No, we don't use the iCloud. Most of the photos are getting buried within the file system, and not in a pictures or photos folder. But from what I gather, macOS saves your entire photo library as one file rather than individual photos in a pictures folder. I might have to do some messing around later. Might be that the correct photo library file wasn't loading. Just seems to me for something that is a premium price it should be a flawless and intuitive system, and shouldn't require detective work. I've never run into any of these kinds of problems with Windows, which is the OS, and its many iterations, I'm most familiar with and have been using my entire life. I have about 18 terabytes of data on my Windows/Linux PC, I'd be going absolutely insane and probably committed to an insane asylum if 50% of my data went missing.