If you’re confused, the video below shows the right-click / control-click approach to accessing the Photos master image files:Īnother approach to finding the original file from Photos app on Mac is using the “Show Referenced” function, which will open a Finder window directly to a file that was chosen from the Photos app. This package folder is not intended to be user-facing which is why it is hidden, nonetheless you can access your files directly if you so desire. Copy a file from the directory if you wish to edit it. This is not recommended for obvious reasons. Note if you delete a picture from the masters directory it will no longer be accessible in Photos app. Within each folder are the image files from that specific date. The Masters folder contains directories of photos organized by date in year, month, and day subfolders.

Open the folder named “originals” or “Masters” (depending on the macOS version) to find the image files contained within Photos app.

Right-click (or Control+Click) on “Photos Library.photoslibrary” and choose “Show Package Contents”.Locate the file named “Photos Library.photoslibrary”.Open the Finder in Mac OS and go to your home directory.If you are going to manually navigate to the Photos file location using the Finder you would use the following steps How to Access Where Photos Files Are Stored in Mac OS This obviously focuses on local image files and not anything stored within iCloud, which are instead accessed through iCloud Photo Library or the Photos app.

Image capture on mac