I always create a shortcut to some of my hidden files on my hard drive -
that is not recommended for most users - but for those of you that do
the same I'm sure you understand why. I noticed my shortcut to photos
cuts off the very day I updated from iPhoto to Photo app.
As you may have discovered, too, the new Photo app doesn't have the option to find the actual photo via reveal finder in
the menu any longer. An annoyance many of us discuss on the Apple
forums. So, I was just going to locate the photos I didn't really truly
want to save forever via my shortcut and it appeared that the new Photos
app on Mac wasn't saving my photos from Photo Stream to my hard drive
(I do that so I don't have to worry about the 1000 photos/30 day
limits). In an effort to figure out why my new photos were not
appearing, I found what looked like 2 duplicate photo folders appearing
to take up twice the hard drive space on my computer if I viewed "Get
Info". A few moments later I discovered what appeared like actually 5
folders of the same photos! 2 "Masters" and 1 "Original" and 1
"Modified" and "Preview" folders. Note:Years ago the Masters was called Original
(photos). Does that mean my photos are on my computer 5x? Not
so fast....
Without being
more long winded, one Masters and the Original is actually the same and
what appears to be the newer for "Photos" app, and the "Modified" and "Previews" is the
same as the older "Masters" folder that was used for "iPhotos".
Confused? if so then it doesn't matter to you. However, if you
understand - then I hope I save you fellow geeks a few minutes - your
photos are NOT duplicated, but just another way Apple updates without
duplicating, giving you access using old files if you still want to use
iPhoto (old software).
See: