Screen Saver "Pictures" Origin?

[jparker402]

I have an early 2015 MacBook Air. Forgot the name of the OS it originally came with, but now using Catalina. When I first got it, I set the screen saver to randomly shuffle through Photos, and I have kept to that. However, I am noticing several photographs coming up which I can no longer find in Photos; I believe I deleted them from Photos quite some time ago. I just now went to Settings>Preferences>Screen Saver and found that the source was labelled "pictures". Not sure I know what "pictures" is suppose to be as a source; thought it was Photos. Went back through my Photos and I cannot find that particular images that keeps popping up randomly. Could someone please tell me what "pictures" means as a source for the screen saver, and then how I can go back to edit what is in pictures? Thanks!!

 

[jparker402]

Okay, I went off half-cocked! Just went to Finder>Pictures and found the photograph there. New question is what is the relationship between Photos and Pictures in Finder? If I delete the photograph from Photos, I would have expected that it would have been deleted from Pictures. And how did the photograph get from Photos to Pictures?

 

[Boyd01]

"Pictures" is just a directory (folder) full of files that happen to be images. Some software may automatically put images there as a default, but you could put any kind of files there, delete them, change the names, create sub-folders, etc..

"Photos" is an app. I don't use it, so not sure where or how it stores the actual images.

 

[glenthompson]

Photos stores your pictures in the "Photos Library.photolibrary" package in the Pictures folder in your home folder. You can have multiple photo libraries and old libraries from iPhoto or Aperture. If you right click on the photo library package you can choose Show Package Contents and see what's in the package. Do not directly modify anything there or you will hose your library. All the original pictures are stored in the Originals folder. No rhyme or reason as to how they are stored in the various folders.

 

[jparker402]

Photos stores your pictures in the "Photos Library.photolibrary" package in the Pictures folder in your home folder. You can have multiple photo libraries and old libraries from iPhoto or Aperture. If you right click on the photo library package you can choose Show Package Contents and see what's in the package. Do not directly modify anything there or you will hose your library. All the original pictures are stored in the Originals folder. No rhyme or reason as to how they are stored in the various folders.

In Finder under pictures folder there is a photos and a Photos Library.photoslibrary. I did delete the images I didn't want from the photos file. Hope that was okay!!! Oh, and I guess when one opts for the screen saver to be from "pictures", that is exactly where it comes from - not Photos. Would be nice to know the relationship between Photos (where I intentionally put images) and "pictures" (which I have no idea how to put things into).

 

[Boyd01]

You put images directly into the Pictures folder the same as you would add them to any folder on the Mac. I have created a lot of sub-folders there to manually organize my images - which go back MUCH farther than the origin of the "Photos" app. In other words, it's just a folder that you manually organize any way you like.

When you use the Photos app, it is supposed to take care of all that automatically. As @glenthompson said, you should not manually delete images from the Photos Library, that may come back to bite you by corrupting the database.

 

[jparker402]

You put images directly into the Pictures folder the same as you would add them to any folder on the Mac. I have created a lot of sub-folders there to manually organize my images - which go back MUCH farther than the origin of the "Photos" app. In other words, it's just a folder that you manually organize any way you like.

When you use the Photos app, it is supposed to take care of all that automatically. As @glenthompson said, you should not manually delete images from the Photos Library, that may come back to bite you by corrupting the database.

Just to be clear, I deleted the images from Photo, nor from Photo Library. Hoping that was okay. Though I still have no idea what the differences between those two folders is.

 

[mmkerc]

Photos is a database app designed to store your images (pictures, photographs, etc). The actual database file that Photos creates is the Photo Library. This is similar to MS Word creating a file letter.doc. Word is the application, letter.doc is the file.

When you take a picture and load it on your computer, you can put the image files off you camera in the folder, or you import them into Photos. Photos is just app that store your files (i.e. images).

Pictures is a folder, similar to the Applications folder, or the Document folder. It is a default folder created in everyone home folder. The screen saver within the OS defaults to looking into that folder for your images to use as part of the screen saver.

 

[jparker402]

Thank you all for the most valuable education!!

 

[jparker402]

Okay, I am back with another problem/question on this same topic or close to it! Installed Monterey and with the latest update got "pictures" working again as a screen saver. I to to System Preferences and have selected "floating" with the Source: people. And I am getting Photos but some of them are not upright; they need rotating. When I screen through my Photos, those same pictures are not rotated. In Photos when I select People, all I get are a preview photo of everyone in my Photos. I do not get a preview of all the photos that I have of those people. How in the world do I find where those photos are so that I can rotate them? And if in Photos they do not need rotating, what in the world is going on?