Working with Apple Photos App

[Huntn]

Over the years I've had a sort of Love Hate relationship with the Apple Photos App. I like it's convenience, but I also like having an independent library of photos without all of the Photos App infrastructure. I've moved my Apple Photos Library off my main hard rive on my MBP which is a small drive, to larger external drives and they are backed up.

Over the decades I've ended up with old Apple photo libraries, that I've recovered or imported into Apple Photos.

Recently I looked at some photos from Apple Photos, that had previously been imported and to my horror, they were teeny as going from a 1-2mg image to a 20k image. There is a very good chance this is operator error, but the elements of this are:

• There were images I recovered from an old iPhoto libraries either recover or imported or migrated, forget which exactly.
• The images as they currently exist in Apple Photos are teeny 28k, but if I return to the original iPhoto libraries I still have, there the images are of normal size about 1.5mb. So I'm concluding that something I did or did not do in the import/recovery process made them teeny in my current Photos Library.

So how best to proceed?

• In the original iPhoto library folders I see normal sized images.
• In my current Photos Library, the same images are teeny.
• If I simply select the old iPhoto library and via Photos tell it to be imported, I'm told they have already been imported.
• If I go to the original iPhoto folders and batch select what are the normal sized photos, Photos tells me they have already been imported.

So the task it to import these photos in such a manner that their data (size) is maintained. There has to be a setting somewhere that controls the size of he import or maybe there is a tech issue or setting I'm not aware of when moving photos into Photos from an old iPhoto library?

One option would be to remove the current tiny images from Apple Photos and then try to select the normal sized images and ask to import them. I've not had enough time to experiment with this, but thought I'd ask if anyone has run into the situation where your moving images from an old iPhoto Library to Apple Photos and end up with small images, and if there is a known setting that controls this?

Thanks!
I'll report back as I make or not make headway.

 

[d1sahib]

Hi. One possibility could be to:
(i) Delete the tiny images in Photos.
(ii) Open the iPhotos library and export the originals with metadata.
(iii) Reopen the Photos library and import the saved originals.

 

[NoBoMac]

^this might be the way to go.

WAG on original problem, since the folder structure of Photos is a bit of a rat's nest, might have accidentally imported the thumbnails?

Or, when you say "I looked at some photos from Apple Photos", looked at them in Photos or via Finder/shell? If latter, might be looking at thumbnails or derivatives. IIRC, stuff in derivatives only contain deltas of what was changed vs full image.