The Photos app in macOS Catalina underwent a major upgrade, bringing many iOS 13 Photos features to the Mac OS. And while Photos retains much of the same user interface as recent versions, the entire app feels snappier, while supporting many new features.
In this Rocket Yard guide, we’re going to take a look at the Photos app included with macOS Catalina.
What’s New in Photos
The new features in Photos run the gamut from minor tweaks to the user interface to the use of machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that concentrates on data analysis to build analytical models. The models allow the Photos app to identify patterns and make basic decisions. Apple is using machine learning in some interesting ways to bring new capabilities to the Photos app.
Photos Curated with Machine Learning
Photos you take that correspond to an event, such as a birthday party, a vacation, a garden harvest, or a first trip to the beach, are automatically highlighted by the new machine learning system built into the Photos app. Events are sorted both chronologically and geographically. Once sorted, Photos creates a cover photo by picking an image, which it then crops, and sets magnification. These cover photos seem to feature people, faces, or pets, depending on the event. Cover photos can also use video or Live Photos.
The intelligence system Photos uses when making the choices for the cover photo images as well as photo previews (see below) appears to be spot on, at least in testing on my relatively small image library.
Photos Tab
In previous versions of Photos the Photo category displayed images by the time they were taken, and further sorted them by location. This allowed Photos to keep together images that were taken at one location during a single day.
The Photos category also provides access to a tab that allows you to further refine the view by Years, Collections, Moments, and Photos. The macOS Catalina version of Photos has updated the Photos tab to provide viewing options by Years, Months, Days, and All Photos.
Selecting one of the tabs, such as Years, changes how the images are displayed. As an example, you may find a birthday collection containing all the birthday images taken for each year.
Images can contain Live Photos and videos, which will come to life as you scroll through the collections.
- Years: View all the images you have taken, organized by year.
- Months: Images, memories, and locations grouped together by month.
- Days: Your best photos, Live Photos, and videos from each day.
The Years, Months, or Days categories make use of animations and transitions to separate the timeline. You can use these separations to switch between the available views while keeping your place in the timeline.
All Photos View
Use the All Photos view to display your images and videos on a grid. You can zoom in to see large previews of each image or zoom out to see most, if not all, of your image collection. Images on the grid can be displayed in a square format, with machine learning choosing how to crop the images, or they can be viewed in the original format.
Live Photos and Videos
Live Photos, as well as videos that are included in your image library, auto-play when they come into view. This produces a dynamic display that can be slightly different each time you open the Photos app.
Memory Movies
Memory Movies makes the transition to the Mac. You can view Memory Movies you created on your iOS device, and edit the run time, mood, and title. You can sync changes you make to your iOS devices if you’re using iCloud Photos.
Only the Best Shots
Well, not really; all your shots are available to you, but Photos intelligence is used to pick the best shots in a sequence, hide duplicates while showing the best one, and generally help you keep your image library well organized.
Who’s In That Photo?
Machine learning helps Photos recognize who is in a photo and what is happening in the picture. This allows Photos to create collections, such as Memories, that may highlight a person, event, or both.
Photos User Interface
On the surface, not a lot has changed in the user interface; the same overall structure is present. However, the way images are displayed has changed, producing a much more dynamic and interesting visual representation of your image library.
The Photos sidebar is where you will find most of the options for how your library is viewed. Not all of the sidebar items are present at all times; the following are the most common:
Photos: We mentioned the Photos category in the What’s New section, above. This category gives you direct access to your image library, organized by Years, Months, Days, or All Photos.
Memories: Photos scans your library in the background to gather related photos and images into “memories.” Memories let you rediscover past events you may have forgotten about. Photos will create up to three memories a day, depending on the size of the image library.
You can also curate your own memories from photos in a moment, collection, or album.
People: Photos scans your image library for pictures that contain people. When the scan is complete (and just a warning: the first time your library is scanned, it can take quite a while), you can open the People collection and see all of your photos that contain friends, family, or loved ones. You can add names to the people Photos found, and the app will know who’s who as you add more images over time.
When you add new images to the library, Photos scans the images looking for people it already knows and adds them to its collection. You can manually identify photos or make corrections if Photos misidentifies someone.
Places: Photos knows about geography, or perhaps it’s better to say Photos can read GPS information that’s part of an image’s metadata. If your camera is GPS capable (iPhones fit this category), or you’ve added GPS information manually to your images, Photos can display thumbnails on a map, giving you a bird’s eye view of where you took each picture.
You can move around the map, zoom in or out, and change how the map is displayed; as a street/terrain map, satellite map, or grid.
Imports: View images you imported into Photos, organized by time.
Recently Deleted: This is your Photos trash. Images you’ve removed will be available here should you wish to recover them.
Shared: This sidebar section will contain albums you’ve shared with others.
Albums: This sidebar section will contain albums you or Photos create. Use Albums as an organizational aid to bring similar photos and videos together. Images can be placed in more than one album, and you can create Smart Albums that automatically include images that match the criteria you set.
Projects: If you’re creating photo books, calendars, cards, collages, or other projects involving images from your Photos library, this is the place to keep track of them. Projects supports the use of third-party apps, many of which are available from the App Store.
Photos Library Tips
You’re not stuck with a single Photos library; you can have multiple libraries although only one can be in use at any one time. Multiple Photos libraries can be helpful for organizing images, allowing you to have separate libraries for home, business, projects, and other categories.
You can also use the ability of Photos to open libraries to gain access to Aperture libraries that can no longer be used in macOS Catalina. Apple has been warning Aperture users that the non-supported app will soon stop working. With the release of macOS Catalina, that day has finally come. There are a few replacement apps available, but often overlooked is the Photos app.
If you just upgraded to macOS Catalina, Photos may be the app to use to regain access to your Aperture library and all the images it may hold. If you exported your Aperture library before you updated to Catalina, you can use the Photos Import feature to add your Aperture images to your Photos library.
If you didn’t export your Aperture library, you can use Photos to open the Aperture library and then either work with your images or export them for use in another app. Once exported, you can also consolidate the images into a different Photos library.
You can find instructions for opening Aperture libraries as well as combining libraries in the Rocket Yard guide:
How to Combine Multiple Photos Libraries Into a Single Library
Where to Keep Your Photos Library
Photos likes to keep your image library on the same drive as your startup disk. But, that’s just the default. You can store your image library wherever you wish: on the startup drive, on a separate partition, or on an external drive. You can find details in the Rocket Yard guide:
How to Manage, Move Your Photos Library to an External Drive
Just One More Shot
That’s our first look at the Photos app included with macOS Catalina, but it won’t be our last. You can look forward to future guides that look at Photos and other image library apps to help you manage your ever-increasing collection of exciting images, and the not-so-exciting ones, too.
If you use the Photos app, let us know what you think of the macOS Catalina version by leaving a note in the comments section below.
This article gives interesting insights into the inner workings of Apple Photos for macOS Big Sur, Catalina and Mojave: https://appinitio.medium.com/hey-mac-user-where-are-your-photos-d9056ee4963e. Also answers some of the questions that have been asked in this thread.
After reading many comments regarding OS Catalina 10.15.7 it looks as tho others have had the same problem I have had. That is I cannot find my photos thru the captions I gave to each one, which was quite time consuming and I cannot add a caption to each photo. This is very frustrating and most annoying.
In the past I have captioned many iPhotos on my MacPro laptop. I can’t seem to find those captioned photos and can no longer add a caption to a photo. I have OS Catalina 10.15.7 What am I missing?
it is NOT a major upgrade, it is a MAJOR DOWGRADE..
it now destroys your original files by changing the file name, the file extension, the dates and meta tags and in doing so even changes file size making it IMPOSSIBLE to find anything manually or to export out your ORIGINAL FILES.. this makes recovering the files and having manual organisation of them impossible..
Apple have basically taken your media hostage destroyed your files and try to force you to have them in their cloud so they actually want to take them from you for their OWN PURPOSES..
the program no longer supports audio files but if you had audio files in your library it just hides them with different names so you cannot search for them manually and doesnt allow you to recover them unless you dig into the library files manually … the photos app wants total control of your photos and videos and apple is trying to force all users into letting it have that total control instead of giving proper warnings before upgrading and changing the original files. you cannot even open original file in finder from within the app any more.. it is the worst nightmare for someone who likes to keep original files backed up and organised externally in their own physical way.. apple should be CLASS ACTION SUED over this because they have NO RIGHT to breach every owners personal copyright of their own photos and videos by changing those original personal items WITHOUT CONSENT and copying them to the cloud for their own nefarious reasons. IT IS CRIMINAL what they have done with these “upgrades”
Why cannot I get rid of imported photos now, once they are allocated to an
album??
with Iphoto previously ,one allocate to an album the import section would disappear.
Just got 2020 MacBook Pro and decided to put ALL my photos on an external drive (4TB LaCie). I have 85,000 pics, some 20MB or so.
1- can I safely keep my external drive attached and MacBook on, since I look at or add pics almost every day?
2 – PROBLEM – edited pics don’t show up as thumbnail or in my library until I push edit. Then I can see them?
3 – PROBLEM – “Get Info”, does not allow me to type text to label my shots? Tries to show cursor for typing, but disappears. Sometimes I can paste a title created in another program.
4 – what happened to “Version 2” label on shots I duplicate? Seems to just create another pic labeled as a number???
5 – How do I see title of pic under pic in thumbnails? I really liked that!
6- Does everyone store their entire library in pictures? Sometimes I have to export pics to “Pictures” separately to do some applications.
7 – How do I migrate a small library made on my new MacBook before I made my main library available in Photos from my external drive? If I just migrate, will it separate the 800 iPhoto shots on it by date or just clump them as one. The rest of the pics total about 20 duplicated and edited from originals. Will they migrate and go next to originals?
Thank you for your time.
I too find it most irritating that Apple keeps changing the way its apps work every time there is an update! For example Photos requires one to go to “Export” to change the format of a photo, where most other apps use “Save As.” Sometimes on the iPhone, the same action requires touching a different part of the screen to accomplish the same thing in different window environments. Why is that a problem? Can you always see the screen in every lighting condition or with/without glasses?
When the digital world finally matures (not in my lifetime!!) perhaps there will be some standardization for certain actions.
Just updated to MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 with Photos v5.0 and now can’t change the Title of photos as i am used to in info window. when i place my cursor in existing title name and press a key the photo opens instead of changing the text. Any help would be appreciated. i have many scans that need titles. Thanks for any help!
my problem too! I also would like when I duplicate a pic, that it label it as version 2, 3, 4 etc.
I have noticed that I can initially add a title after first rebooting my external hard drive, but doesn’t last???
ARE YOU USING and external hard drive?
I also cannot see (blank white) edited pics?? Then, when I go to the individual pic and hit edit, the pic comes back???
Thanks☺️
I agree; Changing the filename is ESSENTIAL!!
that is not true, if there is a file with the same name just tell us there is already a file wit that name and check other data to see if its the same image and if it is NOT then add a numeral to the files name.. it means we can no longer sync a library up with windows versions of the originals or export for collaborative working with other users on other systems.. Changing all filenames is DESTRUCTIVE and means that photographers and web designers or anyone with a website can no longer do some editing on an image and then save it back to the web keeping the original name which IS ESSENTIAL because if the filename changes at all then LINKS TO THOSE FILES WILL NO LONGER WORK. that is a disaster for people who rely on syncing files by the file names . that’s just ONE of the issues this sister creates .. there’s a legal issue too because YOUR original files are YOUR OWN PERSONAL FILES… and they have decided YOUR RIGHTS DONT MATTER and just go ahead and change the filenames WITHOUT CONSENT.. this may not affect a NEW user with an IPHONE or IPAD … but is certainly affects anyone with scanned images or images from older cameras or hand ?meta tagged” images and videos etc etc
I like to organise my albums into folders, they are easier to find that way. Now I can’t make a new folder, as the option is greyed out. Why? Does anyone have a fix for this? Adding photos to an album is a lot more clunky too. Not impressed, I preferred the previous app.
Had the same problem. After fiddling around with it now I have empty (Album) folders in iCloud photos, and the “Shared” folders have disappeared. Tried to upload 12,000 old photos for weeks now and all it does is “sit and spin.” Ready to give up.
You’re not the only one, Jane. I have all mine in month folders, within date folders and keep the whole collection an an external drive. I wouldn’t get near the PHOTOS app with my originals!!
The update was a surprise to me, and I’m annoyed to find a number of photos missing from the photos displayed: all the photos I took of the reverse side of old pictures with identifying names and dates! Where are those pictures? How do I get them back and associated with the original? Fortunately It didn’t remove such pics from ones taken a few years ago, but the recent ones are gone, somewhere. Hope somebody can help me with this!
I agree with you
Sorry for used rough expression, but Apple Pictures general concept is s***, both in macOS and iOS!
On Mac the necessity to import pictures to the app is a “feature” from the last century and the the mishmash with jpg’s and raw’s.
On iOS on other hand the missing possibility to Move a picture to an album makes the app unusable for users with some few tousends of pictures. The Add to album is not solving the situation as the picture sits in Camera Roll (now called Recent, why?) and in an Album. There is no marking weather a picture is in an album or not!
On other hand the apps are fine for editing pictures satisfying even advanced amateurs and compared to other editors with mandatory subscriptions, the Apple Pictures are free!
No one at Apple is using Apple Photos. How else can one explain a glaring bug that has lingered at least since the release of MacOS Catalina?
When selecting groups of photos under Imports for placement into albums, Photos fails internally to deselect previous groups of selected photos. User selects N photos, then File > New Album. The new album then contains not N but N + every o + p + q… photos selected for the previous albums thus created. The selection accumulates until something yet mysterious is done to deselect them. One way is to close and reopen Photos but that seems a bit drastic in the modern age, especially for an Apple app. Another way is to select every photo in the new album, then deselect the new photos, then remove the remaining selected photos from the album. It’s often faster just to close and relaunch Photos.
If it is such a problem, then what other app is a substitute for Photos, especially one that will sync with iPhone, iPad, if that is even possible!?
I’m so angry with Apple for messing up (prefer a different adjective starting with “f”) photos.
I’d appreciate any suggestions
I would like to know how to email photos from the photos app on an iMac, and include the photo’s title and description in the email. I can do that on iPhoto but cannot see how to do it in photo
Hi Peter I regularly have to email images with their titles. I do it from the Desktop. Maybe I’m stating the obvious but this is what I do …..
select the image(s) in Photos,
go to File then Export,
set the quality options etc,
check the box if you want Description etc included,
then make sure Use Title is set and not Use File Name,
then Share to Mail.
Maybe there’s a quicker way …. if so, would be handy to know :-)
Hope this helps.
Mary
Iphoto won’t accept either screen shots or jpegs, it’s useless and the only people who defend Apple now are the cool-aid drinkers and those who make money off convincing people that Apple is still what it was, plug and play, hassle free etc. Well it’s not, I have a ton of problems with my overpriced and pretty useless macair and will not be buying any Apple products again. I am stock pilling my money, so I can get rid or all Apple tech and replace it with another brand and platform.
Actually, I am satisfied with the Photos app itself. My problem is with storing the photos in Apple’s iCloud. My understanding has been that an internet connect would mean that photos on one or the other of my MacBook or my iMac would appear in iCloud and be shared per the latest modification. That isn’t happening and many prhotos never upmost to iCloud and my second computer.
OS Catalina has completely ruined my photos experience. Hopefully this is fixed soon.
May be time to go to microsoft! Apple just stumbles on itself and continually lands on its own face.
SO now ALL my photos turn white when I edit them I have to UNdo then REdo. NOW I can’t print some of those photos and NOW blogger and FB don’t SEE those edited photos so I can’t upload them. Come on Apple get it together. This is extremely annoying.
App is good , it needs to bug free
Bug that hit me is
I use to sync my personal collection of photos in my Mac(school days , some phots are as old as I was not born ) , and I use to sync it using finder sync option , after catalina this feature is not working ( option is there but not working )
Does the Photos app give me access to the metadata so that i can add/delete or alter some of the IPTC core data?
No, you can’t add or alter IPTC metadata in Photos app. You can add Title, Description, Keywords etc. by right clicking a photo and then Get Info, but these don’t update IPTC or EXIF metadata. You need a metadata editor app e.g. SnipTag or Lightroom.
I don’t need artificial “intelligence” to do anything to my photos library. I have intelligence and I can use it to organize MY own photos.
Well, that makes the apple application “Photos” useless for image professionals as IPTC & EXIF are critically important when doing anything except a quick view on the iPhone for friends: “Hey Look!: — “Oh Wow” (& that’s it!!)
I hate Photos and it’s the primary reason I am staying with the Sierra OS. iPhoto was a better product for those of us who need to save and catalog many, many photos and it would be even better if Apple hadn’t abandoned it. For years Apple made it near impossible to export iPhoto content and metadata to other apps that would have had a better long term support commitment. And all in the name of making the Mac “IOS-compliant.” Those of us who are serious users laugh at the idea of making the iphone our primary platform.
Now Apple is forcing the issue. In my case, for the long term, I am looking to the very tedious task of manually sorting, re-labeling and exporting over 100,000 photos into traditional folders and formats that I’ll store in a traditional digital asset management directory that is not device or vendor specific.
This is one of many examples of how Apple has abandoned its early creative user community.
Agree by taking user control out of user hand , now user have to believe apple’s photo DB don’t break and continue to work . The day it break , we loose maximum photos or there order. As of now even export has only two option , if user want to sort them using only yyyy-mm-dd, there is no option . I don’t know why Apple is stared screwing up more
In the slideshow it no longer plays out videos. Videos play the length photos are shown. The Original slideshow selection does play out videos.
I would like to have the sidebar permanently open in photos.
A real hassle to have to open every time.
Also I would like to store my photos in folders and not have photos where they are now.
when adding a photo from facebook photos opens and it never used to. I cant find anywhere to turn this function off
I DO NOT use iCloud for my photos. I have many albums in Photos/Mojave, what will happen to my albums when I upgrade to Catalina? Will they still be there?
I hate the new photos. I want to look at all my photos separated by month and then day. I do not want my computer deciding which of my photos I can see and putting them in a cutesy design. How can I get it back to the old format (pre Catalina)?
How do I print Multiple photos on one page in Catalina?
Since I uploaded Catalina my new photos don’t go into my already there ‘all photos’
To share in groups or on my page in fb I can’t seem to use the ‘share photo’ button as they don’t come up.
Please help
PHOTOS SUCKS – I can’t edit my photos they white out so I have to go back and DELETE all my edits in order to get my photos back. PHOTOS closes intermittenly for no reason. PHOTOS deletes photos off my card AND THE DELETE PHOTOS IS NOT CHECKED. I have jumped through all the hoops to fix it including establishing a new library and I still have white out photos when edited. It also changes the name an album I establish. ON MACBOOK PRO. Canon Camera.
I have been taking pictures digitally since 1998 and have put them in albums by locations or by subject matter. I have also digitized a lot of slides or B/W photos and also grouped them in the same categories .
Now if I want to see pictures from Hagerstown,MD I cannot find them!!! Thank God my method of arranging my photos is the same on my iPad and I can find my pictures!!!! How can I fix this on my Mac mini
I have been going through some of my photos and adding titles and descriptions. For some photos which belong to a group I want to be able to add the same description, but find I can no longer cut and paste into the description box. This is very frustrating. It means anything I want to cut and paste has to go into the title box, which makes the titles far too long. It would be great if I could cut and paste into the description box as I could earlier.
I upgraded to Catalina and now Im having a hard time Downloading my photos to the photos app on my Mac.
Please help….
As our iPhones get better cameras and wanting to utilize that feature takes more space so we get more storage space on our phones to store better resolution images/videos. The storage on Macs also needs to be increased to allow us to backup all our clicks…but no matter what we do using the Photos app is still a MESS!
1. If we only backup to one library – that has to be stored on the local drive of the Mac so that takes up a lot or almost all of our available space with time.
2. If we backup to external drives and separate libraries, its still a pain to sit and find the one photo we’re looking for when we need it.
iCloud Photos is not an option as it took me a long while to retrieve my full resolution images back … very often there are multiple users for our iPads hence we cannot turn on iCloud Photos and the Mac storage space eventually gets limited no matter what we get.
Google Photos is an excellent option as we can see and download what we need..better yet we can share from google photos to messages without downloading the image onto our phones.
OneDrive + Dropbox are also great for storing additional backups of our images folder wise or date wise.
But rest assured Mac OS needs a better Photos app to handle multiple libraries or folders on external storage devices and not freeze up with good high speed configuration Macs and the high res images!!!
Can somebody help me how to upload from the Photos app in macOS Catalina to Facebook. I don’t wanna export photos to my drive then upload because there are too many photos i wanna upload. I went to the photo section under the media file(where you can access the Photos app) but not everything (photos) is on there. Is there anyway I can do this directly from the Photos app?
I am not happy with how Catalina decided how to display my photos. I used to be able to display all the photos I took ON A GIVEN DAY with ease. The were all displayed on the same line with the date at the left of the display window. Now with Catalina when I use the “Days” sort method at the top center of the Photos screen, most of the time my photos will be displayed with a range of dates, such as March 14 to 24, 2020. Then it is a pain to try to find exactly what date the photos in that date range were taken, such as right clicking on each photo and then clicking on Get Info at the top of the pop-up window that appears. Clicking on “All Photos” at the top center of the Photos screen does not help either, since they still are not sorted by exact date. Seems like Apple wanted to fix something that was not broken and now it is.
Hi
I have upgraded to Catalina…and in Photos ,i,m still seeing photos in recent and imports..even tho I,ve named them and put them in albums
what havent I done??
any help appreciated
I tried to leave a comment concerning my opinion of Catalina Photos and wasn’t allowed to because they said I had already posted that comment. I cannot find where I posted a similar comment and do not remember leaving a comment on this site anyway. I did not see a comment similar to mine on any of the comments people had posted. Why am I not able to post my comment?
Hi Bonnie, this blog is moderated and sometimes it takes a while to get through the backlog of comments.
I am disappointed in the organization options available in Photos compared to what was offered in Aperture. I would like to see the sorting options of color coding and 1-5 stars included in Photos. I would like to be able to nest albums within albums using different wording. For instance, one album showing all photos for a long project with the ability to nest other subalbums within the large album. You would be able to see all photos in the first album and then have sub albums nested within that large album for a specific segment of photos. In editing, I would like to see the Aperture brush option allowing the ability to lighten the face of a person in shadow without lightning the entire photo.
As an avid photographer, I hate the new release. I don’t want to store my photos by location or memory! I want to import, select and save my photos by my own category! I usually name and add the date as key in the file name.
This new version scrambles my photos into places unknown to me! it is difficult to find images. And every time I have tried to import from my camera, sandisk card, it imports the images into 2 seperate places! What’s with that! It matters when you import 300 Photos after a single shoot and images are both jpg and raw files!
The work flow is also not intuitive. I could go on, but enough is enough. Hate this version. Hate that it never works simply.
I agree, the current Photo application is overblown – far too overcomplicated for general everyday Mac users – the software designer appears to know little about photography or O&M. iPhoto was fine – brilliant, and easy to use and understand. What Mac users are lumbered with now is nothing short of a nightmare. One master file list, with subfolders created at the behest of the user, is all that’s needed.
Upgraded to Catalina on my iMac. Photos says “uploading 100 items” – for the last 5 days. As far as I can tell it’s doing nothing. Additionally, it has 43 less photos in it’s library than my other iMac (also running catalina for 3 months). No clue what to do next.
Catalina so far has given me more grief than function. very sad. There used to be a time when I looked forward to new MacOS releases. not any more. Just scared now of what they will break with each release.
Tim cook has served up Apple. what do expect from a supply side guy with no computer background. Steve did not choose wisely.
The thing that p*sses me off the most about macOS Photos is the way each new version of the OS requires your Photos Libraries to be updated which then no longer work in the previous version! Given I have a Mac Pro (2010), which cannot run Catalina, and a MBP which can, my Photos Libraries are now in limbo between 2 Operating Systems!
I’m guessing this is Apple’s way of forcing hardware upgrades to an otherwise perfectly good Mac Pro!! And – have you seen the costs of the NEW Mac Pro!!!!!!
I had a iMac for ten years, loved it. It finally failed to power on. I got a new iMac and it no longer worked with my iPod, had to get a new micro soft office. Had to delete tons of stuff off my new iMac because it was not comparable. I no longer know how to sync my iPhone, I no longer know how to use my photo library. I have to to get a new hard disc backup if that is what you call it as my machine now does not accept discs. So far I hate my new iMac and who ever designed the new app for apps make it look like a small child designed it. Thank God the have excellent customer service reps because I have to call them almost everyday. I speak to them more than my family. If the make a book to to guide me thru things I would buy it. Hate my iMac.
I just blew 5k on a MB and I hate it. This is awful! I have to steel myself before making the next tech support call or waste away researching myself, just to realize its what they are serving now.
Sorry your having this experience too
Still struggling to be as good as iPhoto for the non social media photographer…Still hate this App after years of waiting for it to improve
I agree with the other correspondents that the current Apple MacBookAir Photo App on Catalina is a totally rubbish system. I have images completely disorganised, (and not by my doing). With different sets of photos on ‘Photo’ and ‘Finder’, and some completely missing. The old iPhoto app was not broken, so why ‘fix it’? Everything could be found before, but not now with the over-duplication & over-complication of the latest Photo app. It seems Apple is over-staffed with software designers, and the old adage that ‘the devil finds work for idle hands’ appears to be the case. Please bring back the option to revert my MacBook to iPhoto, it is sadly missed, and I’m wasting hours of valuable time trying to deal with the ‘latest’ Photo app.
Using IMAGE in the menu, the date & time can be changed to rearrange the pic’s in Photos. But if you create a separate album, you should be able to just click, move, and drop a picture to put it in a different place.
Importing photos from an SD card:
Catalina hangs when autoimporting photos directly into autoimporter at the point where it says: ‘preparing for import’.
I use my Imac for work and do not want thousands of work photos stored via ‘Photos’.
Any idea why it’s not allowing autoimport?
My photos have triplicates and Catalina identifies and hides duplicates, it sounds like. Can we remove duplicates now with Catalina? Or triplicates
Interesting tip.
But how can rearrange the photos within an album to put them in the order I want?
You have to change the date
Since I have Catalina the photo app refuses to sync my photos with the IPhone or IPad. Why don’t you fix this problem?
Maybe you should ask Apple?
automatic , in the background scans, seem to start and stop in an unrecognized patern and leave people albums not able to open. I find no way to tell photos to finish the scan. Am I missing a step? Sometimes a note is displayed scan will finish when photos is in background. List steps to allow recognition of being in the background. I have a library with 110,000 photos and a tab to tell photos to restart the face recognition scan would be great.
For some reason I lost all the albums that were created prior to purchasing my Mac. They were all migrated automatically to my Mac from my PC and saved under a file called Pictures and I was able to create new albums after purchasing my Mac. I was about create a new folder with our pictures from our recent trip and the next thing I know all the Picture albums were gone. I was always able to go into the Pictures file and see all of them and use them as a screen show or with my TV. Now they are all gone. Did Catalina decide not to support the Pictures file any longer? I am really aggravated because all my photos were segregated into appropriate folders for ease of viewing, even the ones I took and downloaded from my Canon 35mm camera. These albums took me hours and hours to create. I am pretty sure the photos are there because they seem to have been grouped by year when I click on the Photos, but the albums are gone.
I have a hard time locating all of my pictures, especially ones from years ago. Catalina has caused my mac mini to slow down to the point where it is practically unusable at times. Apple told me a 200GB cloud account would hold all of my pictures, the machine ran for over three full days supposedly uploading my pictures to the cloud but my photos are nowhere to be found in the cloud. My Hp printer scanner fax also quit working with this release, what a pain.
where are the original files stored? I have OS 10.15 Catalina and I am unable to locate any information regarding the master (original) photo files.
Andy,
This topic has been discussed at length on this Apple Community form.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250716707?answerId=252017819022&page=46
There are work arounds – such as creating duplicate Albums or Smart Albums at the root level of the Photos Library – leaving your original nested folder intact. Use a USB cable to sync and turn off wifi syncing.
I have used this technique with 100% success on all of my mobile devices with my iMac and Catalina.
Hopefully Apple will fix this syncing issue.
Yes and why should you have to do all this!
I’ve always loved the simplicity with which you can share your albums from Photo ( or iPhoto before that), across your devices,.
Then along came Catalina………
I have spent many hours a day of the past week trying to get my photo albums to sync across my mobile devices, using the ‘ new and improved’ method that comes as a result of running Catalina. Gone are the days where iTunes is used to sync your media ( it was clearly too user friendly for Apple to want to leave it alone) – and instead we are to sync our devices through finder. All sounds good and simple – except for one thing…. IT DOESN”T WORK.
Several hours on the phone to Apple Support didn’t manage to come up with the goods – in fact, all I managed was to delete all of the photo albums that had happily resided in the Photo app on my devices for many, many years..
Today I trooped off to the Genius Bar, and a very helpful Apple Chap told me that Catalina has been plagued with problems with regard to syncing photos/ music – and the best thing to do was to roll back to Mojave…. of course that entails wiping all the data.
So tonight, fortified by a bottle of wine, and a bag of chips, I am reloading all my data back onto my Mac…. back to exactly where I was before I upgraded to Catalina 3 months ago.
Love your comments. I so wish I had my old iMac back. Catalina sucks and too late to remove it!
I too spent hours and hours and more hours on the phone with Apple, was escalated, then there were diagnostics pulled from my Mac, all to find out that “engineering” was already aware of the problem. The syncing between Catalina and iphone or ipad is really screwed up. I inevitably have to remove all photos from the device and then put them all back on. Sometimes it takes several tries for this not to sync some truly random number of photos and get them all to actually sync. If they’d just told me at the beginning that this was something they were trying to fix, I would have saved about seven or eight hours of time wasted.
I am miserable with it. I can’t post to Facebook. Moving a photo to create an album is no longer simple and obvious. Give me back the old Photos. I don’t need all the extra stuff you tout.
My computer was recently upgraded to Catalina. Now when I plug in my external drive and try to move pictures from photo onto that drive it won’t import. What should i do?
Worst photo app I’ve used. Apple needs to scrap this the way it did iPhoto. It’s intrusive and has needlessly complicated and awkward workflow.
When I am on a site on the internet and “save image to photos”, my computer automatically goes back to the photo app, even if the photo app is off.
This is very frustrating when you’re trying to save several pictures to photos and you have to stop and go back into the site with each picture that was saved.
I HATE LOATHE AND DESPISE MOST THINGS ABOUT iPHOTO. Right now, I can’t post photos. the “OPEN” button is faded out and does not provide a function any more. I hate iphoto’s album system, it’s UTTERLY STUPID to click put these in an album and never ever move them from the general listings. TAKE OFF THE DATE, THE FACES, THE PLACES, IT IS NOT YOUR RIGHT TO CATEGORIZE MY PHOTOS OR TO LABEL THE CATEGORIES. I want to put photos into an album and not see it anywhere but that album. I hate that deleting a photo from my phone deletes it from my mac. I hate that YOU HAVE ALL CONTROL OF MY PHOTOS AND I HAVE NO CONTROL. For photos alone I am buying PC and screw apple for all things photo. Great cameras on the phone, the worst damned photo storage ever. Give all the control to the user, what the hell do you need control of my photos for anyway?
Agree whole heartedly!!! Can’t believe Apple stands by this huge mistake. It’s photo management program designed by software engineers primarily and secondarily by photographers. The software engineers won! Yes, you are correct about control and putting the software in control of image management/organization. But the kicker that Photos was designed not for photography but to keep Apples coffers filled with iCloud income users contribute for photo storage!! Making money is good for all of us when useful services are provided. Apple falls too far short in this regard. Keep up the fight a decent photo management software from tone deaf Apple!
I agree with the comment above. I have photo and iPhoto’s and some photos I can’t even view.
How can I recover photos from old iPhoto?
Right click on your iPhoto library, click ‘show package contents’.
All your original photos are in the ‘masters’ folder.
trying since several days, after hours with apple tech, to move a photos library from High Sierra to Catalina.
unable to upgrade the library, tried tens of time, stuck with an error at about 5% :(
Apple should drop Photos the way it did iPhoto and start over. My photo management/editing workflow uses Adobe Bridge (a powerful graphic image file viewer)-Lightroom (an advanced editor)-PhotoshopCC-Smugmug for all my photo management/photo editing/cloud storage tasks. It is far from idea.. But it allows me accomplish photo tasks in a way Photos never could. Photos is a top down program where decisions reside with the software. My workflow keeps me in charge of all photo tasks. That means I control outcomes. Photos is the opposite and gives control to the software.
Photos is now rubbish.
I have latest Catalina, brand new Mac. I have 50 000 pics on 8TB external drive.
It has been ‘curating’ for over a week now with no progress or end in sight.
Apple have tried during chat session, but iyt is still stuck in the loop.
For an Apple product, it is not good enough – but fine if it were Windows :-)
Photos is a horror show for anyone serious about photo management/organizing.
What is the current version of Photos? Is anyone reporting difficulties in face recognition and making new Key photos?
Yes, I lost many face names especially in earlier years.
It is a pain in the ass having to use my iPhone to post photos to FaceBook as you can no longer share to Facebook through Photos!
I spent hours with Apple support a week ago and they said they are working on it. I would imagine FB is upset also. Apple Support did show me an easy workaround: download Google’s Chrome browser as this still works well to download photos to Facebook.
I upgraded to macOS Catalina. However the ‘media’ file with Photos no longer appears when I try to put a photo in my Kijiji ad, etc. How does this get fixed?
thanks for the article!
Since upgrading to Catalina I notice that photos uploaded from my mac to google photos (using Googles backup and sync app) have a very strange alphanumeric filename eg:
816F6DD8-437B-42AA-9851-425FB1BBE18F.jpeg
Upon investigation, I found that Apple Photos has created this filename, you find it when exploring the photo library in finder in the “originals” directory. Although you still see the original correct filename when looking at the photo in the Apple Photos app itself.
Do you know what is going on with the filenames stored within the photo library?
Thanks!
I avoid Photos to the maximum extent possible.
What happened to “Sort by newest ” in sorting photos? I prefer my newest at the top of the window.
One thing that I don’t like is that the editing options on IOS now are different from Mac OS, and this cause me confusion when I need to edit photos on both.
Just 2 examples:
on IOS you have a “Vividness” slide, totally absent from Mac OS.
on IOS, once applied a filter, you can select the “strength” of the filter (a very useful option actually!). Absent from Mac OS.
I can understand IOS having less controls than Mac OS, but not the opposite!
Hope they fix this discrepancy.
The best thing about photos in Catalina is the ability to be able to search by exact date now! Before it was only by month and year.
when I import photos from my camera pictures get stuck in import and recent added folder and are not transferred to photos folder, why?
I’m using Catalina on my MacBook Pro
The Catalina update has removed many face names from my photos.
Before the update I had manually given face names for ALL my faces, all persons.
Now, many are missing and I have to go through my whole 20,000 photo library again.
Is there a way to force the name recognition, or get all my names back?
Using my Time Machine to go back in time will not help because Catalina will “curate” all those pictures with face names all over again.
What do you suggest? Just live with it and do the work again?
Did anyone respond…I also have problems with face recognition….
Photos can’t open “Aperture Library”. (4302)
Hi, congrats about your text, let me know about one question, in old version in finder i open to show package and make alias to masters, then i can access all “jpg” from finder. now this options not show the masters, there is a way to do this ?????
lost my ability to edit scanned photos and documents. Won’t even allow me to crop a scanned item.
Photos stuck on “restoring from iCloud” since recent Catalina update to 10.15.1
I can’t seem to upload photos to Facebook from the photos app on my MacBook since upgrading to Catalina. Any suggestions?
I run various FB pages, so it’s really annoying. At the moment I’m having to do an irritating loop of airdropping them to my iPad, saving them into the photo stream (they won’t seem to load up from shared folders either). And of course on the iPad I have to use the Facebook pages app instead of the main FB interface, and that has limitations.
I have a lot of photos on my MacBook and need to hive some off onto other storage, but it was working before the Catalina update….
Apple is working on the problem of Safari not being able to upload photos to Facebook. The Easiest workaround is to use Alphabet’s Chrome browser (easily downloaded to your Mac) as I did that and it works well.
I spent 4 hours on the phone with two different Apple Support people and they turned it over to Apple “engineers”. Previously I said:
(Apple is working on the problem of Safari not being able to upload photos to Facebook. The Easiest workaround is to use Alphabet’s Chrome browser (easily downloaded to your Mac) as I did that and it works well.)
And still nothing for the families. Still not possible to really share the whole library so each member can see the family photos and keep their own private library. Family sharing is a joke. Does a dev at Apple have a family? Sure not. I’m even not sure they use the app for their private photos.
My photo library is located in an external hard drive. After the upgrade to Catalina, my Photos App seems to go through the “restoring” process every other time I open it. This process then lasts about 30 minutes. It’s quite a pain every time I would like to work on organizing photos. Is anyone else experienced this or have you been able solve this issue?
So let me see if I’m clear on this.
A revamp of Photos, and you STILL cannot split or merge libraries?
A revamp of Reminders and you STILL cannot sort by Priority on an iPhone???
And I’m going to trust this “new” app with my Aperture libraries?
No polite words….
I want IPhotos back, this is S….
First I had to worked half a day to get back my photos and then this program is lrelly S… (Do not upgrade to Catalina if it is not a must)
– If you connect iPhone you have to mark each photo you would like to move to Mac THERE IS NO COPY NEW PHOTOS!
If you click old photos you have double or triple, it does not tell this.
In IPhoto they where own line and clicking new photos all new moved.
– If you would like to copy a picture to an other program (for example Mac e-mail) you can not click right and chose copy / paste, instead you have to open the picture and select / copy / past
There is no ability to delete photos. Under Image you go down to Remove 1 Photo from Album. However when I followed that it did not remove the photo. I then went to help and typed in delete and it gave me the option to delete 1 photo. How do I replace the Remove 1 Photo from Album with Delete 1 Photo so that I do not have to go back to help each time I want to delete a photo?
Press and hold the command key. You’ll notice the options change from “Remove from album” to “Delete”.
Note – this also applies to the primary menus (remove/delete can be found at the bottom of the “image” menu).
Pretty intuitive in my opinion… just wish I didn’t have to spend days figuring this out on my own!
Can’t delete photo in Photos on iMac. What does
%#@messageFormat@ mean?
Just discovered that if you right-click on one or more selected photos, holding the command key changes several of the commands, including changing “Remove [x] photos from album” to “Delete [x] photos”.
The command key modifier also affects the primary menu selections (delete photo(s) can be found at the bottom of the “image” menu when command is pressed).
“Machine learning” seems like another step in the wrong direction for Apple’s photography program. It furthers Photo’s imbalance as a computer program as opposed to a creative photography program
no changes to the editing, same. Photos editing is very basic and really needed an update rather than this social rubbish..
Completely agree. Major changes? Nonsense gadgets that are not for real photographers. Not a single change in editing, while in iOs you have now perspective corrections. Very disappointing!
I didn’t see any comments about editing. Ever since Apple discontinued Aperture, there hasn’t been any real editing program from Apple. Photos seems focused on Social Media uses and applications, which is what you covered. That’s important for many, but photo editing has taken a distinct back seat. It’s geared for the simplistic now. It’s all well and good, but not what I need.
Also, the new Music App under Catalina has a bug that prevents Photos from syncing images in folders – a HUGE failure. It only syncs top level photos. If you select “folders” within Photos, and select them to sync, nothing is transferred, and Music will wipe all old synced images that were synced under Mojave.
FYI – Louis
Surely one of the worst photo apps I’ve used as a photographer has not improved and may have become more intrusive with “Machine Learning.” Apple should start over.
I took a look at Photos on a Catalina machine in a store. There is still no way to copy location data from one photo and apply it to another as in iPhoto. To do so in Photos, you must choose a location on a map. I’ll stick with iPhoto/Aperture and Mojave for a while longer.
VERY good point about bulk copying of metadata in general!
Yeah, I may never upgrade to Catalina!
Is this the end of Apple?
:-(
In View All Photos, the View Metadata Title Option does not work. Any work around ?
So FIFTH iteration, and Photos STILL fails to offer users the display option to SORT the entire active library by newest image first!
Yet Photos on iPhones and iPads offers ‘Camera Roll’ view, always displaying (drum roll), Newest image first!
The unfortunate fact about the last few updates is the loss of that great calendar option. I used to make a new calendar every january but starting jan 2019 I was not able to do so.
Is the photos library different? Can I copy a photos library from a Mojave machine to a Catalina machine?
In Photos under the new MacOS Catalina you cannot sort the pictures within an album by name. It you try sort by title it will automatically sort by date. Most picture do not have titles, they have file names given by the camera. This was not a problem prior to Catalina. It I try to show a slideshow it will all be in the wrong sequence. All folder outside Photos automatically sort pictures by name. Windows also sort picture by name in theirs folders and albums.
How can they get this so wrong? I have exactly the same problem. Apple support did not seem to realise this was a problem, and after hanging on for 50mins today while they were trying to find out about it, I had to give up as I had important things to do!
Good Evening from the French Riviera,
Would somebody please tell me what function in Catalina the
“Unable to Upload” item in does ??
Thank you
I’ve the same problem. It looks like these photos CANNOT be edited anymore or modified as Photos as lost touch with them. Some 6,000! photos are affected in my library and I’ve not found a fix for it.
More annoyingly, it seems that these photos have been taken/removed from my albums.
Any help or advise? I’m sure it’s a bug but I’m disappointed that Apple hasn’t noticed it in testing and released Catalina like this. Do they not realize that people love their photos and cannot afford missing them?
I used to be able to label my photos directly underneath the photo but don’t seem to be able to do this. I like to insert info such as names of various people in photo and their date of birth etc by just clicking in box and entering details I wanted to put in. Help please.
Same problem here. I kept rebooting my iMac hoping that would fix it but obviously it’s another glitch in the Catalina OS (which also has taken away my scanners’ abilities to scan)
With the last update … 15.1, I am now able to put labels below my photos.
New Photos with Catalina OS cannot sort pictures within the albums by name. You can ask to sort by title, but since most pictures do not have titles but only file names, Photo will next sort by date. This was not a problem prior to the new Catalina.
After upgraded to Catalina my photo library doesn’t work anymore: when I open Photo app it updates the library and try to repair permissions of library, but after some minutes I get an error and I can’t open the library.
Anyone can help me? I’ve a library with a big size and is on a NAS (gigabit ethernet).
thanks
That’s exactly where i’m at. And i haven’t dealt with the iTunes to Music migration…and i’m a DJ so this is just dreadful. I thought computers were supposed to make life easier…
Yup. same issue here. had a 45gb library file that tries to update and later tries to repair the permissions and it fails.
copied the file local on the mac and reopend it from there and it works fine. tried after updating to copy it back to the nas (synology) but got the same result that it would update (again) and no permissions.
So now i have this bigfile on my mac…
darn.
will see if i can sync it somehow.. not big fan of timemachine tho but for now i will need to use it in case of failure…
Same here
I’ve got the exact same problem. External hard drive and Photos just does not work. Even creating a new library and moving to external hard drive doesn’t work and cant find an answer anywhere. Have you been able to figure it out yet?
I’m stuck as well. Created a reddit post in search of help. Any chance you’re seeing the same errors?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplePhotos/comments/dp35q9/cant_open_library_after_catalina_upgrade
Not able to upload photos to Facebook nor a commercial photo book company. When I click on photos the Photo program disappears. Never had this problem for the last few years. I installed Catalina a few days ago and the Catalina 10-15-2019 update.
I’m having the exact same problem. Running Catalina, all updates installed. Frustrating! So far, I’m not a big fan of the new Photos app. Maybe it will grow on me.
The new photos program Catalina seems to decide when it wants to sort your photo library. It will only works when power is applied to my MacBook Pro and stops sorting when you disconnect power. You will need to scroll down to the bottom of the screen in photos to see what’s happening …. it has a progress bar to show how it’s progressing and then the display shows : curating best photos … gathering favourites .. composing layout … detecting duplicates .. analysing scenes. Note I have over 33,000 photos with hundreds of duplicates on my Mac … it has taken 5 hours to get just half way through sorting them if you believe the progress bar indication . I am crossing my fingers the program either deletes or at least identifies my many duplicates… Good lLuck
Did it ever finish this ? Mine is doing the same thing.
I am having this same problem and my computer has been sorting for days from what I can tell. I don’t feel I have gained any ground and the one time I cancelled it, it didn’t look as though I have any Photos library at all. It just disappeared which gave me a heart attack. I had to shut down for it to start all over again. So frustrating. I want to know how long I can expect it to go through this process of sorting.
This is happening to me too. I am three hours in on my wait for it to sync so I can hopefully get the photos taken today on my iPhone transferred. This syncing takes to long by hours. I dislike Catalina photos intensely!
Now that I have done the upgrade, when I add a person’s name to the photo, it doesn’t recognize the names in the People App of this program?????
Also, when I go to the People App, it has 35,000 photos it says it has to scan, but it has been days, and I don’t know why this app is working so funky.
Any insight for me?
I have the same problem …
Apple needs to do something about this asap as it suggests I have to manually rename all people in my library to names that the phots now recognises!!
I’m actually having the same problem with the names/key photo selected for each person. My People folder also shows it has the 26,000+ photos, but when I select a person that I know has more than 2,000 photos linked to their name, it displays there are only 700, as an example. So I started going through each person and each one had the prompt above the main picture – “confirm other photos”. So that always found up to 9 additional photos. It seems like after I went through that, all the photos showed up. Hope that helps you.
However, I’m still having a problem with some pictures that are by themselves at the bottom of the group of people, and when I identify the person, the key photo doesn’t show up, just another random photo for that person. I tried re-establishing the key photo, but no change.
I had given over time names to all faces in my 16,000 Photos Library.
Many faces are turned or have sunglasses or in the case of my children and grandchildren, the faces age over the forty years I have collected. Apple didn’t prepare for that.
With Catalina, Apple simply discarded all customer face names and replaced them using their (poor) face recognition program. That means that I am now busy re-doing all those sideways and ageing faces.
I’ve had a conversation with a Senior Apple Advisor called Jeff. He simply denied that all those disappearing face names were due to the Catalina Update. When I pointed out it happened at the exact same time, he answered: “That’s not proof in itself that Catalina did that”!!!
Now I’m worried that at the next update again a lot of face names will be yanked away by Apple. WHAT ARE WE CUSTOMERS GOING TO DO ???
Apple just is NOT what it used to be. I lost a lot from Steve Jobs’ time.
Photos is one thing but there is also a lot of BAD NEWS since Catalina,
ie Calendar app, iMovie on Apple TV, iDVD, etc. Steve was object oriented for customer satisfaction in his development approach but Kim is simply money hungry. Maybe we should go back to Windows.
Before, using show package contents – you could find your original photos in the Masters folder organised by date imported. Making it easy to copy and backup photos imported from a phone
Where/ which folder are original images stored in now?
I’m also interested in this question.
They are now stored in the new “originals” folder in folders named 0-9 and A to F. I know this because my cloud backup service suddenly had 2 copies of all photos media adding 1 TB to my backup!
me too. The masters folder has disappeared and Photos seems to assign long and complicated file names to what appears to be the masters files in a folder called originals or something like that. that is absolutely it. I bought a MacBook Air 18 months ago to improve my photography but it has been a long slow painful learning experience after years of PCs. My brother, a Mac aficionado, warned me about the failings of the Photos App and this is the final straw for an unnecessarily complicated interface that has now gone haywire. Going to abandon the App especially the download photos facility and just do it all manually from now on.
Seriously? Just wow…
Now they are in Originals folder, BUT Catalina messed with older logical subfolder structure. So now you just see folders from A to Z and from 1 to 9 where ALL your media files ARE RENAMED to random long names. I was so angry when I have figured it out.
Now it is impossible to find your media without PHOTOS app. And it was maybe Apple´s intention.
At this moment I have stopped using MacOS for anything other than internet browsing.
I used to be able to see my captions/titles under each photo. Now they don’t show that way. Is there a way to make them appear under the photos again?
I was on the phone w Apple Care today. It seems to be an issue that, I am told, their engineers are trying to fix.
I have been having the same problem and it is driving me crazy. I loved being able to label the photos with names, locations, dates etc below the photo on the main screen. No way to do it anymore. This needs to be fixed!
Photos does not display the ISO setting for any new photos loaded in the “Get Info” tab?? Is there a fix for this?
I was using Photos but also still using iPhoto for specific purposes, such as storing scans of old photographs. Today I upgraded to Mac OS Catalina and it does not support iPhoto. How can I access those pix from iPhoto and move them into Photos? Does any body know please??
Hi,
I have used PowerPhotos to merge libraries in the past.
It was very stable and easy to use.
I hope this helps.
You can download it from: https://fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/
You may be able to open the older iPhoto library using the tip outlines in Photos Library Tips above about opening an Aperture library. The same process should work for opening an iPhoto library.
Tom
Retroactive app might give you what you need:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/28/free-retroactive-tool-brings-aperture-itunes-back-to-life-in-macos-catalina
If there is one plea to make to Apple, it is to allow forcing of the photo scanning. The built in logic simply does not work. It takes weeks until my 75K assets are scanned. Don’t know why but the shady concept of running in the background simply does not work and never has for me. It randomly scans some photos and then for days nothing. I am happy to leave my MacBook Pro aside for a week and scan if that is required (doubt it) but not being able to use Photos properly for weeks and nearly two months last time is complete nonsense. Proper answers by support: 0 Unfortunately with Catalina, it started to scan all photos again. Guess what the status is after a day 0 photos scanned, 75 K to go… Sorry, just venting my frustration but this is simple basic stuff. 101 of user satisfaction, let them decide what they need to do and can afford in terms of time.
Ever get a response on this or resolve it? I’m having same problem
Hello !
4 Libraries in a external 6Tera HD…
One containing over 120.000 photos…
Catalina’s Photo.app can’t open, repair nor fix preferences… none of the 4 libraries open.
What shall I do ? May be a show package and copy all pictures to another HD and re importing them all in newly created Catalina’s libraries…
Any suggestions ?
Thank you
All the best
Lando
Hi, did you manage to fix it cause I’m having the same issue?
Thank you
I have suggested this app to a previous user, and hopefully it can help you as well.
I have used PowerPhotos to merge libraries and access older libraries in the past.
https://fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/
Some two months before installing Catalina we had cleaned up both our collections of photos (deleting many). We share an Imac with myself as the administrator.
Following installation of Catalina all the deleted photos have returned; some if not all my wife’s photos appear on my side of the computer; and generally it is an unhelpful shambles.
Where do I go from here – through the time consuming pain of selecting and deleting several hundred images yet again? And then finding that with the next upgrade they are all back? In the age of film cameras you simply chucked the duff prints into the bin.
I think Apple is simply hopeless with their photography apps. In the new update I can not find tab to delete a photo. Was always simple: right click and the menu showed you “delete”. Where now?
I have about 100 photos that will not upload in this new platform, yet they did previously.
Why can I not upload them and place them in albums?
Oh Aperture, oh Aperture….. where hast thou gone!
Under Catalina Photos doesn’t recognise Exif etc data anymore. That really pisses me off thank you very much! Also f.ex Luminar doesn’t seem to work as a plug in anymore!
(Mess, is ex Luminar “Can’t save your…try later again”
Well, it’s been much later now (days) and it still doesn’t!
Catalina photos rearranged my “Albums” list into what appears to be a random order designed to frustrate. So when i go to photos, find one i want to add to a specific album, go to “Image>Add to”, all of the albums are in a completely different order than they are in the left hand column under My Albums. and there is no apparent way to arrange them in the correct order. So now, in order to add a pic to an album, i have to scroll through literally 200 or more albums….Who the heck decided upon this little tweak?
i just uploaded Catalina and to my amazement find that the new A.I. in Photos has decided which are my best pics and only those are to be displayed…Who are the designers to decide which of my pics, often which are blurred action shots ON PURPOSE, are good enough to be shown? I see from comments that many other folks are annoyed at the A.I. organizing, display and cataloging. Give us more ability to modify and do “photo-shopish” alteration, and less interference and second guessing on the quality and organization. Butt out of my life, Apple
Yep!
Agreed
My husband did the update but it is stuck in an endless loop. Three days and counting. I haven’t heard of this issue, but I’m not upgrading my own computer till I know what’s going on. Ideas??
Where’s all the filters gone ?
I can’t even delete a photo now
The new photos ha been curating my images for more than 4 hours. Is this normal?
In the past in photos view I could see all the titles on had put on the photos. Now they ONLY show initially in imports of if I’ve created an album. I liked that I could note if I missed titling a photo. If there is a duplicate you can’t see which is titled.
I’m also not so sure l like apple making SO many decisions for me as far as albums and such.
Some questions:
Photos on Catalina does a bunch of analysis (people identification, scenes etc); do these sync to iPhone? To another Mac on Catalina with same user account?
if you export photos, what comes with it in metadata? people?
Where are the Titles under my pictures, they are no longer there
Hate the new photos layout … there should be an option to keep the much better and more informative Mojave layout
It would have been really nice if they would have included a ‘clone stamp’ tool.
Hi, my Motif projects have disappeared from Photos after the mass Catalina upgrade. How do I restore?
After upgrade to Catalina OS; Photo now duplicate trousands of pictures to my iPhone and iPad when syncronizing. I can not delete the duplicate ones on the iPhone or the iPad. Does anybody have a suggestion how to solve this.
I have my Photolibrary organized in subfolders.
Under Catalina I cannot share a folder with subfolders to Apple TV.
Has anyone a solution?
will Catalina photos assist in identifying duplicate photos?
I would like to share a memory movie from my Mac, to email or message. Is this possible?
How can this be done?