macmacosphotos
I want to store some pictures that I had in a camera in a folder on my mac, but when I inserted its memory card on the the respective USB port, the app Photos opened up, and there was the option to import the pictures, which is what I did.
Now, I just would like to retrieve all these pictures and put them in a folder that I want. How can I do it? I don't want this Photos app to keep track of any picture that I imported actually.
When you choose to export from Photo (File>Export), choose TIFF, 16-bit and you should get a full quality, uncompressed, but edited image out of Photo. This is what the settings in the export dialog box will look like:
The reason you haven't found the folder with the edits are that image editing programs such as Photo or Adobe Lightroom perform non-destructive edits as an instruction set that sits in a database that references the original image. Basically your edits just create a recipe that the software then can use to create an output file. If you choose to print, it will give the instructions on how to render the edited image to the printer. The only time you will get an edited file is if you export to a file format such as JPEG or TIFF.
TIFF gives you an uncompressed file, and by choosing 16 bits, the software is actually interpolating to add pixels to your photos as most digital camera sensors produce a 12 or 14 bit image. There isn't much of a point for more, as the human eye has a hard time distinguishing the available gradations of a 16-bit dynamic range.
JPEG is a Lossy compression format, but for even a 5K iMac, if you go for the highest quality, largest file size, you will likely not be able to see a difference between the TIFF and the JPEG version of the file, and you will have a file that is probably 80% smaller, depending on the subject matter.
You also have the option of exporting the Unedited originals (Raw files) using this option as well. There is an option to export IPTC data as an XMP sidecar file.
Use Image Capture, in the Applications folder - which is the importer 'behind' Photos.app anyway.
You can set it to auto-launch any capable app, including itself [or do nothing] & set exactly where your imports should be saved. You can also dictate whether it should auto-delete from the camera afterwards, or alternatively you can manually delete any selected pictures.
Best Answer
By default, imported original photos are located at:
So putting them into a folder is as simple as copying the 'Masters" folder elsewhere.
Alternatively you can select the photos you wish to retrieve and then go to
File > Export > Export Unmodified Original.