I am trying to create a smart folder that contains all my photos that are located in the masters subfolders that are held within the photo library that is stored on an external drive. I will then delete the photo library from my drive, but keep the photos. I have tried various combinations of searching, but can't seem to get the result I need. I hope this makes sense! Many thanks in advance for any help.
iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.14
Hi computermum!
This won't work, because: (A) Smart folders won't look inside your Photos library; and (B) even if they did, if you were then to delete your Photos library, the images would disappear from the Smart Folder.
Smart Folders are representations of saved searches, not collections of the real files.
One way to achieve what you want is to launch Photos, select all the images and use File - Export to save external copies. Once that's complete (it may take some time depending on how many images you have), you could (if you really really wanted to) delete your Photos library.
But I would back up your hard disk first.
Cheers,
H
Hi computermum!
This won't work, because: (A) Smart folders won't look inside your Photos library; and (B) even if they did, if you were then to delete your Photos library, the images would disappear from the Smart Folder.
Smart Folders are representations of saved searches, not collections of the real files.
One way to achieve what you want is to launch Photos, select all the images and use File - Export to save external copies. Once that's complete (it may take some time depending on how many images you have), you could (if you really really wanted to) delete your Photos library.
But I would back up your hard disk first.
Cheers,
H
Thank you so much for the very clear reply, that obviously explains why nothing was showing up in my searches!
Smart folder for photos
