How I can organize my photos to make it easy to find these fastest?

I have 38K + photos in apple library, but when I need to fine these it takes to much to fine these. What do suggest? Thank you.

iPhone XS Max, iOS 15

Posted on Dec 8, 2021 9:52 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 8, 2021 11:30 PM

38K is not a large library these days, and as you don't say how you're searching, and how long it takes you to find images, it's impossible to do more than a quick survey of the possibilities Photos offers.


At heart Photos is a database, and to coin an old joke, a database is a like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. So the more effort you put into categorising your images the easier they will be to find. Some things are done automatically: date and time, for instance, so easy to find if you know when the photo was taken. The Places feature, if your camera device tracks that data, means you can find all the images taken in London, or Spain or New York. If your camera doesn’t track that then you can add it in manually. If you're looking for a particular person then the more time you spend naming people in the People section the easier it gets. The AI feature is also useful as it categorises images by what it can recognise in them, so search for 'trees' or 'mountain' and it will find any images that contain these features. Then there is the keywording feature which allows you to further categorise the image using any system you can devise.


As well as the search box you can also create Smart Albums to find images - like all the Photos of John taken in New York in September last year, and even limit those to one you favourited or are work and not holiday images...


So basically, Photos offers you Who, What, Where, and When, as well as any other categorising feature your can devise to help you find your images.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 8, 2021 11:30 PM in response to 0908_2021

38K is not a large library these days, and as you don't say how you're searching, and how long it takes you to find images, it's impossible to do more than a quick survey of the possibilities Photos offers.


At heart Photos is a database, and to coin an old joke, a database is a like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. So the more effort you put into categorising your images the easier they will be to find. Some things are done automatically: date and time, for instance, so easy to find if you know when the photo was taken. The Places feature, if your camera device tracks that data, means you can find all the images taken in London, or Spain or New York. If your camera doesn’t track that then you can add it in manually. If you're looking for a particular person then the more time you spend naming people in the People section the easier it gets. The AI feature is also useful as it categorises images by what it can recognise in them, so search for 'trees' or 'mountain' and it will find any images that contain these features. Then there is the keywording feature which allows you to further categorise the image using any system you can devise.


As well as the search box you can also create Smart Albums to find images - like all the Photos of John taken in New York in September last year, and even limit those to one you favourited or are work and not holiday images...


So basically, Photos offers you Who, What, Where, and When, as well as any other categorising feature your can devise to help you find your images.

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How I can organize my photos to make it easy to find these fastest?

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