Mac Photos Library Masters Vs Originals

Peter writes:

How do I backup the Photos Library so the folders remain organized in the external hard drive just like I have it in the Mac?

Turning off iCloud Photo Library and having the originals saved to the computer will be necessary to not mess anything up within your Photos Library that is stored locally on your computer and ensure that the images will be physically moved over to Lightroom. Finding the Photos Library / Navigating to the Masters Folder. Photos for Mac uses the same hierarchy as Photos for iOS — intelligently grouping images and videos into moments, collections, and years. That lets Photos for Mac show you small moments in time and space, like yesterday at the park, but also collections of moments marked by larger changes, like that party across town or that week at the beach, and even an entire year all at once. Photos for Mac has a similar setting to help you optimize storage on your Mac. Open Preferences and on the iCloud tab and switch from Download Originals to this Mac to Optimize Mac Storage.

I read this question and almost replied, “That’s easy!” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it’s an intricate question, because of how Apple has its own organizational structure that’s invisible in the Photos Library, independent of how you sort images in the Photos app. And because there are several possible answers to the same question.

The first question is, really, what is your ideal outcome for this copy on the external drive?

An exact duplicate of the library. Quit Photos, if it’s active, find the Photos Library, and copy it. The Library includes 100 percent of everything that Photos needs. Done. But that’s probably not what Peter was asking.
Copy the file structure of the folder in the Photos Library. You can Control-click the Photos Library and select Package Contents, and then access all the folders that form the library. However, Photos organizes images and video into chronological folders— nested by year, month, and day—inside Masters (originals) and Previews (modified versions). This is probably not what Peter wants, either.
Copy Moments, Albums, Smart Albums, and other organizational structures in the Photos app. Unfortunately, while Apple lets you select multiple images to export at once (via File > Export), you can’t export these album and other structures as folders. You could open albums one at a time, select all the photos inside, and then export them to a folder you create with the same name, but that’s manual and tedious, and doesn’t automatically update.

I’ve recommended PowerPhotos ($30) before, a utility by Fat Cat Software that can merge, de-duplicate, and selectively copy Photos libraries, along with other tasks.

But it can’t (yet?) provide that sort of clean export operation Peter wants.

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Mac photos library masters vs originals 2020

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Glenn Fleishman is the author of dozens of books. His most recent include Take Control of Your M-Series Mac, Take Control of Securing Your Mac, Take Control of Zoom, and Six Centuries of Type and Printing. In his spare time, he makes Tiny Type Museums. He’s a senior contributor to Macworld, where he writes Mac 911.

At a glance

Cons

Our Verdict

While Photos is streamlined and zippy compared to iPhoto, its stripped-down approach can be confusing. PowerPhotos takes some of the shock out of Photos for OS X by helping bridge the gap between old and new. Fat Cat Software’s app offers assistance in migrating iPhoto libraries, managing multiple Photos libraries, and a different way of viewing images and videos. It’s more flexible, to be sure.

When launched, PowerPhotos shows—under an Operations listing—Migrate iPhoto Libraries, which can also be selected later from the File menu. This lists all iPhoto libraries that it can find via Spotlight; you can add others manually.

The migrate operation lets you manage creating Photos-compatible libraries without babysitting the Photos app, and shows progress and errors. It can also migrate several libraries from the same interface instead of requiring multiple iterations of quitting and launching Photos with the right key held down.

PowerPhotos doesn’t merge Photos, iPhoto, or Aperture libraries. Its predecessor, iPhoto Library Manager can merge iPhoto and Aperture ones.

Finding duplicates

Once you have Photos libraries migrated or created, you can use PowerPhotos’ duplicates feature (File > Find Duplicates). I apparently have 43,169 photos in my master Photos library, and I hadn’t spotted many duplicates in my perusal. PowerPhotos found over 1000! If you have multiple Photos libraries, you can scan across them, too.

The app gives you several choices for deciding how to let it identify duplicates, including excluding hidden photos, images marked with “duplicate” in the keyword field, and photos that it’s already placed in a special album. Comparisons can be based on the content of an image (Exact Match), which looks for byte-for-byte identical versions of either the original image or any modified version you’ve stored. Or, you can opt for filename and date, which includes minor variations in filenames commonly used with duplicates.

Even with my huge library and using exact matches, it only took about 20 minutes on a 2014 Mac mini while I continued to work on tasks in other apps. Once the pass is complete, you can review pairs or multiples of images and make sure your matches are correct. If not, you can switch which image in a set you want to be the “keeper,” or discard the match entirely, among other options.

When you’re done reviewing and click Apply, instead of deleting the files or moving them to the trash, the images are placed by default into a special duplicates album, which you can then review in Photos to dump into the trash.

Library management

While you might use Find Duplicates once or rarely, the ability to easily review and switch among multiple Photos library is a must-have feature for many users, based on the email we’ve received at Macworld. Some iPhoto users set up multiple libraries, one per year, or with other divisions that they want to maintain and have access to. PowerPhotos can’t overcome iCloud Photo Library’s limit: one Photos library is a master to which iCloud syncs.

With a Photos library selected, PowerPhotos lets you select Moments as items in its navigational column. Albums and Smart Albums are also shown. But where it shines compared to Photos is with its list view and in an middle ground for search between Photos very basic option and Smart Albums.

Click the list icon at upper right, and PowerPhotos shows a thumbnail that can be sized from tiny to enormous, and then a host of associated data, allowing easier scanning through and sorting. By default, it just shows a few items, like Title and Date. But pop into the View > Show Columns items list, and you can add Description, Place, Faces, Size, and more.

Mac Photos Library Masters Vs Originals 2020

This works well in association with its find feature. Type in a word or more, and PowerPhotos searches across all of an image’s file data and metadata. But then you can opt to broaden to search across all libraries the app is managing, and narrow to match that text only across Title, Filename, Keywords, Faces, Place, Description, and Moment. While you can achieve this with a single library using Smart Albums in Photos, it’s not interactive nor can it provide the compact density of a detailed list.

Mac Photos Library Masters Vs Originals Torrent

Bottom line

PowerPhotos is an extremely useful addition as an enhancement for any Photos user trying to perform tasks that fall outside of Photos restricted purview. It’s also worth the price for one-time use if you’re just trying to move iPhoto libraries over and remove duplicates after doing so across all of them.

Fat Cat offers PowerPhotos for $20 or as a bundle with iPhoto Library Manager for $30. Owners of iPhoto Library Manager 4 get PowerPhotos at no cost. Fat Cat may add a Photos library merge later, but it’s not guaranteed as a future feature.

Mac Photos Library Masters Vs Originals 2019