How to Simulate Star Ratings in Photos

Written for Photos 1 to Photos 4. For Photos 5 on Catalina see: How to Simulate Star Rating in Photos 5 o… - Apple Community

Photos has only a binary rating system - a photo is either a favourite or not.

Aperture and iPhoto had a more elaborate rating system - rejected, *, **, ***, ****, *****.

When Photos migrates the Aperture or Photos Libraries it replaces the star ratings assigned in Aperture of iPhoto by keywords "1 Star", "2 Star", "3 Star", ....

We can search for these rating using smart albums or the search field.And we can assign them quickly, if we drag the keywords to the quick group in the keyword manager; then even the old keyword 5, 4, 3,... shortcuts will work.But there is one problem with this - the rating keywords do not imply an order. It is complicated to search for photos that are "at least 1 Star" or better and to combine the rating with other constraints, because we cannot nest constraints in a smart album.

As a work-around I renamed the keywords generated by the migration to these new keywords:1*, 2**, 3***, 4****, 5*****.

Now I can search for all photos with a rating of two stars or better with a rule "Text includes **".

This will turn up all photos with two consecutive stars in any text, and thus will find 2**, 3***, 4****, 5*****. The number prefix will make it possible to search for the exact rating 3*** as well.

Searching for keywords with a "Text" rule does no longer work in Photos 5 on Catalina, if we do not search for the start of a keyword. Renaming the keywords described as above will not help in Photos 5.

We have to search for the rating with a rule "Keyword is...". To find all photos with a rating of at least 2**, we now have to use "Match any: Keyword is 2**" or Keyword is 3***" or Keyword is 4****" or Keyword is 5*****" .