Moving between folders in Photos

Correct, a folder or album is just a way of looking at a selection of your photos: the same photo can appear in more than one album and what you term as "moving" a photo from one folder to another is, in fact, merely creating another reference to that same photo. In other words, instead of "moving" you are, as it were, "Copying."

Remember that deleting a photo from an album does not actually delete the photo from your complete collection of photos, merely its reference in that particular album. If you no longer wish to see a photo in a particular album or folder, delete it from there; it will still be in your Photos collection and All Photos album.

I moved all of my photos into different "events" and this allowed me to separate photos in a much more logical fashion.

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.

Old Toad wrote:

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.

Is this still happening, even in latest versions of Photos? I'd like to move my iPhoto Events when this is finally de-bugged.

The benefit of having those albums in a folder is when the folder is selected the window at the right is a "simulation" of the Event's window in iPhoto which everyone seem to miss.

Ah, I see what you mean! Thanks O.T.

It is more convenient to have the albums in folders, if you have many albums. You can click the disclosure triangles and get large sections of your albums out of the way to hide them, if you want to drag photos between albums.

Yes, so I could arrange them in folders by year for example.

Yup. The organisational possibilities of Photos are very good. You can have folders in folders and albums in folders and mix them up, move them around. You are the boss of your photos. Here's just a part of what I currently have, as an exaple: in the folder Guardamar you can see several albums (Christmas, Dama de Guardamar, and more like that), as well as three sub-folders, one of which, Moors & Christians, I've opened to show that it contains its own albums with photos collected by year (2006, 2008, etc.), as well as an extra album for a particular group (Labradores).

And on top of all this there are the "automatic" albums, such as Faces, Selfies, Panoramas, etc., and the smart albums.