kathy10708

Q: How do I remove individual albums from photos and send them to an external hard drive?

Newbie Here and grateful for any help.

 

I have been scanning lots of old photos.  I have purchased a WD My Passport for Mac.  I would like to remove some older albums of scanned photos from PHOTOS and put them on the My Passport.  How do I accomplish this?  Also, did I purchase the right external hard drive and/or do I need to format it?  The clerks in Best Buy make it sound so simple...."Just put your pictures on an external hard drive". 

 

I guess I should mention that I have iCloud set to store pictures and I have an airport time capsule set up.

 

Thank you to anybody who can help me!

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Jan 16, 2016 7:26 PM

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Q: How do I remove individual albums from photos and send them to an external hard drive?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by léonie,Apple recommended

    léonie léonie Jan 17, 2016 4:12 PM in response to kathy10708
    Level 10 (106,883 points)
    iLife
    Jan 17, 2016 4:12 PM in response to kathy10708
    Also, did I purchase the right external hard drive and/or do I need to format it?

    Waht is the filesystem of the drive?

    Select the icon of the drive  in the Finder and press the key combination ⌘I  (short for "File > Get Info").

    The Info panel will show the file system in the Genera section:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-17 at 08.40.15GMT.png

     

    If the file system is not MacOS Extended (Journaled) reformat the drive with Disk Utility before you move any data to it.  Formatting will erase it.

    The procedure is explained here for Aperture, but the same goes for Photos:  Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture - Apple Support

     

     

    I have been scanning lots of old photos.  I have purchased a WD My Passport for Mac.  I would like to remove some older albums of scanned photos from PHOTOS and put them on the My Passport.  How do I accomplish this?

    To save your photos on the external drive you have two options -  just saving the individiual photos or saving the the Photos library.

     

    It would be preferable to copy your Photos library to the drive. This way you will save the edited versions with all metadata you added and the original images in the est quality.

     

    If you export the photos you will have to make up your mind, if you want to export the edited versions or the original versions, or both.

     

    • To save the library, simply drag it from the Pictures folder to the external drive.
    • To save the individual photos, open one of your albums, then select all photos with ⌘A,  then use the command "File > Export > Export ... photos" and select a a high quality format t the original size. Do taht for all albums. Check if the export went well, before you delete the photos from the library.  To delete photos from an album use the key combination ⌘⌫   command-delete.

    Empty the recently Deleted album only after you have convinced yourself that the exported photos are o.k. and you have a backup.

  • by kathy10708,

    kathy10708 kathy10708 Jan 17, 2016 4:17 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 17, 2016 4:17 PM in response to léonie

    Thank you so much for your help and for explaining it in terms I could understand!  Blessings to you!

  • by crossczechfotoguy,

    crossczechfotoguy crossczechfotoguy Jan 17, 2016 8:40 PM in response to kathy10708
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jan 17, 2016 8:40 PM in response to kathy10708

    Kathy there are some other huge things that need to be pointed out on top of the suggestion above...

     

    You do not erase original pictures either when you erase any type of an album, or any pictures "within" an album.  You only eliminate them out of the album that they are in.

     

    You can only get rid of the master files in either "Photos" or "All Photos" located in your library in order to get rid of them everywhere else in any album you have created.

     

    Your best bet of the options mentioned above is to drag the full library over to the external drive because the complete structure of how everything looks like when you open Photos will be exactly the same.

     

    At that point go to the internal hard drive and highlight the Photos library and rename it something else than "Photoslibrary"  Call it Happy Clowns or something.  It doesn't matter what you call it.

     

    The reason why is you are going to need to then eliminate (delete) that original library on your internal drive because in essence you now have two identical libraries taking up twice the space that are exactly the same.

     

    After you have a library on your internal drive and one on your external drive.  While opening up Photos hold down the "Option" key (look two buttons to the left of your space bar) while you click on the icon of Photos in your dock.  While you are doing this instead of your pictures showing up on the screen you will get a window that will show you several things.  The names of both of your libraries (including the one you just renamed) and the location of where those two libraries are currently taking up space (whatever the name of your external hard drive is called it will show it also on the sidebar of a finder window when you have one open).

     

    In that window that now comes up double click with your mouse on the library that is on your external drive (this one should have the original title of the photos library).  You will then literally see everything exactly the same way it looked when you connected photos to the original library that you still have in your internal drive (that you renamed).

     

    You have now directed the photos program to always look at that library and use it from now on.  No matter what you do inside of the program Photos (editing, deleting, importing, etc.) it will always be using that library that is now located on your external drive.

     

    You can then put the library that is in your internal hard drive (you renamed whatever...) into the trash and it will free up all that space on your internal drive.

     

    One last big thing you will need to do because you are using the iCloud...

     

    You must go into preferences of Photos (located in the menu bar at top under "Photos") and while the general tab is selected, you need to press on the button in white that says, "Use as System Photo Library".

     

    This will make sure that Photos will be re-syncing the library (on the external drive) just like it was before to your iCloud.  Once you do this you will want to click on the "iCloud" tab that is next to the general tab.  You may have to check the box next to "iCloud photo library".  Once you do that just re-choose which of the two buttons you had chosen before that are located below (optimize or download originals).

     

    Again once you complete this you can now go and delete whatever pictures you want but you have to do it in the "Photos" or "All Photos" portion of the program.

     

    R