New to MAC so how do I only keep one copy of a photo when I am creating albums?

How do I remove these aliases so that only one album is displayed when I move photos?

In the photos application there is a function: Add to - the photo is displayed in two albums. The first one where it was located and the second one to which I added it. For me it then becomes a problem. The photo is displayed in two places - it looks like an unnecessary duplicate. In paid browsers there is simply a function: move to. It causes the photo to be displayed in one album only. Is it possible to make a shortcut so that when you add a photo to a new album you simultaneously remove its alias from the previous album?

Currently, I cut out a photo and paste it into a new album so that the photo is not displayed in two albums. But this is a few steps.

1. cut the photos from the original album,

2. paste the photos into the parent album,

In other browsers it is done with one action - move to.

But it is impossible to "move" photos between albums in Photos because albums are not storing photos, as SmilingBrian already explained. Albums are using the one photo in the library and not storing photos. Albums are like a catalogue or index in a lending library for books. There may be only on copy of a book sitting on the shelf, but you will find it in the catalogue in many lists - once sorted by the author, once sorted by the title, sorted by the year, or in the list of new purchases., and there may be several additional list sorting the books according to the category. The same goes for Photos - there are already many predefined albums created by Photos showing you all your photos selected and sorted according to the rules for the specific album. The "Recents" are showing all photos sorted according to the last day added, "All Photos" is showing the photos according to the date they have been taken, "Media > Selfies" is showing all photos taken with the front camera, etc. You are expected to build onto this basic architecture according to your own needs by creating albums for each project you are working on or by adding albums for certain categories of photos. As photos will usually fit several categories, it is natural to have a photo in many albums.

I would not worry about duplicate photos in Photos, as Photos is checking for duplicates on import and will warn us, if we are about to import the same photo twice. We can only create duplicates by importing modified copies of the same photo, and that would not be real duplicates, as the files are different.

Léonie,

thank you for your interest in my questions and for finding the time to answer it. Sue please to outline the problem to use your example - the photo app as a library to borrow books, because the comparison is very apt.

We have our librarian (app user) received a package with books in which there were to be only books about animals (importing photos from Iphone e.g. from a trip to the forest with photos of forest animals).

He prepared a shelf for these books (a photo album in the application) and attached a plate with the inscription "Books about animals" (an album with photos about from a particular trip to the forest).

When he put the books on the shelf without looking at them carefully, he noticed that there were three books about the desert (three pictures from a trip to a museum that had nothing to do with the forest). He smiled to himself because he recognized that these were the books that had been sent to him a month earlier and were to be placed on the shelf prepared for this purpose with the inscription "Books about the desert". (the album in the app pictures from another trip). He takes these three books and brings them to the Books About the Desert shelf (a feature in the app photos Add To), where they are along with other books with the same theme. When he returns to the Books about Animals shelf, he sees that the three books about the desert are still among the books about animals (the way the photo app works - I copy the photos to a new folder, displaying their aliases at the same time in the previous photo album, even if this album does not match thematically). And now the librarian sees three new books about the desert on a shelf with other books about the desert, and three of the same books about the desert on a shelf with books about animals, where thematically they don't match. And he wishes the ones about the desert didn't appear anywhere other than on the Books About the Desert shelf (a photo album from another trip) because that's where he'll look for them.

Léonie, I know that the photo is one and only displays in two albums in the photos app, but I want it to display in only one album - e.g. a specific trip, where I will be looking for it, and not in several albums thematically unrelated to this photo.

I also understand that if I make an additional album with photos in which I want to have all the photos e.g. from a given year, then I will display for example both trips which were in the same year (in your example, books about animals and about desert together because they were in the same year - importing photos from iphones in the same year). But when you want to have only the photos from a particular event in a given album and you accidentally import photos from another event to the album, you want to move them to the right album and you don't want them to be displayed in the album they were imported to by accident.

but I want it to display in only one album - e.g. a specific trip, where I will be looking for it, and not in several albums thematically unrelated to this photo.

That's up to you. Don't add the images to the other albums. In the case of Smart Albums then you achieve a lot if you examine all the options for creating these and find a solution that way. I have photographs from 2013 and that includes some taken in Liguria. I can create an album for 2013:

Date Captured -> Is in the range -> 1/1/2013 / 31/12/2013

And I can exclude the Ligurian ones by adding a term:

Filename -> does not include -> Liguria.

But that only works because I have named the files appropriately. But you can use any option - Filename, title, keywords as works best for you.

Yer_Man,

thank you very much for your answer, because it made me understand why Leonia, did not understand my question and the question from jclevenger846.

You do not understand our question because you are an advanced user of the photo application. You sign every photo you import, so you can create smart albums that do photo searches.

Our question is at the level of a beginner who is not a professional photographer and when importing photos to the photo app I do not sign each photo (e.g. for the reason that there are many of them and it would take a lot of time). I import them into a regular album. However, even though I have not signed all the photos , I want to organize and divide them into separate regular albums (not smart albums). The idea is to simply sort the photos into regular albums. To do this, he uses a simple tool in the form of the Add to function. Then if he doesn't want the photo alias to be displayed in two places, he has to do an extra step - remove the alias from the original regular album. Or he can, as I do, cut the photo from the original regular album and paste it into the new one. In other apps there are two simple tools: Add to - just like in the Photos app after using this function the photo is displayed in two albums - the original and the new one you wanted to add photos to and

Move to - this function causes the photo to be displayed only in the album to which you moved the photo (I still remember that the photo is one in the application library and only its alias is displayed as Smilin-Brian pointed out).

To answer your question, the wrong photo or photos can end up in the wrong album by a moment's inattention - an unintentional action. The point is that the Photos app has the ability to create fantastic smart albums that will select exactly the photos you want and there is no simple tool to organize the album for a novice user.

It is possible that both Léonie and I are not understanding your problem because we're advanced users. There are other possibilities, among them that you're not explaining yourself very well, or that we do understand but you're not understanding the replies you get.

But let's try again, shall we?

I do not sign each photo

Sign? Do you mean rename the file or add a title?

that there are many of them and it would take a lot of time

You can change the filename (in the Finder) or the title (in Photos) of hundreds at one go.

I import them into a regular album.

Why? Why not import them. The go to the Library. Adding them to another album is an extra, unnecessary step. Or, are you confusing Album with the Library.

The idea is to simply sort the photos into regular albums. To do this, he uses a simple tool in the form of the Add to function. Then if he doesn't want the photo alias to be displayed in two places, he has to do an extra step - remove the alias from the original regular album.

When you import a photograph it is added to the Library. Every photograph is in the Library. That never changes. You cannot have a photograph in an album that is not also in the Library. From the library you can add photos to albums as much as you like. But no matter what they remain in the Library also. If you don't want this then you're using the wrong application.

Many thousands of novice users use this app every day. But if it's too complicated for you then the simple solution is to use a different application, one more matched to your capabilities.

The photo albums don’t copy photos, but rather use alias that points to the original copy.

If you delete the original copy, the alias is gone. 

You can add a photo to many albums, without needing extra storage. The only exception are shared albums - shared albums are using downsized copies of the shared photos, specifically for sharing.