Deleting photos from library but keep in album

Another way to characterise it:

Photos, (like iPhoto, Aperture, Music, iTunes) is a database. This means it can be very flexible and powerful, if sometimes a little confusing. The library is the core of the app. Every image is in the library. Albums are virtual, and are just subsets of the library. In fact, Albums are not places, they are lists - instructions to the app to 'display this group of images together'. So images do not get "moved" to Albums, they get added to that particular list. This means that an image can be in more than one album but use no extra disk space. Similarly in the Music app, all the tracks are in the Library and can be added to any number of playlists.

In a Mac:

If you're trying to organise your Library and want to find images not in albums, then a simple Smart Album

File -> New Smart Album

Album -> Is Not -> Any

will find these images. As you add them to albums they will disappear from the Smart Album.

On iPad or iPhone, which do not currently support Smart Albums:

Check out HashPhotos

https://apps.apple.com/ie/app/hashphotos/id685784609

It integrates with Photos on your iOS device and adds a Smart Album feature. Using this app a search

!#inalbum

Will find images not in an album

(Hat tip to User ukSamo for the recommending this app.)

Nukhan wrote: To keep photos in albums while deleting them from your library, first move the photos to a new album. Then, delete them from the library.

As Phil0124 said twice, "NO NO NO"

Pictures aren't exactly "in" an album. When you put a picture into an album, its name is added to a list of pictures to display together when the album is clicked, kind of like a music playlist, but for pictures. So two albums can both have the same picture name in their lists, and that picture will show up when you click either album, but there's only one picture file-- it's just on multiple lists. And when you remove a picture from an album, its name remains in the lists of other albums, and the file still remains in your Library. 

The Library View isn't really an "album"-- it provides a view of all of the pictures in the entire Library. You can't remove a picture from the Library View without deleting it entirely!

You cannot.

Albums don't hold copies of pictures, they merely point to the actual photo in the Recents album or Camera Roll. If you delete it from the Recents album then its deleted from everywhere.

Nukhan wrote:

To keep photos in albums while deleting them from your library, first move the photos to a new album. Then, delete them from the library. This way, they remain in the album but are removed from the main library view.

No, Not possible on an iPhone or iPad.

Photos deleted from the main library will be deleted from everywhere else as they are only stored within the Recents album in the library.

To keep photos in albums while deleting them from your library, first move the photos to a new album. Then, delete them from the library. This way, they remain in the album but are removed from the main library view.

I suggest you try this. Put all the pictures in your library into an album. Delete them from the library? What happens?

(Do not wait 30 days to fix what you did!)

😨.

Better not! A very full trash is still causing big, big problems. That has not changed since iPhoto and Aperture times!