Photos App Issue

[Ken1222]

Hello, my issue is a three-parter. Right-clicked on email .jpg attachments to download them after which I would send them to my photos library on my iMac as I have done in the past. The files appear on my downloads virtual folder in the dock, but when I open Finder they are not in the downloads folder so I cannot move or delete them.
- Why aren't the files visible in my Finder when they are there and viewable in the virtual folder in the dock?
- Why can't I move or drag photos from my "import" folder in my photos library into my main photos folder (I have
to click on "imports" to view these half dozen files).
- What is the purpose of the "imports" folder in photos and why do my downloaded photos sometimes go into it for
no apparent rhyme or reason?

Any advice is appreciated...sometimes Apple's "quirks" really drive me nuts.

Thanks

 

[Nigel Goodman]

1: Have you got 2 Download folders? I had this with iCloud Drive. If you have iCloud Drive turned on you might find 1 Download folder there as well as 1 in your Home folder. This happened to me. The one you want to keep is the one in your Home folder. Edit: check in the preferences of your email client to make sure the correct Downloads folder is the right destination.

2: Photos imported to the Photos app will first be shown in the Imports area. They will also be in All Photos and can be added to any Album you like. In the Sidebar on the left click Photos (at the top) and then click the All Photos tab. You will see all the imports there.

3: The Imports folder is there so all imported photos are grouped together. They will also appear in All Photos as described in 2.

 

[Ken1222]

Thanks for the info on downloads folders.
As for photos, my basic issue is that they’re in the imports folder but they do not show up in the All Photos tab... what is the reason for that?

 

[Nigel Goodman]

In Photos view have you got View>Show>All Items selected?

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Imports is an Album - Albums, like web pages, do not contain actual images, they are effectively made up of links to images that are stored elsewhere - in the Photos library. This is very much like images in a web page, which are actually stored/fetched separately from the web server. Photos is the master catalog of all images, and is organized chronologically by the image date. "All Photos," "Years," "Months," and "Days" are ways of viewing the contents of that Photos library. So, if you see something in Imports or Recents, it has to be in the Photos library.

Photos in the Photos library are not organized by the Import date, they are organized by the Image date. So if you imported a JPG from 2018 that contains EXIF metadata, then it'll be sorted in Photos by the image date in the EXIF metadata (2018) rather than the file create date you see in Finder (2020).

Whether that EXIF data is present depends on how the JPG image was obtained - for privacy reasons EXIF data may be stripped from images shared via messaging apps, email, etc. - the main concern there is that the EXIF can contain GPS coordinates that can compromise the privacy of the sender. So if the file does not contain EXIF data, then it should be organized in Photos by the date you imported the file. But if you imported the JPGs from a camera or a camera's memory card, it'll contain the EXIF data and will be sorted by EXIF image date.

 

[Ken1222]

Thanks very much, Nigel and Apfel.

My "imported" photos are indeed in the main photos folder but just noticed that one of the EXIF dates was December 1st 1903, so of course it was embedded near the top of my large photo catalog. I had been looking at the bottom, which is where the recents always appear. I never thought to check the date!

Thanks again for your help with my downloads and photos questions.