I contacted Apple support who escalated my case to Apple Engineering. Apple Engineering’s initial response was to request diagnostics be gather and sent to Apple which was done. I am waiting to hear back from Apple but the Apple Media Support person pretty much confirmed what I already suspected. Here is my summary:
1. On the Mac, the Photos app allows you to create folders, subfolders, and albums under “My Albums”. In addition, you can use Apple Script to automate the process of importing and creating a folder-album structure from an existing Finder based file-folder photo library. This is a great time saver for those with very large photo libraries.
2. On the iPad, the Photos app allows you to create folders, subfolders, and albums under “My Albums” but there is no way to automate the creation of folders, subfolders, and albums. If you have a large photo library, the process of creating a folder-album structure on the iPad has to be done manually which could take months. Managing a large photo library on the iPad (or iPhone) is just not feasible.
3. If you are using iCloud photos, the folder, subfolder and album structure you created on your Mac using the Photos app will sync over to your iPad or iPhone under “My Albums” as expected.
4. If you are not using iCloud photos, you have to use iTunes (which is now integrated into MacOS but still a separate application under Windows) to sync your photos to your iPad. Unfortunately, when your photo library is synced from your Mac to an iPad (or iPhone) using iTunes, only the photo albums are copied and are placed under “From My Mac” not “My Albums”. All your folders and subfolders created within the Photos app on the Mac are ignored. Hence, you are forced to use a flat photo album naming structure. This behavior is the same under Window’s Apple iTunes.
5. For those of us with large photo libraries (my current library is over 7 TB), using iCloud Photos is not an option since Apple’s largest iCloud storage option is 2 TB.
Hopefully, one day, Apple will update iTunes (or replace with something better) which will allow non-iCloud users to sync their MacOS Photo library folders and subfolders to their IOS devices.
Apple… Please add the above statements to your photo syncing documentation.
