Photos in El Capitan

please explain

I am not aware of a problem with the way smart albums work - rather than make giant generalizations that appear to be unfounded and that will confuse other users try starting a thread with your specific information and yoru specific problem and then people here can help

Smart albums do work and if you are having a problem then help is available - no reason to confuse other users with yrou system issues

LN

I just "upgraded" to el crapitan. Miraculously, I can see my photos. But...cannot share photos on my iMac with other logins, cannot cut and paste photos from Photos to desktop or google photos. Spoke to Apple - solution - cloud or buy an external drive (or use my existing one to share photos). Have zero interest in writing some code to fix this because, unless I missed something, thats what Apple's job is, I just use this stuff. Using the existing time machine backup drive to also be the sharing location is insane - what's backing up the back up -and what is the iMac for if it no longer has the photos on it - is it just a big and expensive viewing screen?.

Said differently, take your photo album from the coffee table, mail it to a neighbor and call him to send you a photo whenever you want to see one. Also, you and you family have to mail him any new photos. And, he also has the negatives but he lost them, so you can't copy them anymore, and you have no back-ups. To see your photo, take the back off the Mac, and hold your photo up behind the screen, because that is now what your Mac has become.

Hoping Apple reads this because the only sensible response is to allow you to keep your own photos on your own computer and your own family can see them too under their own login, just like it was 2 days ago before I "upgraded".

But hey, when I went to the help button it automatically recommended some cool local restaurants, because I'm apparently too stupid to know where I live...

LarryHN, I agree, my initial comment should have included a reference to the thread where the issue had been noted. Last July I did just as you suggest. So far there has been one reply, no solution.

Why does smart album not find most photos?

As described in that thread, on my system I have found Smart Albums to be unreliable. Sometimes the results are as expected, sometimes not. I have tried a lot of ways to find out why, with no luck. I have reported this as a bug, more than once. The problem remains.

My observations are valid. I do not doubt that you have not sen this issue; your observations are also valid. That is the nature of software bugs: they appear in some circumstances, not in others. One value of these discussion groups is to let those whose systems do reveal issues compare notes. Sometimes a pattern is revealed which can suggest a solution. Flaws in operation of software may be due to operator error, or due to bugs in the software. My intent in discussion of observed flaws is to clarify, not to confuse.

If you have a comment on my observation of problems with Smart Albums, I would like to hear it. The thread I started do discuss this issue would be an appropriate place to post your thoughts. Problems with Smart Albums are a real issue for me. If you ar anyone can help me resolve this long-standing issue, I would be grateful.

Again

You have a problem - no one else has reported it and no one has responded to you indicating that it cetainly is not a wide spread problem

Asking for help is one thing - advising others not to use a valuable feature because yoru system has an issue is not a good thing and your obversation is not valid

Caution, Private.Parts. Smart Albums do not work reliably in all cases, so a method which depends on Smart Albums is inherently unreliable.

simply is an incorrect and unfounded statement - they do work just not for you so you nee dto address your problem not confuse everyone else for whom they do work just fine

LN

A brief search finds another thread in which two users report issues with Smart Albums and Faces, much like what I found.

smart album and faces

This documents that others have encountered what seems to be the same problem I describe. In one of the replies in this thread a knowlaegable user suggested a workaround, and stated

The smart album constraints for faces do still seem to be buggy.

One of those users who experienced a problem commented

This smart albums/playlist are buggy I think.

In response, LarryHNrecommended sending feedback to Apple.

I believe my warning is valid.

Smart Albums may not work as expected.

Smart Albums may not work as expected.

Well that could be said about any thing and everything - but you are not being honest since that is not at all what you said

You did not say "might not work as expected" at all - you said that in all cases they did not work and that using them is "inherently unreliable" which is totally different from the claim you just made and is totally incorrect and is poor advice to users since it will keep users from using a very reliable and useful capability that works very well (unless you have problems with your personal system)

What you actually said was

Smart Albums do not work reliably in all cases, so a method which depends on Smart Albums is inherently unreliable.

which is untrue and very poor advice

Smart albums do work reliably and are reliable - if you find otherwise then you need to fix your system because it has defects that need correcting

Clearly two posts out ot tens of thousands does not prove a problem - in fact it strongly indicates that the problem is with the two posters not the software

LN

Ah, now I see. Our difference is in semantics, and we are both insistence due to our desire for others to understand clearly.

It seems you took my statement "Smart Albums do not work reliably in all cases" to mean "in all cases Smart Albums do not work reliably". That is not what I said, and not what I meant. I agree, in most cases Smart Albums work properly. However, there are cases in which Smart Albums do not work properly. I have found some such cases, and others also have reported similar results. Since some cases do exist in which Smart Albums do not work as expected, "Smart Albums do not work reliably in all cases" is true. It might be more clear to say "Although Smart Albums usually work as expected, a few instances have been reported in which Smart Albums do not work as expected. Since cases have been reported in which Smart Albums do not work as expected, we cannot be completely confident that Smart Albums work reliably in all cases."

You and I approach these issues from different perspectives. You (LarryHN) spend a great deal of time and effort helping people understand how their software is supposed to work, and that if used properly it works as expected. This approach probably solves 99% of the problems reported in these discussions, which is a great service.

I am a beta tester. I spend a great deal of time and effort finding circumstances where software, when operated properly, does not function as expected. Supposedly beta testing is done on pre-release software, so that errors or "bugs" can be found and corrected before release to the public. Bugs remain in almost all released software. Unfortunately, in recent years more and more bugs have accumulated in Apple system and application software. This fact is broadly discussed on technical web sites. To address this issue, Apple has declared El Capitan to have few new features, while their programmers work to make the existing software work as advertised. The OS X Public Beta program allows Apple to gather detailed input from a broad range of users, so that more difficult to detect bugs can be found. Bugs which result from easily described and reproduce actions are relatively easy for programmers to correct. Other bugs which result from conditions which are less obvious are more difficult to find and correct. I believe this is the case with Smart Albums which in my experience works most times, but not always. Observations similar to mine were reported in the referenced discussion. Independent reports of inexplicable Smart Album malfunction suggests a bug. If there is another explanation I would be happy to hear it, in the thread which I started to discuss the issue. OTOH if others have similar experiences, I would like to hear that also. Comparing notes, we may learn more about the issue, and if it is due to a bug help Apple fix it.

My original post on this was in response to a user who recommended an elaborate procedure involving Smart Albums to work with libraries that had problems uploading. Based on much testing and experience, I believe Smart Albums in some instances may not function as expected. Using software that may be buggy (Smart Albums) to manipulate a library that already is showing problems, seemed to me like a bad idea. I urged caution, for the reasons you cite. Reviewing that thread just now, I observed that the problems discussed there were with beta releases of Photos, and that for at least one user the issue was solved by a later build, which apparently fixed the bug.

Beta software is not an appropriate topic in these Discussions. Issues with released software are an appropriate topics. Suggesting that most issues discussed here are due to user error may be accurate. Asserting that all issues discussed here are due to user error denies the possibility of bugs. and is probably inaccurate.

I believe my statement was true, and my advice good. I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

I want to thank you for helping me resolve my problem with Photos. All my devices are less than a year old. I can take a photo with my iPhone and see it on my iMac and iPad within minutes (virtually instantly on my iPad) via iCloud. My MBP stopped syncing (downloading) about two weeks ago. Just like that. I noticed that my photo library had "rebuilt" in its name. Probably some legacy when I restored files from my old MBP.

Anyway, I backed up, trashed the old library and started over. Nothing worked until I restarted my computer. Then it zipped along. It didn't take that long to download everything from iCloud.

Thanks again!!!

Still not helpful. you assume that the library has been backed up to iCloud. Mine is not backed up there. I need to repair. Thanks.