Why can't I remove photos from an album in Photos app after selecting them?

expeditor wrote: … I don't wanna say it, but no.

Nonetheless, I think I hit it on the head. Even though the submenu lists "Remove nn Photos from Album, it makes no sense that it should work, and it doesn't. That choice should be removed from the submenu in a search result, because the picture might be in several albums. The choice does not exist in a Smart Album, for instance, because the picture either meets the criteria or not.

If you don't mind, I'd like to make an alternate suggestion-- use keywords and Smart Albums. Add the keyword "Funny" to all the pictures that meet that criterion. (Right now, that means going to your Funny album, selecting all, and adding Funny to the Keyword list. Easy to do.) Then make a Smart Album with

So this gets all the Funny pictures. Do the same for the other categories.

Now, make a Smart Album for the ones that have not been categorized, yet:

Now, putting a pictures in the right album does not involve dragging-- just adding a keyword. You can make a one letter shortcut for each of these keywords, and then you can go through the Not Sorted album, move to the next picture, hit the F key (perhaps,) and then that picture will immediately disappear from the Not Sorted album and will appear in the Funny album. Then the next picture is automatically selected for you to assign a category.

I do this, by the way, when I'm "favoriting" my pictures. Eliminating pictures is way easier than picking favorites, so I have a keyword, "NotFav." The short cut is "x." I go through an new collection of pictures and just hit "x" on the ones that are not best, and when I'm through-- I mark the rest as favorites!

The one downside to Smart Albums is that they don't show on an iPhone. So some of my Smart Albums have regular album partners, and I drag the pictures from the sorted Smart Album to the partner regular album.

There's some non obvious stuff in using the keyword manager (⌘-K) of course, but this gives some information:

Add keywords to photos and videos on Mac - Apple Support

And apparently I've written about this before:

How to quickly add multiple keywords in P… - Apple Community

What do you think?

expeditor wrote: No I have not, but this in my Mac mini.

Ahh-- you listed "iPhone" in your signature:

so naturally I spent my time checking things out on my phone before answering. Now that I know you're talking about a Mac, instead, t would be useful to know what OS you are using.

On my Mac with 15.3, I "remove from album" by hitting delete, and there is no warning. The picture immediately disappears.

To narrow things down, try these steps:

• Restart the computer (of course)
• Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and it often helps. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 

           Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 

Those are the easiest things to try first. Then try these:

• Use another library if you have one, or make a small test Library with a few pictures in it and see if the same thing happens. You can create a new Library by closing Photos and then option-clicking on the Photos icon.
• Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it
• Rebuild your Photos Library--close Photos and re-launch by option-command-clicking the app icon.

The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.

Let us know what happens…

expeditor wrote: … I was trying to locate serval similar photos spread out over a few years, so I used the search function. It was only after using that, that when I highlight the results from that search that I wish to remove, the 'remove from album' does appear in the drop down menu, but when I click on it, nothing happens.

Ahh, I get it. Here's the thing: a picture can be in three albums, maybe. So if you do a search, you will see the picture once, even though it's in three albums. If you say "remove from album," there's no way for Photos to know which album you mean.

 In Photos, pictures aren't exactly "in" an album. When you "put a picture into an album," its name is added to a list of pictures from the Library that 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 (like two playlists with the same song,)  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. You don't get fewer pictures in your Library because you remove one from an album; you just get fewer names in the album list.

So albums give a specific view of your pictures. The picture of "Aunt Ethel at the Grand Canyon" can be in the "Aunt Ethel" album with other pictures of Aunt Ethel, and it can also be in the "Grand Canyon"  album with pictures of other people at the Grand Canyon. And it can also be in a the "September 2015" album with other things that happened then. Each album is pointing to a single file stored in the Photos Library, so having pictures in multiple albums takes up no more storage space. As you can imagine, this is very powerful in organizing pictures.

Weird. After I use the (•••) menu to choose "Remove rom Album" I get a warning, and I have to say Remove, again. Do you get the warning? Just where does it go wrong for you?

There are Apple generated views from which you're not allowed to remove pictures, but in those you don't get the option, anyway, so I'm sure that's not it.

Have you tried a forced restart?

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

This is different from a simple power off…

Let us know…