Organizing Photos: Folders, Moving Pictures, Keeping Photos in separate folder, Instead of having ALL photos lumped together.

I am assuming your photos are in the Photos app on your Mac and not just in one big folder on your hard drive.  Photos in an app that comes with your Mac and is used to organize photos.  It will also sync to your other Apple devices so all your photos are available on all your devices.

The folders you want to create in Photos are called Albums.  However, you can create a folder and put multiple albums into a folder if you want. For example, I have a folder in Photos called "2023" and inside that folder I have 12 albums, "January 2023", "February 2023", "March 2023", etc. To each their own but it works for me.

I am unaware if you can have windows side by side in Photos. I don't think so. But you could have open pictures in one album and drag the files into a second closed album.  Alternatively, you could highlight the pictures that you want to add to an album, right-click on them, choose "Add To,” and then choose the album you want to add those pictures to.

One strategy is creating all the albums up front and then dragging and dropping your photos into the various albums.  I know you said it is unimportant, but a photo can belong to more than one album if you want it to.

I, too, want my pictures by year, so my sidebar looks like this:

Because I'm old, my folders go by decades, and the decade folder have folders by years. Year folders have folders by month or albums by date or event-- whatever seems right. Names of my folders and albums start with the year then month then day (if appropriate) so that they can alphabetize by date. In Photos, folders can have folders and albums, but not pictures. Pictures are in albums.

But a big advantage to Photos is that pictures can be in more than one album. Albums don't contain pictures-- albums are lists of pictures that you like to see together, so a picture can be in three different albums but not occupy any more space. So I also have albums that don't go by date:

I can see all the astronomy pictures together-- pictures from Astronomy Picture of the Day or pictures that I've taken can mix together without being connected to a date. Pictures of Jeff or Barbara are collected together even if they were taken years apart. But those pictures are also in the albums by date. Or, if they have flowers in them, then they might be in one of the Flowers albums in the Flowers folder in the Albums not years folder.

I also have a folder of old family pictures that have folders for Scans of pages of old photo albums, and pictures sorted by family names.

I have Smart Albums, as 1BirchView suggests, like the one that collects all the pictures of my Father in date order (as well as I can figure.) Some, of course, have pictures of my Mother, but I have another album of her in date order-- so some pictures are in both. I have pictures with family and friends together, so I can't think of a Family album that's really separate from a Friends album.

To help collecting pictures together, I add keywords to pictures. And I don't really "move" a picture from one album to another, because a picture can be in both. I do use an "Album not any" Smart Album to make sure everybody gets sorted. I also have empty caption and no title smart albums to check on those.

There's lots of experience here of people who have lots of pictures. Let us know if you have other questions.

Some notes on folders and albums in Photos for Mac you should be aware of:

• There are four kinds of albums in Photos. Standard albums, Smart albums, predefined albums, Shared albums. We can create and organize the standard albums and smart album. We can add or remove photos from standard albums and sort these albums freely. The predefined albums are created automatically by photos and we cannot remove items from them or sort them differently.
• Standard albums can only hold media items (photos, videos), as pointed out by ResortCasual. When we add an item to an album, a reference is added. Albums are not storing the photos or videos. This way we can add the same item to many albums without creating duplicates. When we delete a photo or video from our library, it will vanish from all albums.
• Folders can only hold standard albums, smart albums, and subfolders. Nested folders are quite useful to structure our library.

Example: Windows PC, Photos, right click create folders, name said folders, open 2 folders side by side, highlight photos you want to move, drag photos into the other folder, drop photos into that folder (drag/drop or copy/paste) and you are done. Simple, fast, easy.

Works exactly the same way on the Mac if you're using Finder. There is no difference between instructions for a Mac or iMac unless the systems are very old.

If you're using the Photos App, you create albums (under the file menu) and drag your photos into an album. Photos remain in the library too.

This exactly what I want to do - Have year folders with subfolders(albums?) inside them . I want the year folders to run 2015,2016,2017, etc and within each year I will have albums for each month, or special occasion.

But I'm finding it really difficult to do this , sometimes it seems like I create a folder eg 2016 , only to find it's nested in 2015. Not what I want. Or 2018 appears above 2015, not below 2017.

It will probably be very simple but it's not very intuitive to me - this is my first Mac, and I'm finding Photos quite bewildering.

I've got a lot of photos I want to import and get organised.

when you create anew folder it will be created in the folder that is currently selected snd open in the sidebar. You can use the sidebar to rearrange your folders and albums. You cab drag albums into different folders or folders from one folder to another one.

The folders are having disclosure triangles. You can click them to close a folder to hide the items inside and save space in the sidebar.

Consider smart albums when you are concerned with dates. Avoids drag/dropping

I use a smart albume for each year

eg Date Captured is in the range 1/1/2022 to 12/31/2022

this i name 2022

I put all such in a top level folder called years. If I click on "years" folder in Photos , it shows a count of photos for each year. But this only works at 1 level - no detail for folders within this.

If a capture date is wrong (this will always be true for scanned photos), then you can change it at Images | adjust data and time.

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If you want every picture in an album, you can use a smart album "album is not any" to find the stragglers

Thanks, this is all incredibly helpful. I feel that I'll be able to get everything organised at last. I was getting quite frustrated but this is such a helpful forum. Thanks again

KMHW said: this is such a helpful forum. Thanks again

It is helpful-- I've learned a lot from the folks here.