Photos reorganize

[funnnyfarm]

My photos go back 1977 when I junked my micro soft computer and went to a iPad Pro and a 13” MacBook Air. I save all my photos and Videos on a external hard drive and my iCloud Drive. I have all ready backed the photos on another external. I want to reorganize my photos. Right now they are all in Albums. I want to put Albums in folders, but should I delete the photos from the iCloud Drive. Any advice would be great. Thanks funnnyfarm

 

[Slartibart]

Which version of macOS are you using? Depending on that, so far you have organized your photos using iPhoto or Apple’s Photos (which do you use currently)?

 

[funnnyfarm]

My photos go back 1977 when I junked my micro soft computer and went to a iPad Pro and a 13” MacBook Air. I save all my photos and Videos on a external hard drive and my iCloud Drive. I have all ready backed the photos on another external. I want to reorganize my photos. Right now they are all in Albums. I want to put Albums in folders, but should I delete the photos from the iCloud Drive. Any advice would be great. Thanks funnnyfarm

 

[Tagbert]

I wouldn’t delete the iCloud Photos. they are linked to the photos on your computer and I think that would delete your local copies. Generally whatever you do locally is synced to iCloud and vice versa.

 

[funnnyfarm]

I wouldn’t delete the iCloud Photos. they are linked to the photos on your computer and I think that would delete your local copies. Generally whatever you do locally is synced to iCloud and vice versa.

Thanks Tagbert i will start at iCloud. funnnyfarm

 

[DocBashir]

I concur with Tagbert. Don't delete iCloud drive. At least until you make sure ALL your photos are on your external drive as jpeg or other photo types. Deleting photos from the iCloud drive (assuming you are using the Mac's Photos app to view the photos on iCloud or on iCloud.com) will delete the photos from all devices unless you have Exported them. (Of course, they will still be in Recently Deleted until you delete them there also.)

If your 'Albums' are in Mac's Photos app, you may already know that photos in Albums are just links to the photos in the Photos Library. To keep the Albums as folders, you have to Export each Album to a folder of the same name. If you also export everything from All Photos, the photos that were in albums will be duplicated.

I would like to know more details about your current setup and what you want to accomplish. What apps are you using to manage your photos? How are the photos organized on your drives? How were the old photos incorporated into your Photo Library? What methods are you using to put the photos and videos on the external drive? What is your plan for managing your photos going forward.

 

[Tagbert]

One way to manage photos is to split a large library file into tow or more libraries. Each one is a separate file. This keeps the file smaller and if your goal is to reduce the number of photos in iCloud, this will let you do it.

The downside is that only the main library is available on iCloud and on your other devices. If you are using your phone and wanted to pull up photos of that trip in 2007, you won't be able to. For a while I had separate libraries for each year, but that became too clumsy and limiting. You need to hold the Option key down while starting Photos to select a different photo library.

If you choose to go this route, the third-party app PowerPhotos will make it easy to split a library and will carry albums over to the new library. Any tagged faces will not be retained in a separate library as the apis don't support accessing them.

PowerPhotos - Merge Mac Photos libraries, find duplicate photos, and more

www.fatcatsoftware.com