Deleting photos from Photos?

[Micky Do]

Late last year I upgraded my 2009 Mac Mini from Mountain Lion to El Capitan. With that came a change from iPhoto (which was easy enough to use and I liked) to Photos 1.0 (some of which I am unable to fathom)...... I have checked out Photos 3.0 on new computers, and functionality seems to have been restored, but it requires High Sierra, which is not available to my aged Mac Mini.

My biggest problem is deleting photos...... I take a lot of shots of sports events, most of which are not useful for my purposes (newspaper reports and websites). I archive whole albums on an external drive, but on board I want to keep the best, and delete the rest.

With iPhoto it was just a matter of moving unwanted to trash and emptying the folder from time to time..... they were gone, freeing up space on the HDD.

With Photos 1.0 deleting a photo or album from the visible library is easy enough, but where they go I don't know. I have not been able to find a Recently Deleted Album to empty....... Photos remain cluttering up space on the HDD (only 128 GB on the original HDD), but unseen in the Photos Library.

Photos Help is unhelpful. It directs me a Recently Deleted Album that doesn't seem to exist, or at
least I can't find.

How can I get rid of my unwanted, invisible photos, to free up space on my HDD?

 

[AllergyDoc]

I can't answer for Photos 1, but the recently deleted folder is near the top in Photos 3:

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

"1st Thai Youth Tour" sounds pretty wrong.. :S

But as mentioned above, you should have a 'Recently deleted' folder in the sidebar - I also have it in Photos 2.

 

[Micky Do]

"1st Thai Youth Tour" sounds pretty wrong.. :S

But as mentioned above, you should have a 'Recently deleted' folder in the sidebar - I also have it in Photos 2.

1st Thai Youth......
In full "1st Thai Youth Tournament": It was the first under 19 cricket tournament in Thailand, for which a few of us put together a team of players from several schools to represent Phuket.

As to getting rid of unwanted photos in the library.....

I found that deleting photos from the Last Import folder created a Recently Deleted folder, into which they went. However photos deleted from other folders / albums just disappeared to I know not where. However, I know the remain in the system somewhere as the photo count remained unchanged. So to did the available space on the HDD after deleting a large number of photos.

After playing around for quite a while yesterday I discovered that using right click (on a Logitech mouse) to select photos to delete did result in these photos going to the Recently Deleted folder. More importantly once emptied from that folder they disappeared from the system, thus freeing space on the HDD (the original 128 GBB from 2009, still soldiering on).

I still prefer the simplicity of iPhoto, but with a bit of a work around my problem has now been resolved.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

You do see that there are different options for deleting images from albums, and deleting images completely?

 

[Micky Do]

You do see that there are different options for deleting images from albums, and deleting images completely?

Well, obviously I did discover that.

Having had a bit of time on my hands of late I have spent some of it working out Photos.

For filing and archiving photos I can now say that it is an improvement on the relatively simple to use iPhoto, albeit a little less intuitive initially. It is possible to file a photo in several different albums and folders, something that cannot easily be done with iPhoto, except by duplicating a photo. I now have folders and albums for various categories, and can easily find a photo I want.

However Photos seems to take up more space on the HDD..... Not a biggie these days when HDD's start at 500 GB (for the base model Mac Mini). However I have only the original 120 GB HDD, comparable to the basic 128 GB SSD on base model laptops. External storage is a must for archiving...... also useful as a back-up (in addition to Time Machine, which I do use). A good system of folders there, echoing what I have with Photos, lets me store many more photos there. It took me a month to find these photos (and yes, the catch was held):

Now, filed under "Catches" in my "Cricket" folder as well as the year, league and match, and being in the library, I can find them in an instant.

Editing is still a drag with Photos 1.0, the most up to date available with El Capitan (the most recent available for my early 2009 Mac Mini). It lacks some of the editing tools that iPhoto had, and is rather laggy in use. Checking out Photos 3.0 on a more modern computer, the editing tools have returned, and then some, and it is easier to use. I guess I just have to live with what I have (which is more than adequate for my other needs) until I stump up for a new computer.....

 

[Ray2]

Photos is a lost cause. If you use it expect you will never come close to mastering it as it's an undocumented piece of software. Nothing intuitive about it and no help worth anything. And no one at Apple who knows how to use it as the "team" was reassigned a few times already.

This is Apple today.

 

[Micky Do]

Photos is a lost cause. If you use it expect you will never come close to mastering it as it's an undocumented piece of software. Nothing intuitive about it and no help worth anything. And no one at Apple who knows how to use it as the "team" was reassigned a few times already.

This is Apple today.

While I agree that Photos is not particularly intuitive (unlike most Apple apps, in my experience), and was a battle to make sense of after the relative simplicity of iPhoto, I don't feel it's a lost cause.

I spent some time working it out, and am reasonably happy with the way I can file my photos now. Editing is still a bit of a lost cause compared to iPhoto, which worked quite well on my aged Mac Mini. However, I have tried Photos 3.0 on more modern hardware, and have found much of the functionality has returned, with more editing tools, and smoother operation.

What are the alternatives, what learning curve is involved, and what do they cost?

 

[Ray2]

While I agree that Photos is not particularly intuitive (unlike most Apple apps, in my experience), and was a battle to make sense of after the relative simplicity of iPhoto, I don't feel it's a lost cause.

I spent some time working it out, and am reasonably happy with the way I can file my photos now. Editing is still a bit of a lost cause compared to iPhoto, which worked quite well on my aged Mac Mini. However, I have tried Photos 3.0 on more modern hardware, and have found much of the functionality has returned, with more editing tools, and smoother operation.

What are the alternatives, what learning curve is involved, and what do they cost?

Good it works for you. Really all that matters.