What is the difference between "Photos" and "All Photos"?

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Level 1

14 points

What is the difference between "Photos" and "All Photos"?

I migrated from iPhoto to Photo several months ago. I have also stored my photos on iCloud. I have around 8,000 photos.

In Photo there is a folder at the top left corner labeled "Photos". Under Albums there is another folker labelede "All Photos". Many of the photos in "All Photos" and not in "Photos". I also have many iPhoto Events listed. Many of the photos in the "All Photos" folder are not in the "Photos" folder. Can someone tell me the difference between these two folders? They are obviously different.

"Photos" groups the photos and displays at the top of each group a location and date (month and day only, not year). "All Photos" has a starting and ending date Month, Day, Year. But nothing but a continuous string of photos with no separation, titles or dates. The starting date is not correct.

I find Photos to be most confusing and difficult to know how to navigate around. I assume the "Photos" folder is the photos on iCloud?? (There is a download button on the lower left corner of each photo).

iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11), 8 GB, Late 2014, Airport Extreme,

Posted on Nov 29, 2015 4:43 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Nov 29, 2015 6:22 PM in response to veehb

they are not folders - Photos is your library and is sorted by photo date - it can show as years or collections or moments

All Photos is a special Photos album and is sorted by the date photos are added to Photos

Unless you have a corrupted library everything in all Photos is also in Photos and the counts are the same

If you are using iCLoud PHoto Library then your library is synced via iCLoud to all devices so the PHotos view is the same as the iCLoud.com view and as on each IOS device or other Mac using ICPL under the same Apple ID

LN

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Answer 2

veehb Author

Level 1

14 points

Nov 30, 2015 8:05 PM in response to LarryHN

Thanks Larry, for the clarification. My libraries are slightly off, so maybe there is a problem. I'll worry about that later.

But, I have another more pressing problem. I think I know why the upload of photos from the MBP is taking so long, but don't know what to do about it.

My wife has been keeping all of her photos on her iPhone and under the old system was connecting the phone to her MBP via USB, and dumping the photos into iPhoto, (and then later into Photo) on her MBP. She never deleted the photos on her iPhone, so there are 4000 plus photos and 600 plus videos on the iPhone and 15,500 photos and 772 videos on the MBP.

Just noticed that both the iPhone 6S and the MBP are uploading photos to iCloud.

The iPhone 6S seems to be loading faster than the MBP. When I turn off WiFi to the MBP, the iPhone 6S stops uploading. Not sure if it is uploading to the iCloud or to the MBP. We have the MBP set to keep high resolution copies of all the photos on iCloud. The iPhone 6S is set to optimize iPhone storage. Upload to My Photo Stream is on, on both devices. Maybe I'm seeing Photo Stream traffic from the iPhone to the MBP?? Or does it all go through iCloud?

Some questions:

1. Does iCloud eliminate duplicates between two devices? Most of the photos in the iPhone 6S are on the MBP and after four weeks of uploading, most of them should already be on iCloud. If not, how do we eliminate duplicates? Don't want them double stored. She has over 100 GBytes of data to be saved on iCloud.

2. Looks like the iPhone 6S might be uploading its photos to the MBP, as it is set to store high resolution copies of all the photos on iCloud (and I assume also will store high resolution photos from the iPhone 6S). It is showing progress on its upload, whereas the MBP seems to be stuck. When I turn off WiFi on the MBP, the photos stop uploading from the iPhone 6s. Can you help me understand what is happening here?

3. Maybe the iPhone 6S is uploading to iCloud, and then iCloud is sending the high resolution photos back to the MBP. Could this be what is happening?

She is concerned that some of her most recent photos on the iPhone 6S have not been transferred to her MBP. With iCloud turned on, the photos don't dump to the MBP directly via USB. Is there any way to transfer them without turning off iCloud on both devices? I tried to turn it off and got a scary warning that the photos on the MBP would be deleted if we turned off iCloud. If we let this go to completion, can I assume that all the photos presently on her iPhone will end up in iCloud and also on the MBP? (hopefully not duplicated)

I'm finding this all quite difficult to understand and don't find the help files in Photo much help in this area. Thank goodness for a few of you more experienced users being willing to help us understand.

Any suggestions you can give me would be very much appreciated. You seem to understand this stuff!

Thanks,

Vee

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Answer 3

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Nov 30, 2015 8:26 PM in response to veehb

1 - yes as long as they are duplicates

2 - No idea - i'm not even sure what you are getting at

there is no setting for what to upload only what to download - iCloud Photo Library always has all high resolution photos - each device has either full resolution or optimized as needed depending on the settings on that device

3 - That is the exact process for the settings you have

and until all devices complete their upload you really can not see what is going one - no device downloads images until it completes it upload adn until they are are done the counts and status can be wonky - give every thing a chance to complete without messing with them - keep them awake, charged and on WiFi - once all uploads are complete things will work smoothly and normally - until then it is not at all clear exactly what happens or why except that uploads occur first and then downloads

LN

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