trouble with photos

[perkinly]

My system: Macbook pro
OS X Yosemite
version 10 10 5

I can see my photos when I click on my photos app. When I try to upload a picture anywhere (FB, photo shop, attachment) I am unable to view any of the photos to click on and choose. I have read several of the posts here and other internet pages without any luck. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?
The tab for choosing "use system photo library" is grey in photo preferences. I do not know how to get this to be an option to choose. (I read that could be a problem.)

[Rod]

Welcome to these forums perkinly, as with all problems without seeing what you see it usually requires a bit of clarification to understand the problem.
To share a picture from the Photos app you would normally choose one or more first then using the Share option key choose what method you wish to share your selection with eg Email, Messages, Airdrop etc. This differs from the iPhone where FB is an app.
With 3rd party or online apps like FB and PhotoShop on your computer you would normally import photos from within those apps.

[badshoehabit]

Following on from Rod, can you do a screen shot of what you see and post here (fourth icon in last block, immediately above)?

Is this a recent issue, has it worked in the past?

I'm on Mojave, Photos version 4, which I don't think is much different, and my method is to:
* open whichever album I want images from
* highlight images (hold Cmd key for multiples)
* click Share button and select. (You can't upload to Facebok this way any longer; you have to do it from fbook)

The other option is to click and drag. Screenshots for both:

Screenshot 2019-11-11 at 11.47.01.jpg

Screenshot 2019-11-11 at 11.47.59.jpg

[perkinly]

Welcome to these forums perkinly, as with all problems without seeing what you see it usually requires a bit of clarification to understand the problem.
To share a picture from the Photos app you would normally choose one or more first then using the Share option key choose what method you wish to share your selection with eg Email, Messages, Airdrop etc. This differs from the iPhone where FB is an app.
With 3rd party or online apps like FB and PhotoShop on your computer you would normally import photos from within those apps.

Thanks for you attempt to help me. I might be using the incorrect terminology. Let's say I am doing anything that I want to upload a picture to. I click on the tab which usually states something like upload image. When I click on that I chose photos. Despite having hundreds or thousands of photos on my computer, I see no photos to choose from.

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Thanks for your attempt to help me. I might be using the incorrect terminology. Let's say I am doing anything that I want to upload a picture to. I click on the tab which usually states something like upload image. When I click on that I chose photos. Despite having hundreds or thousands of photos on my computer, I see no photos to choose from.

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[MacInWin]

Perkinly, your post doesn't really help because it is too general. "I am doing anything," "usually states something like," "I choose photos," and the like really don't give us anything to go on.

You say you have thousands of pictures on your computer. Are they all in Photos? If so, they are stored in a database inside Photos and would have to be controlled from there. When you say you "chose photos" was that a generic "photos" or did you choose the application named Photos?

Can you give us one, much more specific, example of what you are trying to do? For example, to get a picture from Photos to Facebook, I usually find the picture in Photos, then click on File and Export and export the image to a file on my Mac somewhere. Then I go to Facebook, click on the "Photo/Video" button and then pick the file I just exported to upload. Once it is uploaded, I can delete it from my Mac as it is still in the Photos database in case I ever need it again. That's just one possible scenario.

So what is your scenario?

[MightyGem]

I think that perkinly is clicking on the Upload button in, say, Facebook which then opens a"Finder" window. To do it that way, just drag the photo(s) out of Photos onto the desktop, and then they will be able to be selected in the "Finder" window.

[Rod]

Thats a good solution MightyGem, I used to do it that way years ago and the photos if you drag them from the Photos app are just copied rather than moved which means you can just delete them after they are sent.