iCloud + Photos

[8Apples]

I have always kept my pictures organized like this: Pictures -> 2017 -> 2017-05-20 -> pictures.

I have digital library dating back to 1999. With my wife's computer she doesn't have space to access all the pictures. I have decided that I will upgrade and use iCloud to remedy this situation and pay for the space. While I don't mind using Photos, it is not my primary Photo program. iCloud is setup to best work with Photos. In order to work with Photos, I will have to relinquish the control of my nicely organized photos to the hands of Apple Photos in order to actually benefit from this space and decision. Is there any other way to go about this? Referenced libraries are not uploaded to the cloud and therefore are not 'available'. My primary objective is to be able to have fluid sharing between my wife's iPhone/MacbookAir and my iPhone/MacbookPro. I was a looooong time user of Picasa (RIP) . It let me organize my pictures and it just referenced them (yes I miss it). In the end, I was in control. I currently use Unbound and XnViewMP to view my wonderful picture setup. I do have some pictures pulled into Photos library for specific projects I have done, but not all of them. It is 100GB of pictures. Do I really have to cave to Apple Photos to be able to do this??? Any ideas thoughts?

 

[techwarrior]

Assuming you are starting fresh, when you start importing into Photos, create albums organized like your current structure (by year, and perhaps month). Then, import into these. Photos also allows you to create Albums by subject without duplicating photos. So, you could have Albums by year and month, with more general topics like Family, Trips, Activities.

If all you are trying to achieve is sharing between two computers, and don't want the hassle of Photos, how about a cloud account like Box, DropBox, or even iCloud? Create a pictures folder and move your entire photo file structure under this. Then, login with that cloud account on both Macs and boom, done. With all of these, if you login with the same account on both computers, you will have copies on each computer and the cloud which will auto sync. Or, you cause different accounts (pay for 2) and only share the pictures but have personal storage that is not shared (if that is important).

Unfortunately, iCloud Drive doesn't allow folder sharing, only individual files. So if you go that route, you would need to be logged in the the same iCloud account on both Macs.

 

[8Apples]

After writing this... I'm starting to think I'm hanging onto my Folder Structure for no real reason, other than I like the organization of it. I want the simplicity of Photos managing it all, and syncing it across devices, but like the control. I just took a look inside the Photos Library.photoslibrary folder structure, and I see that Masters are actually still organized in similar fashion to the way I do things... so it wouldn't be the end of the world accepting and trusting them with the Folder setup.
[doublepost=1514741833][/doublepost]

Assuming you are starting fresh, when you start importing into Photos, create albums organized like your current structure (by year, and perhaps month). Then, import into these. Photos also allows you to create Albums by subject without duplicating photos. So, you could have Albums by year and month, with more general topics like Family, Trips, Activities.

Great idea!!! Thank you for the tip. I will have to start fresh with a New Photos database to make this work.

 

[techwarrior]

Drop by your local Apple store and sit in on one of their sessions on iCloud or Photos. The sessions are free, and the instructors are generally quite knowledgeable and willing to spend a little time tailoring the content to attendees questions.

They may have some suggestions on how to best tackle this that might avoid frustration of trial and error. In my local store, they seem to offer these sessions several times per week.

 

[8Apples]

Unfortunately I'm no where near an Apple Store. I have been to their classes before, they are very helpful. I am now researching using two apple id's with Photos and sharing the album. I would like to do this: My wife takes a picture on her iPhone it is automatically uploaded to the iCloud and added to my iPhone. Then I take a picture and it does the same. Do we need to use the same apple id to do this? Or is this not even an option? My research keeps pulling old info from 2015 when all this was introduced and still problematic.

Ohh, this seems to cover it: https://www.imore.com/how-use-icloud-family-sharing-photos-mac

 

[Pomeroy]

The Photo app sorts your photos by date automatically, you don’t need to put them in folders for that. When you want to see photos from a date just type it in the search bar, (jun 2012) and there will be all the photos from June of 2012. That works on your Mac computer or iPhone. There are lots of ways to find the picture you want easy in Photos by using Smart Albums and keywords too. There are other ways to see your photos listed too, I’m not at my computer so don’t want to lead you wrong, but learn to use the search function in Photo and you will be able to find the pictures you want fast and easy.

 

[8Apples]

The Photo app sorts your photos by date automatically, you don’t need to put them in folders for that. When you want to see photos from a date just type it in the search bar, (jun 2012) and there will be all the photos from June of 2012. That works on your Mac computer or iPhone. There are lots of ways to find the picture you want easy in Photos by using Smart Albums and keywords too. There are other ways to see your photos listed too, I’m not at my computer so don’t want to lead you wrong, but learn to use the search function in Photo and you will be able to find the pictures you want fast and easy.

You are right. I have been thinking a lot about why am I holding on to my folder structure. I have trust issues with Software companies that tend to leave you paying them $$$ in the end or leaving you high and dry. I can see however this will not be the case, the 'worst case scenario' is that my pictures will still be organized by a folder structure inside the 'folder' Photos Library.photoslibrary under a subfolder called Masters then organized by year, then month. So in the end, if the database breaks, crashes, gets dropped off the support list. I can still get my pictures easily without being a database guru. That is probably one of my big concerns. I hate being prisoner of a system or company. That is probably the root of it all. That being said, I'm kicking off the New Year with Photos and iCloud.

 

[8Apples]

I think this will be helpful for me sharing my Photos Library at home: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517 So I sync locally to my USB drive attached to my Airport Extreme. My wife and I both use that, hers could be set to iCloud, and mine just local, and that would create one in iCloud and my local copy... I think that may work for syncing between us.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

After writing this... I'm starting to think I'm hanging onto my Folder Structure for no real reason, other than I like the organization of it. I want the simplicity of Photos managing it all, and syncing it across devices, but like the control. I just took a look inside the Photos Library.photoslibrary folder structure, and I see that Masters are actually still organized in similar fashion to the way I do things... so it wouldn't be the end of the world accepting and trusting them with the Folder setup.
[doublepost=1514741833][/doublepost]

Great idea!!! Thank you for the tip. I will have to start fresh with a New Photos database to make this work.

I was going to say exactly that, 'under the hood' that is how Photos organises it anyway...but you are going to gain so many other ways of organising as well it really is worth it to start using additional metadata.

 

[mikzn]

I think this will be helpful for me sharing my Photos Library at home: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517 So I sync locally to my USB drive attached to my Airport Extreme. My wife and I both use that, hers could be set to iCloud, and mine just local, and that would create one in iCloud and my local copy... I think that may work for syncing between us.

I agree with Pomeroy's comments - Photos automatically organizes your photos by date and using meta data, albums and projects you can search and further organize your pictures. Albums and Projects do not duplicate the pictures - they just provide an "alias" of the original (much like iTunes playlists) so if you have a picture in multiple albums or projects you are not creating unnecessary duplicates.

iCloud and iOS - As per your original post looks like you have a lot of pictures going back to 1999, my guess is you may have a massive amount of photos and putting them on iCloud will require a lot of storage and may not fit on you iPhone or iPad - I have about 140 gig of pictures for roughly the same time period. I don't use iCloud to sync Photos for this reason and use iTunes to manage photos back to my iPhone and iPad by syncing selected albums (once you are using photos albums will automatically appear in iTunes for sync options). I also have the libraries split into separate libraries (ex Work, Hiking, Personal/Family)

If you want a tools for managing large amounts of pictures and multiple libraries you might want to check out PowerPhotos a great "add on" to the Photos app