criteria for future searches. Remember to give it a name so you always know what it’s for: choose a name like Image Search or something similar. After you choose Save, the criteria will disappear from your screen and you will only see the smart folder you just created. However, you can reopen the criteria window by clicking the gear icon and choosing Show search criteria.
- If you want to move all your photos, or just those of a particular type, to a single folder, first set it up by creating and naming the new folder. Then open it in a new window.
- Navigate to your search results and select all image files by pressing Command+A or by clicking Select All on the File menu.
- Drag the photo files from the search results to the new folder. Please note that if there are a large number of files, the process may take a while, and if the search returns a large number of photos, your system may even become unresponsive. So if there are too many images in the search results, it might be best to copy them to the new folder in several batches.
If you want to avoid copying images that are just graphics associated with other files, such as help files, you can exclude them from searching by size. To do this, return to Smart Folder, open the search criteria, and select File size is greater than. Enter the minimum size in kilobytes and the search will not return results smaller than the ones you choose. The safest estimate for the minimum size would be between 3 KB and 100 KB; Images of that size are most likely not your photos. For this process, it would be helpful to know the average photo file size. Photos will typically be no smaller than 0.5MB, and even that mostly comes from cameras with three or fewer megapixels.
Another alternative to this method is to use third-party apps specialized in finding and organizing files and photos on Mac. This software can help you copy, move, view, and organize your images outside of the Photos app to make sure they are all in one place. .
Find out how many photos you have
If you want to know the exact number of photos you have, the answer to that question lies in the Photos app. All you need to do is open the app, wait if any new photos need to be uploaded or indexed, and open the Photos view. Then, scroll to the bottom to see the list of all items contained in the Library. You will see the exact number of photos, videos and other files.
You can also use the Photos app to migrate files to a visible location on your hard drive. To do that, simply select the desired photo and export it to your desktop. You can also use drag and drop to export photos, and files can even be dropped directly into a photo editor.
What are the common photo folders?
All your photos will be stored in Photos Library.photoslibrary. Please note that to view files you will always have to open them by right-clicking; Double-clicking on it will simply open the Photos app. Remember that the subfolders in this location may have different names depending on your version of Mac OS, but whatever they are called, all your images should be there.
There is a way to find the source folder of each photo, but this will be easier to do if you have been managing your photos manually. If you’ve imported copies of your images into the Photos app, the somewhat complicated process we described above will apply. To avoid confusion, note that both methods involve the Photos app; the only difference is whether the images have been copied to it.
Showing photos in Finder
Once you find the image you need in the Photos app, you can right-click on it and choose Show reference file in Finder. The same can be done by selecting this option from the File menu. In previous versions of Mac OS, this option was called Reveal in Finder, but the meaning of the name is pretty obvious either way. Once you click on the option, you will be taken to the Finder window, where the image will be selected. From there, you can easily copy or move the image to another folder or edit it with image editing software.
How to locate and restore lost photos
Maybe you couldn’t locate a specific photo or the entire folder containing an album may have been lost? If by chance you can’t find the photos you want even after trying all the methods, there is a chance that you accidentally deleted them.
However, that is not the end of the story. Deleted files and folders, including photos, can be recovered. To do that, you will need third-party data recovery software. This type of software scans the entire hard drive and can find even deleted files, as long as the data is not overwritten by something else. If you’ve lost a few photos or even an entire folder of images, chances are you can still recover them if you haven’t made any changes since deleting them.
To recover lost files via a data recovery app, you will need to choose and download one. Most applications of this type work in the same way, but user opinions can help when choosing. Once you launch the app, you will have to choose which partition to scan. Then, in most apps, there will be several scanning options, such as a quick or deep scan. If there are no relevant results after a lighter scan, it would be better to try some more comprehensive options.
The data recovery software will probably also let you choose the type of file you want to scan; If there is such an option, select Images or Photos. Once the scan is complete, you will be able to view the results and possibly even preview the files. If you find the lost photos among the results, simply choose the option to restore them, choose the folder where you want to save the images and that’s it. Your lost photos will be restored and ready to use.
Get the image
The way Mac systems handle images can be a bit confusing at times, especially if you’re used to relying on the iCloud and Photos app to organize images. In fact, for avid users, these tools can be very convenient and can organize photos much more efficiently than in the case of manual management. However, even these users would like to handle the photo files themselves from time to time, and that’s when complications arise.
Now that you’ve learned how to find all the images on your Mac, as well as where they are stored, we’re pretty sure that all your photos will be more easily available. If you follow our advice and remember all the methods for discovering and copying your photos, you will be able to organize your library exactly the way you want.
Did you have problems finding your images on Mac? How did you discover their locations? Tell us in the comments section below.
