Steveatesh wrote: My understanding of Photos on the Mac is that it merely points to the photos on your hard drive (like LR does) rather than contain them in a folder of its own. No, like iPhoto, Photos doesn't merely point to the photos, at least not by default. By default, Apple designed both programs to copy images into the Mac's private photo library. To make iPhoto or Photos import by reference (link) instead, you have to open Preferences and turn off "Copy items to the Photos library." So that's one solution, but it only works for images you haven't imported yet. That's because, if you've already imported images into Photos with that option on, there's no way to make Photos convert them to referenced images. They are trapped inside the Photos library. Steveatesh wrote: Personally I would go to Import in Lightroom then navigate to the actual folders your photos are stored on your hard drive and import them from there. Because of the way Photos stores images, it won't work that way. If the preference above was not changed before importing images, the actual folders where the photos are stored will be inside the private Photos Library inside the Pictures folder. But if you try to navigate to it in the Lightroom import dialog box, Photos Library won't show up. That's because it isn't a folder, it's an OS X package, because Apple does not want you messing around with the contents of the Photos Library. There is a workaround that will let the Lightroom import dialog see the photos inside the Photos library. But I'm not going to describe it, because it also lists the multiple versions of each photo that Photos creates when you import an edit an image, and you don't want those in Lightroom. Apple tries to keep users out of the Photos library because if you move or modify images behind the back of Photos, the Photos database can become confused and corrupted very quickly. So if you want use Photos images in Lightroom, it's safer to get your masters out of the Photos library and import them into Lightroom from there. For example, in Photos, select all the photos you want to manage with Lightroom, and choose File > Export. Export them to a normal folder, and in Lightroom, import them with the Add option to catalog them at that location. Another option is to right-click Photos Library and choose Show Package Contents to force it open. In there you'll see a Masters folder. That contains your unmodified originals. Copy the Masters folder (don't move it) to a location outside Photos Library and import that folder to Lightroom from there. Whatever you do, don't change anything inside the Photos Library package.
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