You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Accessing Photos from iMovie if not (fully) loaded from iCloud

iMovie in general allows users to access photos (media) from the iPhotos app. From iMovie typically you easily can select photos or albums you arranged in the iPhotos app.

Having iCloud photos enabled BUT let your mac optimize them to save disc space, some photos are loaded to iPhoto and some are not (better said: only their thumbnails are loaded, but not the full size)

From my point of view this is a BIG PAIN for iMovie users (especially if they do not really understand the technical background). Because in this case they really will NOT understand why they are able to see some photos but don't see other photos (even if both are available in iPhoto!)

The workaround is to switch to iPhotos and click on every single photo to let iPhoto load the full photo from iCloud onto the mac. As soon as all photos from an album are fully loaded from iCloud switch back to iMovie and you will be able to see and use all photos from this album as you would expect. NEXT Pain is, that there is no functionality in iPhotos like "load now" on a whole album. No - you have to click on every single photo to load it from iCloud if you mac decided to "outsource" it to the Cloud. Maybe I am wrong, then please let me know what I am missing and what I described wrong. If not - Apple PLEASE implement a solution to allow iPhoto to load e.g. Albums from the Cloud with one click OR allow iMovie direct access to photos even if they are not currently loaded in full size to the mac.

Thank you very, very much!

Posted on Sep 26, 2020 8:32 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 26, 2020 9:00 AM

The procedure you describe is exactly how its done, Johnny, if you are talking about the Photos.app and not iPhoto, as you mentioned. View a photo enlarged in Photos to force a download from iCloud and you will be able to see it in iMovie.

In Photos 4.0 on Mojave we had a nice command - we could select an album in Photos, ctrl-click it, then select the command "Download originals". This command to force a selective download is now gone in Photos 5.0 on Catalina, a pity.


Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 26, 2020 9:00 AM in response to Johnny-42

The procedure you describe is exactly how its done, Johnny, if you are talking about the Photos.app and not iPhoto, as you mentioned. View a photo enlarged in Photos to force a download from iCloud and you will be able to see it in iMovie.

In Photos 4.0 on Mojave we had a nice command - we could select an album in Photos, ctrl-click it, then select the command "Download originals". This command to force a selective download is now gone in Photos 5.0 on Catalina, a pity.


Accessing Photos from iMovie if not (fully) loaded from iCloud

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.