Importing folders of photos into the Photos app without duplicating them

Hi,

A friend of mine wants to start backing up her photos on iCloud.

Her photos are currently organized in many folders and sub-folders on her Mac. She wants to keep the photos organized in those folders on the Photos app, to be able to see the folders on her iPhone.

Many of her photos were taken on her iPhone, so they already exist on her iCloud, but not inside the relevant folders. Because of this, we cannot add photos into the folders without duplicating them. When dragging the folders into the Photos app we receive the following modal:

When choosing "Don't Import" the photos are not imported and nothing changes.

When choosing "Import" the photos are duplicated and exist twice - once inside their relevant folder and once simply inside the All Photos.

Is there a way to associate photos with relevant folders on the Photos app, besides manually going through the photos and adding them to each folder?

Perhaps to import some kind of "schema" of folders and images?

Thanks in advance!