Photos mystery

[poppi]

I have a mystery with photos. I have my desk top pictures to randomly cycle through the photos file and I frequently see a photo that I want to share with the family as a flashback. In the majority of times I can locate the picture in the photos file and share it by email.However on occasion I see photo on the desktop which cannot be found in photos. If not there where is it coming from? Suggestions will be appreciated

Thank you

poppi

 

[MacInWin]

What version of the OS? What Mac?

 

[poppi]

What version of the OS? What Mac?

Sorry.20" iMac, early 2008 O/S 10.11.6 El Capitan

 

[MacInWin]

OK, thanks. In the original post you said:

In the majority of times I can locate the picture in the photos file and share it by email.

Can you explain this a bit better? What do you mind by "locate the picture in the photos file?" I ask because Photos has two ways to build the Photos database, one is to actually import the image into the database and the other is to leave the files where they are and only import the location into Photos. So what do you do when you "locate the picture in the photos file?" What is the "photos file" to which you refer?

 

[badshoehabit]

Find photos by text, content or date in Photos on Mac

In Photos on your Mac, find a photo by searching for text in the title or caption, for something in the photo (like “the beach”) or a date.

support.apple.com

 

[poppi]

Find photos by text, content or date in Photos on Mac

In Photos on your Mac, find a photo by searching for text in the title or caption, for something in the photo (like “the beach”) or a date.

support.apple.com

The photos file to which I refer was named iPhoto in an earlier O/S version.When I upgraded to 10.11.6 it became photos. It's icon is in the dock and I open it by 2x clicking on that icon. When I import photos to the iMac i send them there (currently 10,500 photos). I religiously assign key words to the photos, largely the names of people in the photo. When I see a photo in my rotating desktop that I want to find I type the names in the search box and search by key word. One example - I recently saw an older photo of my mother snd father in law on the desk top and searched by her name, his name, both names, and the year, none of which worked. The mystery is that photo on the desk top came from somewhere but it is definitely not in the PHOTOS database. I should mention that my desktop setting in System preferences is set to "Photos"

Hope this helps

poppi

 

[MacInWin]

Ok, so just to clarify, Photos is an application, not a file. It has a database stored on your system somewhere that holds your images for you. The application Photos can, if you want, look for people for you, too, notwithstanding any key words you may or may not assign. To use that function, open Photos, select "People" on the left column and the resulting display will be of people you have let it identify for you. To add someone to that list, open a photo with them in it and below the picture will be a subset of faces the software has found in the image. Click on one to assign a name. Now Photos will start a process of scanning all of your images to find that face in them. It takes quite a while, as you might expect, for that scanning to complete, so be patient until it finishes. You will see that when you click on People on the left you will see that it is updating and will finish when Photos is in the background. That means leave it running, but click on Photos in the upper left corner and then Hide Photos to put it in the background and let it run. It's not perfect, but it may help you find those images not tagged for whatever reason.

 

[poppi]

Ok, so just to clarify, Photos is an application, not a file. It has a database stored on your system somewhere that holds your images for you. The application Photos can, if you want, look for people for you, too, notwithstanding any key words you may or may not assign. To use that function, open Photos, select "People" on the left column and the resulting display will be of people you have let it identify for you. To add someone to that list, open a photo with them in it and below the picture will be a subset of faces the software has found in the image. Click on one to assign a name. Now Photos will start a process of scanning all of your images to find that face in them. It takes quite a while, as you might expect, for that scanning to complete, so be patient until it finishes. You will see that when you click on People on the left you will see that it is updating and will finish when Photos is in the background. That means leave it running, but click on Photos in the upper left corner and then Hide Photos to put it in the background and let it run. It's not perfect, but it may help you find those images not tagged for whatever reason.

Sounds very high tech but I will give it a shot. Thank you

poppi

 

[MacInWin]

It is high tech, but easy to use. And by "quite a while" I mean it may take days to finish. It runs in the background, with very low priority, so as not to interfere with what you might want to do while it runs.

 

[IWT]

Sounds very high tech

No poppi, it's dead easy, I promise and so rewarding when you've finished.

People, places, favourites, memories - Photos does it all for you. Just give "people" a nudge.

Photos also automatically creates Albums like this:



No input from you! It's a great app and one you can learn to use without getting a headache. Editing is a joy, for example. You can "play" with loads of settings without ever losing the original. Give it a go, eh?

Ian