Smart albums

I have so many questions! How are you getting the pictures into the Photos Library? Do you use File>Import or something else? "Drag and drop," for instance, is not reliable.

I'm not sure about "created the files exactly as you show in your last screenshot." I don't have a screenshot of creating files.

And again, "you can't "drag and drop [a picture] into the smart album.' " I don't understand how you're trying this.

You've said that when you use a Smart Album, "for some reason it won't work." In what way? If you put the pictures into a normal (not smart) album and sort them by date, do they end up in the right order? If not, what is their order?

What do you get in a Smart Album set up for Capture Date in the range you want? Do you get no pictures, some pictures, or what? What dates do work? What happens if you ask for all pictures after 2020, for instance, or some other dates?

Have you looked at the metadata with another app? I use GraphicConverter, by you can use Preview. If you export with File>Export>Export Unmodified Original and use Preview's Tools>Inspector>Exif you should see the scan date, or whatever the date was before importing to Photos. If you export with File>Export>Export 1 Photo then in Preview you should see the date that you adjusted. If you look at the metadata with an app like GraphicConverter, then you may see both dates, and maybe others. The File date (which Finder shows) may not be the same as the Create Date.

If you haven't done this already, you should try restarting your computer in Safe Mode-- this will restrict some login processes that my be messing with the data, for instance.

    Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

It doesn't hurt anything to try it.

I agree with léonie -- that "album not any" specification is the part we hadn't talked about before. You had said that "I created a "wrong date" album and have been manually changing the date on the Photos within" so the pictures seem to already be in an album! Try removing that rule, and see if the pictures show up.

Albums and Smart Albums list pictures. Folders list folders and albums (including Smart Albums). Folders can have folders in them. When I click on a folder, it shows all the albums inside.

It looked like your screenshots didn't show albums inside the folders.

HI, Lisa,

First, sorry about your Father. Been there.

Now, you can't "drag and drop [a picture] into the smart album." What makes it a Smart Album is that it only takes pictures based on it's selection rules. If you change the date on a picture, is should automatically show up in the appropriately defined smart album. No dragging.

Adjusting dates is an awful job! How are you doing this? Are you using the Photos Menu "Image>Adjust Date and Time" function?

That's a bit painful, frankly, and, for me, I've mostly depended on putting the dates in the titles so that I can arrange them alphabetically by title to get any order I like.

How do you set the specification for the smart album? Do you do it like this?

When you look at the new date and time in the info window (⌘-i), does the date appear as you expect?

For scanned images I have batch changed dates using the app GraphicConverter ($40), which does lots of useful things.

By the way, are you using iCloud to sync your devices?

Let us know-- we've done this and can help...

Lisa, in your screenshot I am seeing a list of folders, when you try to add the picture of your Nana to an album. You cannot add a phot to a folder, it has to be a standard album. Are there albums inside the folder "1940's & back" , that you have selected to add the photo to?

As to the smart album - you are combining two rules - the date range and "Album is not any". This way a photo will vanish from the smart album, once you have added it to an album. Is that the intended behaviour?

The rule "Album is not any" has been a bit buggy in the past. I am not sure, if it has been fixed. The problem has been, that photos may be reported as being in an album, even if the album has beed deleted and the photo is no longer in an album. Do you still need the second rule?

Lisa, could you tell us exactly, how the date range rule is set, that you are using?

I had it occasionally happen, that Photos did not read the date range in the rule correctly, depending on the primary system language . Is your mac using english as the primary system language?

Where is it going wrong? Is the date part (day, month, year wrong) or the time part? Just a few hours or several years?