Q: Can anyone suggest a good way to organize photos in Photos ?

actually i am using photo instead iPhoto. i think it is really improved very much.

i delete all the album previously by adding keyword !!

actually, you can easily search any photo you want after you adding keyword to all your photo

by using keyword + smart album, you can create and auto update and group all related photos together.

just 1 it can improve should be set more filter function in different place. e.g. i want to sort out all "Favourite" in one of my smart album.

another function should be rating function. hope it can be added in later version.

Hi bruxxx,

I can't say I agree with all your comments, but we all use our apps in different ways. I've come to like Photos over the last couple of weeks. I even like the white background (sorry)!

I've already weaned myself off the idea of always having to have an event. Over the last few years with Photo Stream and auto import, I had got used to my events simply being a "month" anyway. Occasionally, I would have created a separate event if there was a special event, like a wedding or a family holiday.

So, now in Photos the Years/Collections/Moments are in effect the events from iPhoto, but they are auto-created and can't be changed. But everything is chronological, and the groupings really aren't that bad. So, it's not that hard to find even by just scrolling through this (and the search function is quite strong).

So, all I'm planning to do now is to let Photos do its job, and then when I do have some special event, I will create an Album so I can have an easy reference to that event.

The only trick I might think, if one is manually importing, is to import in small batches, so that you can use the "Last Import" to create an album if there is something special you want to catalog.

I loaded my iPhoto library of some 40,000 pictures into Photos and pretty much immediately deleted the Photos library I had just created as all the good structure I had previously was mulched.

I realised a couple of things in the process. First, that because Photos lacks the flexibility and function I am used to in iPhoto, I needed to do a lot of pre-processing of my iPhoto library to get a usable structure BEFORE loading into a new Photos library.

From my point of view, the best way is to use Smart Albums as these come through OK. I suspect many of my problems come from the fact that all the legacy pictures prior to my first digital camera in 1990 that are in my iPhotos library had to be scanned and therefore reflect the date of scanning, not of taking. My family pictures go back to 1900, and I'm unsure of the precise dates of many of them. In iPhoto I had simply dragged them into new named Events per year, 1900, 1901, etc. Now, I'm keyboarding those Events with the year and then creating Smart Albums by picking up that value.

The lack of a batch mode of operation like in iPhotos is a hinderance for Photos that necessitates using the superior iPhoto product.

I'm making sure this works on my MacBook on a subset of pictures before trying the main library on the iMac.

At present, I don't like Photos. Since I bought my iMac in 2010, Apple has slowly moved away from all the reasons I switched from Windows. Having a relatively small user base compared to Microsoft, Apple doesn't feel the need to continue to support ways of working that traditionally Apple users have embraced. I find I'm having to buy in third party products to provide function on my Apple systems whereas in 2010 that wasn't necessary.

At the same time I'm checking out Photos, I am also checking Lightroom. Whether I will ultimately use one of those or simply stick to iPhoto until I need a new computer, I don't know at present.

i compared lightroom and photo.

lightroom has a greater power on photo touching. all the picture fine tuned by lightroom is more beautiful than photo.

but photo is easy to manage, face detection and sharing with friend who use iPhone

therefore, for lightroom, i will do professional job or if i want a better photo touching for my iPhone picture

for photo, manage all my picture and final tuned picture and even all company and personal profolio

"Does anyone know of a good tutorial that can makes sense of Photos and explain what it is that I am missing that makes this app so great?"

I checked on this and there is scheduled to be a "Missing Manual" that includes both OS X and IOS due around July. I've found these publications invaluable in the past, so perhaps that one also will be helpful. I'll wait on that before making a final judgement.

As a 10 year user of iPhoto, let me provide you with my input on Photos. As with all apps from Apple, their trend is to try to be as innovative as possible. As many other users have indicated, I was initially confused and a little ticked about the Photos app. However, after using the app for a few weeks now I think it will grow on me.

A few notes:

I had 495 events sorted perfectly in iPhoto. I was never a user of Aperture and/or Lightroom but I tried them both but never made the switch so I never quite got used to the folder/album concept. After the intial Photos upgrade, I was left with all iPhoto Events in 1 large folder. I could make the choice of dumping all these "albums" into the sidebar of Photos and then be done with it. However, I have realized that the "event" organization of iPhoto started to become slightly cumbersome and all I did was to sort photos by month. (Various April, May, June etc.) The only real events/album I needed was trips/vacations and I don't have too many of these per year. Also, looking into the Moments/Collections views on my iMac using a magic trackpad, I realized how quick this was and how much I enjoyed scrolling through the year that quickly. 

Here's where I ended up. I created a few folders named TRIPS, VACATIONS, WORKING, KIDS etc... Into these folders I dropped all albums accordingly. I believe Apple will probably add the ability to sort these "albums" by date in the near future and perhaps add gradient background, things will be on the up/up. 

The biggest thing I realized that over the last few years these "events" didn't mean too much anymore...

//Cheers

If you had a version of iPhoto that was 9.x or later before upgrading to 10.10.3  you should be able to go to the App Store and download iPhoto 9.6.1 which will run under 10.10.3.  You may have to move your current iPhoto 9.x to the Trash bin before going to the App Store under the Purchases section.  In my opinion this would be a better way to go than trying to understand Photos at this time.  It's missing too many features that make iPhoto easy to use.

If you're able to get 9.6.1 and continue using iPhoto you can create a test library with Photos and experiment with it for a while before committing to it entirely.

Otherwise the following is one way you can try to use Photos in a manner similar to iPhoto:

Moments in Photo are the new Events.  There's a way to simulate events in Photos.

When the library was first migrated there was a folder created titled iPhoto Events and all migrated iPhoto Events are represented by an album in the folder. To open the sidebar if it's not open use the Option+Command+S key combination.

 

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.

The downside to the simulation is that the Album/Events can only be sorted automatically by Title. But they can be sorted manually.

Ask Apple for more sorting options in Photos via https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html.

Converted2iMac wrote:

 

I loaded my iPhoto library of some 40,000 pictures into Photos and pretty much immediately deleted the Photos library I had just created as all the good structure I had previously was mulched..

.

Exactly what structure was "mulched"?

All the Events you had in iPhoto were converted to Albums and are located in a folder named iPhoto Events. If you don't see it, turn Sidebar on. From there you can move and reorganize these Albums as you wish. You can also group them into Folders and even Folders within other Folders. You can drag or move images from/to Albums without any limitation. What you can't do is keep loose photos in a Folder, only Albums and other Folders are allowed.

Pressing delete (not pressing Command) only removes it from the album, not the timeline.  If pressed by accident it may be impossible to find that photo in the timeline.  I have 1,700 pictures from one trip and hit delete by accident, now I don’t know which picture was removed from the album.  The old iPhoto I was able to organize events and create album from events of my favorite pictures.  This was a more organized way than just having all pictures in a timeline that can be from multiple events from a trip. 

The new method dumbs it down for those that can’t organize their pictures.

Need a way to know which pictures are not assigned to an album.  This way I can assign them, and be more organized.

As a previous PC user all my events were in folders.

Also, where the the "provide feedback" in the menu?  Don't they need good suggestions?

To find photos not in any album Make a new smart album (file menu ==> new smart album) for album is not any

to provide feed back us this link - http://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

And for new questions please start a new thread rather than tThreadJack an old thread about a different subject - it is much less confusing to you and to the OP  --  Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question

LN

I Wholeheartedly agree with your base actin about a way to indicate what photos are NOT in albums.  This is the crux of the problem in terms of treating iphoto events as albums.  It would also b nice to b able to remove the already assigned from view so that there wasn't so much visual clutter.

Really the assumption in Photos appears to be that everyone oganizes all their pictures chrnologically instead of thematically.

I gave up and went to Adobe Elements for Mac. It retains the sensible file structure we all use to file information. Apple says photos go into albums. I say photos are just information and they go into structured folders.