transfer photos on Mac to thumb drive?

What do you want to achieve? Remove the photos from the Mac to the thumbs drive or save a copy on the thumbs drive?

If you want to archive your photos on the thumbsdrive in a high quality, do not use drag-and-drop but use "File > Export". Only exporting is allowing you to control the quality of the saved phtos. By exporting you can select if you want to save the edited versions or the unmodified originals, and specify the file format and the quality, when you export the photos.

You can save individual photos on a thumbs drive, but you must not store a Photos Library on a USB flash drive or an SD card. These devices are not keeping the data long enough safely: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Make sure that your external storage device, such as a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, is formatted for Mac: either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

"You can't store your library on a storage device used for Time Machine backups. And to avoid possible data loss, don't store your library on a removable storage device like an SD card or USB flash drive, or on a device shared over your network or the internet, including over a cloud-based storage service."

Hi mdandr,

welcome to the Apple (user-to-user) Community.

Wondering which Mac Laptop model (year) you use, and which MacOS is installed.

Wondering too, if the photos are in a folder, on the desktop, or in your Photos Library,

and whether it is just a few, or a whole Library of Photos. You may need to check the thumb drive has space for the amount of photos you want to transfer.

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For Mac OS versions before Ventura, eg: Monterey / Big Sur etc.:

Generally, you can just connect the thumb drive to the Mac with a cable or adapter.

Open the thumb drive on the desktop (double-click its icon),

Drag photos from any folder or from the desktop to the thumb drive's folder.

Wait till the transfer is complete.

Arrange photos as you choose.

Then close the thumb-drive's folder and ...

... two finger click the thumb-drive icon / choose"Eject" from the menu that opens. Remove the the thumb drive when it's icon "disappears" from the desktop after Mac "ejects" it.

Eg: You can "export" photos from "Photos" app to the desktop, open the thumb drive and just drag the photos to the thumb drive.

If storage space on the thumb drive permits:

You can drag the whole Photos App Library from "Pictures" to the Thumb Drive as a back-up.

or

You may want to follow Apple support's article: (choose your Mac OS version at the top of the article): Connect and use other storage devices with Mac - Apple Support

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For Mac OS Ventura:

Connect and use other storage devices with Mac – Apple Support

Always remember to "eject" external storage devices before you remove them from your Mac.

All the best :-)