Difference between ALBUM and EVENT?

An album is a collection of pictures from any time or date. An event is a collection of pictures from single time and date. Pictures from a family cookout would be an event. Pictures from family cookouts over the last five years is an album.

In many cases an album is a collection of pictures from a single event like a wedding album. In this case the album may be a selection of pictures from all the pictures that make up the event.

Events are automatic and very limited

Albums are pointers to photos in events and are very flexible. They are used for organizing

LN

What do you want to do? When you add pictures to iPhoto it organizes them according to their timestamps. All pictures on a given date constitute an Event. Events are automatically made when you put pictures in iPhoto. You have little control over what pictures make up an event because they are determined by when a picture was taken.

If you create an Album then you select pictures from your entire collection or a selection from one or more events. You have control over what pictures will appear in an album.

An Event is a folder of images with a fancy icon in the iPhoto Window. The contents of the particular Event are decided by the date and time of the Photos. Events are a view of the Library. So, every photo is in an Event because every photo is in the Library. That means if you want to have the same photo in two Events it uses twice the disk space.

An Album is an arbitrary collection of Photos - My Favourites, Pics of My Dog from various dates and so on. Photos in an Album simply reference the pics in the Library - so a Photo can be in any number of Albums and use no extra disk space at all.

One way to look at it: Events are basic, automatic, crude organisation. It's all date and time.

Albums allow you to select, to group on other bases - like the content, the quality, the importance of the photo. So, go to a wedding, shoot 300 photos. They all go into the Event. Then pick the best 50 and make an Album from them. Be nice to your friends. Only show them the Album 😉

FWIW:

I use Events simply as big buckets of Photos: Spring 08, July - Nov 06 are typical Events in my Library. I use keywords and Smart Albums extensively. I title the pics broadly.

I keyword on a

Who

What

Where basis (The When is in the photos's Exif metadata). I also rate the pics on a 1 - 5 star basis.

Using this system I can find pretty much find any pic in my 40k library in a couple of seconds.

So, for example, I have a batch of pics titled 'Seattle 08' and a typical keywording might include: John, Anne, Landscape, mountain, trees, snow. With a rating included it's so very easy to find the best pics we took at Mount Rainier.

File -> New Smart Album

set it to 'All"

title contains Seattle

keyword is mountain

keyword is snow

rating is 5 stars

Or, want a chronological album of John from birth to today?

New Smart Album

Keyword is John

Set the View options to Sort By Date Ascending

Want only the best pics?

add Rating is greater than 4 stars

The best thing about this system is that it's dynamic. If I add 50 more pics of John to the Library tomorrow, as I keyword and rate them they are added to the Smart Album.

In the end, organisation is about finding the pics. The point is to make locating that pic or batch of pics findable fast. This system works for me.

I read your response with interest as I am trying to figure out how to organize my photos. In the past I had folders with specific names that would give me an idea. These FOLDERS were my ALBUMS. Like in your example Mount Ranier Sep 08. My example Graduation Photos June 2014 as an example. What I like about this is that I had access to the Folder and the FILE within the folder. What I did not like was once the picture was put inside of IPHOTO, I lost access to the FILE and you are not able to get down to the FILE level within the library.

I understand the concept of the LIBRARY where everything is stored in the library.

iPHOTO has changed to PHOTOS and have never gotten around to understand the differences.Today I started looking for other software to store my photos but then I realized I should try and understand before dumping Photos and going to something else. I did a search to understand the difference between an EVENT and an ALBUM and thanks to your article helped me with that.

I have many photos that are stored in approximately 15 events and would like to move these to ALBUMS. I like the idea of creating SMART FOLDERS as what you flag or keyword will then be found within that SMART FOLDER. The pictures that I have in 1 events folder may not necessarily go the to same ALBUM or SMART FOLDER as they are a period of time rather than how you want to organize.

I have selected various photos within an EVENT and I cannot figure out how to tag, meta data or keyword 1 or more photos so that with the keywords that the 1 or more photos that are given, then show themselves in the smart folder.

Once I have added a keyword to a photo and the photo is appearing in the album that I want. When I delete the photo from the EVENT, that photo will still exist in the LIBRARY....is that correct?

Thanks in advance for the feedback. I would like these 2 weeks of Christmas vacation to spend some time organizing over 10,000 photos. I need to understand how to perform some basic concepts before I can get started.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Let's clear up some basics: You do not lose access to files with iPhoto nor Photos. These apps are designed to replace the Finder for anything you want to do with your images. Think of this way: You have an address and phone number. You put into the Contacts application. That manages this information for you. It makes it available in every app on the Mac for you. You don't care where the database actually is located on the HD, it doesn't matter. It's the address and phone number that do. You never access it via the Finder. Contacts replaces the Finder for that data.

So, too, with a Photo Manager. Want to share a photo with an app: start with the Photo Manager, want to edit it, start with the photo manager - including sending it to 3rd party apps for editing - and, of course every single thing you put into these apps can be got out again by exporting:

File -> Export - This User Tip

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921

has details of the options in the Export dialogue.

Next:

You're no longer talking about iPhoto. The new app is Photos and it has some differences. For a start Events no longer exist in that app as a concept. It uses Moments - there are some minor differences between the two. But the basics are the same. The Library holds all the images, Albums allow finer grained organisation.

have selected various photos within an EVENT and I cannot figure out how to tag, meta data or keyword 1 or more photos so that with the keywords that the 1 or more photos that are given, then show themselves in the smart folder.

So, you're selecting photos in a Moment. Select the group of images and click on the Info button. You can edit metadata there.

Once I have added a keyword to a photo and the photo is appearing in the album that I want. When I delete the photo from the EVENT, that photo will still exist in the LIBRARY....is that correct?

No. An Event or Moment is a view of the Library, so you would be deleting from the Library.

Thanks for the feedback and the link on exporting. I understand

1. that going to INFO is the place where you can add metadata / keywords about that object. If your smart folder is based on a specific criteria of keywords, then those objects with those keywords or names should appear in your smart folder.

2. If I delete the photo or object that is in the EVENT / MOMENT (in my Photos, they show up as Events). I understand that the underlying photo in the LIBRARY will also be deleted.

Q

1. I currently a list of about 15 events followed by about 25 Albums. Once I have reconciled all of the photos appearing in EVENTS/MOMENTS, how do I clean up this list so that I can mimimize the listing of events as the Albums/Smart Album folder list continues to accumulate and make the list longer.

Q2

1. Once I finish with Events and have keyworded the photos, or placed them into an existing Album, my next step will be to start working through the pictures in the Albums. I probably have pictures in Album X that do not belong there and should really go into some other folder such as Album Y. How do I move photos in an existing album to another album?

Thanks again for your feedback. It's been helpful

Can you clarify: are you now using Photos? or iPhoto? Just the answers vary...

Hello T.

I am using the app called PHOTOS.

I converted from IPhoto back when the Apple first had the conversion available.

• I have about 10,000 pre existing photos
• I have many photos in Events that I would like to get organized into Albums or Smart Albums.
• I have Albums with photos that I am sure are in the wrong location and want to move to an existing or new Album or Smart Album
• I asked a couple of additional questions in my last email prior to you asking which app I am using.
• In addition to those questions. I have about another 10,000 photos in many places, (other hard drives, other folders, thumnails, collections from other family members that have not yet been added to the LIBRARY. I am thinking I should organize these as best as I can before I import them, or import them in groups that are time based.... 500 today....500 tomorrow 500 the next day so that the Events/Moments that are created as a result are not too large to finish.

  Your thoughts on importing all of these other photos and to be in best position to organize.

• Thanks for your feedback.

In Photos, the basic element of organisation in the lIbrary are Moments, not Events.

You can add photos to an album by drag and drop, you can remove them by tapping the delete key.

Smart Albums are different. They're not really albums at all, but rather an answer to an instruction: Show me all the photos with the keyword 'Mom'. Obviously to add photo to that you need to keyword images appropriately, and to remove them, then remove the criterion that matches the conditions.

As for your Q1

I suspect that you have a Folder called iPhoto Events in your Photos Window. These are not events. They are albums made from your iPhoto events when the library was migrated. So they can be added/deleted, renamed, put in folders, removed from folders just like any other album.

So I think I understand the difference between an event and an album. My question now is that, in Photos, I have organized a number of images as events thinking that they were "albums". How do I simply "rename" or designate my events and call them albums? And by doing so does this then eliminate the image from being noted twice on the HD?

No I don't think you do understand.

In Photos there are no events. What you see in the Photos window is a folder called iPhoto Events. This is confusing I know, but that is a folder of Albums created from your iPhoto Events when you migrated. Again, these are not Events. There are no Events in Photos. These are albums called events.

The Photos for mac forum is here

Photos for Mac

I am using the app called PHOTOS.

Moments in Photos are the new Events, i.e. groupings of photos sorted by date taken.

When the iPhoto Library was first migrated to Photos there is a folder created in the sidebar titled iPhoto Events and all migrated iPhoto Events (which are now Moments) are represented by an album in that folder. To open the sidebar if it's not already open use the Option+Command+S key combination.

NOTE: It's been reported by several users that if the Event albums are moved out of the iPhoto Library folder in the sidebar they may disappear. It's not widespread but several users have reported that issue. Therefore, if you want to assure that you keep those Event albums don't move them outside the iPhoto Events folder.

There's a way to simulate events in Photos.

When new photos are imported into the Photos library go to the Last Import smart album, select all the photos and use the File ➙ New Album menu option or use the key combination Command+N. Name it as desired. It will appear just above the iPhoto Events folder where you can drag it into the iPhoto Events folder

When you click on the iPhoto Events folder you'll get a simulated iPhoto Events window.

Albums and smart albums can be sorted by Title, by Date with oldest first and by Date with newest first.

Tell Apple what missing features you'd like restored or new features added in Photos via Apple-Photos Feedback.