Moving but keeping phots.

[cheddar-caveman]

In Photos, iOS there any way one can move images away from the main desk, into an album for example, and then delete the photos from the main gallery but retain them in the Album? When I delete them from the gallery they also disappear from the album.
I am just getting into astrophotography so am taking hundreds of pictures, some of which I want to keep but not in the main gallery.

Any idea where I can store them for future use please?

 

[Longkeg]

Photos retains only one copy of a photo ... period. It’s existence is recorded in the Photos Master Directory, what you are calling “the main gallery”. When you move a photo to an album you’re not really moving anything or even creating a copy of anything. All that happens is a marker (or Alias) referring back to the original photo (in the gallery) is created so the album can locate and display the photo. If you delete the original photo, the alias can’t find what it’s supposed to and nothing is displayed. That’s just how Photos works. To do what you are describing would, in my opinion, require a “non-Apple” solution.

 

[James_C]

Any idea where I can store them for future use please?

You could create a separate photo's library for your astronomy pics. When you press the ALT (⌥) Key down as you start Photo's it gives you the option to open or create another library.

Alternatively you could create a smart album and tag all your astronomy photos to be included in that smart album. You can then create a second smart album that contains all photos apart from those in the Astronomy smart album.

 

[Longkeg]

Keeping in mind that if it’s not in the Main Gallery it’s not in Photos... you could: create an empty folder on your Desktop. Drag and drop pictures you want to archive (but not keep in Photos) to the folder. Copies will be created in the new folder and you can then delete the pictures from Photos. You will end up with a folder full of pictures with meaningless alphanumeric names that you can keep on your hard drive or move to an external drive, cloud storage... whatever. In my opinion this would just cause confusion and add an unnecessary layer of complication. The reality is that if you don’t want the Photo in the Gallery, you can’t have it in the Photos app at all. I’m trying to understand why you wouldn’t want the photos to show at the root level (your Main Gallery). You’re not gaining storage space since only one copy of a photo is all that is ever saved. Keep your albums up to date and organized and spend as little time as possible in the Gallery and you should fine.

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Thanks guys. The main reason for wanting to clear them out of the main page is because it looks like this and this is just last nights!!

 

[Longkeg]

All righty then! Good luck with that. All I can think of is to archive nightly. Name the folders by date.