Q: In the new Photo's 1.0 app, What's the difference between "Photos" and "All Photos" in the sidebar?

"All Photos" is an album. See the Photos help topic "What are albums?" for complete description of each of the album types.

"Photos" is the name given to the Years, Collections, & Moments views. See the help topic "View photos" for more about how that is organized.

I'm still a bit confused as to which images are stored on my hard drive and which are in a cloud somewhere ? Please could someone clarify this for me ? Without knowing I'm nervous about deleting images from my camera, iphone, ipad etc ...

Mark Webber wrote:

I'm still a bit confused as to which images are stored on my hard drive and which are in a cloud somewhere ?

Where your photos are stored depends on several factors. One of them is if you are using the iCloud Photo Library service. For detailed info about that, see iCloud Photo Library FAQ, but basically unless you have enabled that option in Photos preferences > iCloud, your photos will not be stored on Apple's iCloud servers. Another cloud related service is Photo Streaming. For info about that see My Photo Stream FAQ.

in the iCloud preferences I have only My Photo Stream selected.

does this mean that all photos shown in "Photos" are on my hard drive ?

and why would there be more images in "All Photos" than in "Photos" ?

and why would there be more images in "All Photos" than in "Photos" ?

"All Photos" is an album. And albums are showing all photos, even photos that have been hidden.

But hidden photos will not be visible in the  "Photos" View of the library,  in the Moments, Collections, Years.  So the numbers may differ.

Check the "Hidden Album": View menu > Show Hidden Photos album.

in the iCloud preferences I have only My Photo Stream selected.

 

does this mean that all photos shown in "Photos" are on my hard drive ?

Yes, they are locally stored on your Mac.

thanks for clarifying these points, léonie.

the info provided by Apple is really not very clear …

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201317

When Apple says "With My Photo Stream, when you take a photo on one device, it automatically appears on all of your other devices.” … Do they mean “appears” literally (ie, it looks like it's there, but it isn't), or are these images transferred to the other device ? (i.e. from iPhone to Mac)

If not, do I need to transfer images by manually importing them from iPhone to Mac in Photos ?

In Photos it is not made clear whether an image is stored on the hard drive or on My Photo Stream.

When Apple says "With My Photo Stream, when you take a photo on one device, it automatically appears on all of your other devices.” … Do they mean “appears” literally (ie, it looks like it's there, but it isn't), or are these images transferred to the other device ? (i.e. from iPhone to Mac)

The kind of appearance on the Mac will depend on the version of MacOS X and the settings for "My Photo Stream".

What will happen:

• When you take a new photo on an iOS device that has My Photo Stream enabled, any new photo will upload to iCloud and remain there for at 30 days, or until it is deleted.
• Mac, that have My Photo Stream enabled will download these photos.
  • In iPhoto or Aperture you will see an My Photo Stream Album in your photo library. If you enable "Automatic download" these photos will imported to the library in monthly events, called "June 2015 PhotoStream" or similar. Or you can import them manually from the My Photo Straem album.
  • In Photos "My Photo Steam" will import automatically to the photo library, if you enable it,  and the new photos will appear in the Moments. If a separate My Photo Stream album will be shown, will depend on your setting for iCloud Photo Library.

Thanks very much Léonie

My pleasure