Original photo is missing, but is still in Photos for Mac

[peterafranklin]

I selected a few photos from the Photos app in Mac, using the Edit With Lightroom Classic right click option. Imported OK (using Add option) and did my edits plus a couple of draft prints. Couple of days later went to print again from Lightroom but they came out blank. Seems the source files are missing, and Lightroom states the photos are missing. Tried to locate missing photos by clicking on the exclamation mark but does not find them. However, they are still sitting nicely in Photos app.

I tried importing another photo today using the same process and that is fine at the moment, so not sure what I might have done to break the links.

Is there a way of linking the files to Lightroom and how do I prevent this happening again?

Thanks

Peter

[JP Hess]

There are a number of ways that images can become missing. Hopefully, there will be information on this webpage that will help you resolve the issue.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/ 

[Rob_Cullen]

Lightroom doesn't currently support importing from the Apple Photos' Library.

This was in 2015 but is still applicable!

The Mac Photos App 'locks' your files away in a library that is not visible to Lightroom-Classic. Thus you have "missing photos".

(not being a Mac person) I do not understand how you managed to Import from the Photos App to make your initial prints in the first instance. (possibly you were only editing some Preview files).

Have a read of answers in this 'old' forum thead by-  @Daniel_Sterchi

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/i-can-t-find-apples-photos-library-to-import-into-l...

Lr-Classic and Photos App are two entirely different working systems and you will only have difficulties trying to reference your photos in both!

[Jao vdL]

You do not want to do "edit in Classic" from Photos. Photos dynamically downloads and uploads images to the cloud and doesn't keep all images around. So at some point they will always go missing with this method. What you want to do is export originals from Photos and import those exported originals into Classic. Typically you would then use the move option in the import panel to put the newly imported images into the standard Lightroom file and folder structure you have set up.

[peterafranklin]

Thanks all for your replies.

One assumes Lightroom does support importing from Photos in some way, and Photos obviously intends to as it provides the option to edit in Lr from within the app. However, I suspect Jao has the answer by suggesting the orginals should be moved (or maybe copied?) into a new folder that Lr will use to enable future editing. I will try that and see how it goes.

The second photo I imported and edited the following day still shows the orginal in Lr, so I wonder if I did something to cause the missing photos from the first batch.

btw I keep the originals downloaded to my Mac even though thay are all stored in iCloud.

regards

Peter

[peterafranklin]

Ok, I think it's sorted. Jao is correct - I copied the orginal files from Photos app when importing into Lr and a few days later they are still there. It seems something changes after a day or two in the Photo app library to remove the link to the orginal files, so copying or moving when importing into Lr is the way to go.