See only photos NOT in an album

This is a really maddening problem. I have about a year's worth of photos now and some have been added to albums and some have not. I take it that the answer to this important question is, "There is no easy way in Apple Photos to find orphaned photos that have not been assigned to at least one album." I am pretty sure several years ago in one of the earlier incarnations of Photos one could create a smart folder that solved this problem easily. This is a really frustrating problem to have.

The simple answer seems to be here: https://www.macworld.com/article/229895/how-to-find-all-the-media-not-in-an-album-in-apple-photos.html

Maybe I misunderstood from the first answer. Here is all there is to it:

Choose File > New Smart Album. Give it a name like "Not in Any Album"

Select from criteria Album, Is Not, Any.

Name and click OK.

That seems to be all there is to the process.

The benefit would be, that you can filter for photos not in an album, in any view and any smart album. For example, if you are viewing a smart album with photos from a certain year, set the filter to the keyword for photos not in an album and you can focus on the photos from this year. You an additionally filter for videos or other favorites, etc. once set up it will be more flexible.

I like how the filter can add a different layer of rules to albums and smart albums and are using the filters a lot. I am using smart albums based on keywords more than albums. Instead of dragging photos to albums I prefer to add a keyword with the album name to the photo. This is just one key stroke. And I can see in the Info for a photo by the keywords, which album it it in. To remove it from the album, I do not have to open the album but just delete the keyword.

I have over 8,000 photos and dozens of albums. Maybe I don’t understand the process suggested, but it seems I would set some tag in all 8,000 photos, then go through every album one by one and remove that tag? That’s a lot of work. But, maybe is misunderstood.

Use your smart album, it is the only solution.

if you select all photos in your smart album with (cmd)A, and then add a keyword, for example NotInAlbum, and add the keyword to the Quick Group, you can use the filter to find the photos not in an album, as any keyword from your QuickGroup can be used as a filter. Just remove the keyword again, when you add a photo to an album.

Read the first post. Use the smart album.

They are easy to find.

You can only filter for keywords and create smart albums on your Mac, not on the iPhone. But on the iPhone you can search for the keywords, as iCloud Photos is syncing them to the iPhone. The photos with the keyword you are searching for will appear below the heading Keywords in the search result. And when you select this result, you can add further filters.

Use your smart album, if you really need to know, which photos are in albums or are not.

It will work on your Mac, but not on an iPhone.

Why do you want to know which photos are in albums? Perhaps you can achieve what you want to do without partitioning the photos into disjoint albums. On the iPhone is no easy, feasible way.

It is not necessary to have each and every photo in an album, and it does not matter, if a photo is in many albums. I am only creating albums when I need to select photos for some project. Or to group related photos according to categories. Many photos are belonging to several categories, so they are in many albums. And many of my photos are in no album at all, because there are better photos of the same event and will sooner or later be deleted anyway.