Is there a way to move individual pictures in Photos (sonomaOS) without reference to the capture date/time? In Google photos you can 'grab' a photo and move it to come before one that was taken earlier. I would like to be able to do that in Photos or at least within albums. In the past I've adjusted the date/time to effect the order displayed but it is not working with pics that have been shared with me.
MacBook Pro (M3 Pro, 2023)
In Library, Recents, and other pre-made albums the sorting is set for the purpose of those views, and you can't change the order.
But in Albums that you make, the ones I think you mean, you can have Photos sort pictures automatically by date or by title. But you can also sort the pictures manually. In the thumbnail view, you can grab a picture and drag it anywhere in the album, and the other pictures will move aside to make room for it. I do this all the time, because I have lots of scanned images whose date is the date scanned rather than anything relevant to the picture.
Photos maintains this manual sorting, but I don't completely trust it! So, once I am satisfied with the order, I add titles to the pictures that include an index number, 1, 2, 3, etc, so that I can use "Sort by Title" in the future. I use the app Photos Workbench ($30) to help with adding and editing titles.
In Library, Recents, and other pre-made albums the sorting is set for the purpose of those views, and you can't change the order.
But in Albums that you make, the ones I think you mean, you can have Photos sort pictures automatically by date or by title. But you can also sort the pictures manually. In the thumbnail view, you can grab a picture and drag it anywhere in the album, and the other pictures will move aside to make room for it. I do this all the time, because I have lots of scanned images whose date is the date scanned rather than anything relevant to the picture.
Photos maintains this manual sorting, but I don't completely trust it! So, once I am satisfied with the order, I add titles to the pictures that include an index number, 1, 2, 3, etc, so that I can use "Sort by Title" in the future. I use the app Photos Workbench ($30) to help with adding and editing titles.
In albums you can drag images where you want. This is not the case in the Library or in Smart Albums. So make albums.
Thank you. Manual sorting within albums does work, I just wish it could be done within Library itself.
Also, would you happen to know if/how one can delete an album? I know I can remove all the pictures, but I'd like to remove the album folder itself.
As Yer_Man says, views like Recents and Imports and Library are provided to present all the pictures in an order that never changes, so every phone every time every where can be counted on to do the same thing.
By the way, "album" and "folder" mean different things-- folders can contain albums and other folders but not pictures; albums contain pictures. I have folders of a trip, for instance, that contain albums for each day.
But deleting foldrers and albums is the same: control click on the album or folder to get a menu, and chose Delete.
Deleting an album will remove the album, but the pictures remain in the Library. Albums are just lists-- they list the pictures you'd like to see together. So deleting a list doesn't delete the picture--pictures listed in other albums will not be disturbed.
Folders are a bit different-- if you delete a folder, then all the album lists inside will also be deleted. Again, the pictures themselves won't affected.
To delete a picture from the Library, you can use command-delete. The picture is then listed in Recently Deleted for 30 days to give you a chance to change your mind.
organizing photo library in Photos (Sonoma)
