Where are my photos?

Go to Finder and select all my files (rather than just pictures). You should see them in Today at the very top.

 

If the photos are in iPhoto its best not to access them through Finder, instead you can access them by:

1) Opening up iPhoto and dragging them out into Finder or another application to make copies which you can work on.

2) In whatever application you want to edit the photos in, go to File > Open (or the equivalent), then in the left pane scroll down to the Media section and choose Photos. From there you can see your iPhoto library and the photos stored in it.

3) If you have a specific editor you always use, you can set that up in iPhotos preferences > advanced, so when you click the edit button it loads the selected photo into the editor.

If you really want to view the originals in Finder, open up iPhoto. Select the photo you want to see, then go to File > Reveal in Finder. Just don't move the file and preferably don't modify it, as that can mess up the iPhoto library.

 

I think you mean iPhoto.

 

Unless you want the lower resolution preview, I don't recommend you drag and drop the photo out of iPhoto as that will just extract the preview file. If you want the full resolution photo, you should use the export function under File>Export.

Either that or assign the editor of choice as suggested above to open the full resolution photo.

 

Ah interesting, I remember having a problem like that with Aperture, but I've not noticed it with iPhoto. At-least for me the images I drag out have the same checksum values as the images located as the master/full size modified image in the iPhoto library.

Maybe I've done something to make it act that way and forgotten though.

 

I guess it depends on what the quality of the original file is. I shoot in RAW and drag and drop in iPhoto basically produces a medium quality jpg file. Now if your camera is set to save images in medium quality jpg then maybe you will not see much difference. File > Export gives you full control over the quality of the exported file including exporting the original file.

 

No it doesn't. You get the full size original photo. Unless something's changed since iPhoto09.