Add Photos/Videos to album without them reflecting in “imports”

You can't. Every photo and video in the library will show in the Library, Recents and Imports views. They will also show in the Places view if they have location data.

The Imports view is by Date Imported with the oldest on top.

Remember, Photos is like iTunes in how it handles files. A file takes up space in the library only once but can be seen in many views, albums, smart albums, memories, places, recents, etc.

This screenshot shows how you can sort photos in the various views:

So create your own albums and ignore those that are predetermined by Photos.

Richard.Taylor wrote:

But dragging a picture to an album also shows up in Imports for me.

There's no way to avoid that. Imports is just another view of the library but sorted by import date. You can't avoid it. If it bothers you don't use the Import view.

As I said earlier Photos is like iTunes. A song track can be in many playlists (which are albums in Photos) but only takes up space on the drive once.

Bottom line: there's no way to avoid the Import view except not to open it and use it.

Old Toad wrote: Bottom line: there's no way to avoid the Import view except not to open it and use it.

But copying using PowerPhotos skips the Import process, and those pictures don't show in Imports.

Hey, OT--I can't believe I'm spending time trying to avoid Imports, but I dragged a picture to the Library icon in PowerPhotos and after about 3 minutes of thinking, the picture showed up in the Photos Library in Recents but not Imports. PowerPhotos was doing its own duplicate search and I don't know what-all, taking much longer than Importing directly to Photos.

jeet_purkayastha wrote: How can I add photos/videos from a folder in Desktop to a folder in “My Album” for an organised view without the same showing in imports folder.

As otherwise the import folder is fully loaded and looks unorganised.

I'm going to start with, "I don't get that." The Imports folder is perfectly organized by date of import. It has exactly the number of pictures that have gone through the import process. I can't figure out why avoiding this is important to you-- but that's me.

You can sneak pictures into the Photos Library without going through Import. The method that I notice often happens when I copy pictures from one Library to another using the 3rd Party app  PowerPhotos ($30). Pictures added to the Library that way do not show up in Imports. PowerPhotos has a free trial version with limitations, but I'm not sure if it will do the same thing in the same way.

But really, the whole point of the Photos app is that you make albums and put them in there the way you want. Imports offers a specific view that you don't ever have to look at if you don't want.

Had an idea: try dragging the photos from the folder on the EHD onto the destination album in the sidebar. I believe that will do what you want. That way you can avoid going to the Imports, Library or Recents view to drag them to your select4d album.

Old Toad wrote:

Had an idea: try dragging the photos from the folder on the EHD onto the destination album in the sidebar. I believe that will do what you want. That way you can avoid going to the Imports, Library or Recents view to drag them to your select4d album.

The picture would appear in Recents, just as the ones from PowerPhotos do. But dragging a picture to an album also shows up in Imports for me.

Clearly you'd have to really really want to have the import not show up in the Imports view! Frankly, I think it's weird that it doesn't--I find it a bit confusing. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure why Imports exists, since (except for PowerPhotos) it's the same as Recents. Isn't it? Well, Imports has divisions between import dates...

I tried it also and it took me about 3 minutes to import. Tried again and it went thru in about 1 minute. Still too long compared to less than second for a direct import.