Moving, Deleting and Managing Pictures

I am trying to sort pictures from Live Photos and Imports into albums. I can add the pictures to the albums, but if I delete the photos from the original folder (Live Photos and Imports), they disappear from the new albums. My goal is to sort my hundreds of pictures on different devices into a single set of albums so that I can have a single authoritative source for all my pictures on my MAC. I should probably mention that I am migrating from a PC / iPad/ iPhone environment to a new Mac mini I just purchased. It should be easier than it is. Thanks for your help...

Mac mini, macOS 15.2

Posted on Dec 22, 2024 5:52 PM

Top-ranking reply

markwmsn

Level 6

16,793 points

Posted on Dec 22, 2024 9:15 PM

"Live Photos" and "Imports" aren't really Albums (or Folders; see note below); they are views into the Library showing, respectively a specific subset of the Library and a specific order of the contents of the Library. Likewise, Albums are also views into the Library showing whatever subset of the Library you designate (by adding the items to the Album). Whatever you see in any of those places is really in the Library.

If you want to keep track of which items you have yet added to any Album, you can create a Smart Album with criterion ("Album","is not","Any").

Note: Point of terminology for the Photos app: Albums and Smart Albumsare structures that can display (colloquially "contain" but really "point to") photos and videos. Folders are structures that can contain/point to Albums or Folders to create a hierarchical structure; Folders cannot directly "contain" photos and videos.

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Moving, Deleting and Managing Pictures

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