We take a lot of photos with our iPhones and even DSLRs and other cameras. Photos are great for capturing memories with others, or when you just want to get a snapshot of something beautiful. Photos on Mac can help you keep all of your photos in one place, and even help you organize them.
If you have a lot of photos and videos, one of the simplest and easiest ways to start organizing everything is to make use of albums, especially when you give them good names. And if you use iCloud Photo Library, all of your albums in Photos for Mac get synced to your iOS devices too.
Launch Photos on your Mac.
Pick out the photos you want to add to an album, either new or existing.
You can choose an existing album, or create new album.
Jan 23, 2016 This video explains how, using 'Finder' you can move photos from random places on your drive into your Photos app. From there, you can make a photo album and move those imported photos. Feb 21, 2020 Step 1. Hold the Option key and double-click the Photos icon in the Applications folder (or click the Photos icon in the Dock). In the Choose Library dialogue, click Create New.
Optionally, you can make a new album at any time by clicking the + button that appears in the sidebar next to My Albums. Drag-and-drop the albums in whatever order you want to rearrange them in the sidebar.
When you have a lot of albums, it may be better to clean it all up by organizing albums into folders, which are like collections of albums. It's easy to do.
Either right-click on My Albums in the sidebar, or hover above and then click on the + button that appears next to My Albums.
Give your folder a name.
Drag the albums that you want into that folder.
Smart Albums are like regular albums, but smarter, obviously. They're great for helping you quickly organize images without the need of manually adding each one to an album because it's all automated.
Right-click on My Albums or click the + button that appears next to My Albums.
Choose the parameters for your Smart Album.
Click OK to confirm.
Smart Albums have a large number of different parameters, such as photos, faces, aperture, ISO, Live Photo, RAW, Portrait, and more. With all of these options, you can create many different Smart Albums to suit whatever it is you need.
If you're not satisfied with the Smart Album, you can always tweak the settings by clicking on the gear icon that's next to the Smart Album's title, then re-select the parameters you want to use.
Unfortunately, Smart Albums do not sync to your other devices through iCloud Photo Library, as they're only available on your Mac.
The Sidebar in Photos is a great way to quickly jump between various areas in Photos quickly and easily. Plus, it helps you find albums that may otherwise be hidden, so this was a design choice made by Apple.
However, if you are running macOS Sierra and older, you can actually hide or unhide the sidebar as you wish.
Follow the steps above to hide it (make sure Show Sidebar is unchecked).
One of the coolest things about Photos is that it intelligently groups all of your photos and videos into moments, collections, and years.
This means that your photos appear in a timeline and are grouped by things like location, or even event. It's a great way to take a look back at your memories and relive those specific moments in time.
The Moments, Collections, and Year views are only available in macOS Mojave and older.
Click on Photos, Moments, Collections, or Years buttons at the top of the window.
Click on a section of a Year to move to that Collection, or a section of a Collection to drill down into that Moment, or an item in a Moment to view that image or video in closer detail.
A single click on an item selects it, while a double click takes you to view it.
In the Year and Collections views, thumbnails can be small. You can click-and-hold and then drag the cursor in any direction over the thumbnails to get a larger preview. Letting go will take you directly to the image that the cursor was last on.
To replace the previous Moments/Collections/Years view, Catalina changed it to Years, Months, and Days for simplicity.
Make sure you're in the Photos section in the sidebar.
Source: iMore
Click the Years, Months, or Days buttons at the top of the window. The default view is All Photos.
Clicking on Years lets you see each year as a block. Double-clicking the year takes you into Months.
When you double-click on a Month, you'll drill down into the Days view.
You can create a new library for your photos at any time with Photos for Mac. To do so, make sure that you quit Photos and reopen it with the following method to get the Library options.
Click OK.
You've now created a brand new Photos Library. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to migrate over photos and video, so you will need to export the content you want, and then import it back into the new library.
When you create a new library, you may still want to go back to a previous library for something. Fortunately, it's easy to switch between multiple libraries.
Click on the name of the library you want to open.
Voilá! Just make sure to repeat this process each time you want to switch to a different Photo library.
If you're low on storage space on your Mac, you can just move your Photos Library to an external hard drive. Keep in mind though, that you will need to have this external drive plugged in to access your Photos Library, even if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled. And you aren't able to create a second Photos Library that has iCloud Photo Library enabled on your Mac, so be wary.
Click on the Photos Library file and then drag it to your external hard drive in the sidebar.
This process may take a while, depending on how big your Photos library is.
The Photos app technically supports the management of images that aren't locally stored within its library — that is, you can keep a set of images in a folder called 'October Trip' and manage them within Photos without having to make a separate copy of them. You can do this by navigating to Photos > Preferences from the menu bar, selecting the General tab, and unchecking the 'Copy items to the Photos library' box under Importing.
That said, reference libraries won't play nicely with iCloud Photo Library users; you may run into problems when syncing, or not be able to sync at all. So if you plan on using a reference library, you'll have to opt out of iCloud Photo Library.
I also didn't have any luck getting referenced files to sync properly with Photos — I'd delete a photo, but the reference file would stay in its original location, even after deleting it from the 'Recently Deleted' folder. Not sure if that's a bug or just not how Photos wants us managing referenced photos, but worth noting.
Sound off in the comments below!
October 2019: Updated for macOS Catalina.
You need more ports, right? And you probably need more storage, right? What you really need is the HybridDrive.
Losing photos and Photos Library corrupting can really drive Mac users crazy. If you are facing such a problem, calm down and read this article. Follow methods on this page to repair your Photos Library and recover all lost photos with EaseUS data recovery software for Mac immediately.
Applies to all new macOS: 10.15 (Catalina), 10.14(Mojave), 10.13 (High Sierra), 10.12 and old Mac OS X like 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.9, etc.
The article provides full solutions to recover photos after Photos Library corruption and fix the corrupted Photos Library:
Workable Solutions | Step-by-step Troubleshooting |
---|---|
Part 1. Recover lost photos after Photos Library corruption | Fix 1. Restore lost photos with EaseUS Mac data recovery software in three steps..Full steps |
Part 2. Repair corrupted Photos Library | Step 1. Close Photo Library if it's opened. |
'Hi there, can anyone of you tell me how to restore my lost photos on Mac? The Photos Library corrupted suddenly. All my photos stored in the Photos Library all disappeared. What can I do?
Please help me. And this is important for me to recover photos. Any solutions or suggestions are all welcomed.'
How many of you guys are facing Photos Library crash or corrupt problem and unable to restore photos? Here EaseUS software provides effective methods to prevent similar problems from happening again, follow to repair Photos Library and recover all photos on Mac immediately.
If you didn't lose photos, the best choice is to backup them first. When unexpected troubles happen to your photos, you'll still have the backups. Here we recommend you to use Time Machine to backup all important photos and other data on Mac:
1. Click Time Machine and choose Set Up Time Machine.
2. Click Select Backup Disk or select locations (an external storage device is preferable) back up photos, and then click Use for Backup.
You can also copy photos and files one by one and paste to another storage device where you want to store the backups. Be patient and careful while copying and pasting.
If photos lost due to Photos application or Photos Library corruption, you have two ways to restore the lost photos: 1. Restore lost photos with Mac data recovery software; 2. Retrieve Photos Library with photos from Times Machine backup.
If you didn't create a backup of Photos Library in the Time Machine, you'll need Mac data recovery software to help. We recommend you try EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac which supports to recover photos from corrupted Photo Library and even worse situations.
Step 1. Select the location where your valuable photos were lost and click Scan button.
Step 2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will start immediately a quick scan as well as a deep scan on your selected disk volume. Meanwhile, the scanning results will be presented in the left pane.
Step 3. By Path and Type, you can quickly filter the photos you've lost earlier. Select the target files and click Recover Now button to get them back at once.
If you've created a backup of Photos Library with Time Machine, follow the steps below to restore Photos Library and all lost photos:
1. Connect Time Machine backup drive.
2. Click Time Machine in the Dock and enter Time Machine
3. Find backups - your photos then click Restore to recover lost photos.
If the Photos behaves unexpectedly or Photos Library corrupts, follow next steps to start repairing Photos Library with Photos library repair tool:
Step 1. Close Photo Library if it's opened.
Step 2. Relaunch Photo Library by holding Command + Option key.
In the iTunes app on your Mac, choose iTunes Preferences, then click Advanced. Deselect the checkbox next to “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.” From now on, when you drag a file to your library or choose File Add to Library, the item appears in. Where’s my iTunes content on my Mac? In macOS 10.14 and earlier, iTunes was the app where all your media lived—music, home videos, TV shows, movies, podcasts, and audiobooks. ITunes was the one app for everything, including backing up and syncing your iPhone, iPad, or iPod. Now, macOS Catalina brings three dedicated apps—Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Podcasts—to your Mac.
Step 3. Click 'Repair' when the 'Repair Library' dialog pops up and ask whether you'd like to repair the library.
You might be asked to enter your account and password to authorize the library repair. And the Repair tool will analyze the database of Photos Library, repair detected errors.
If your Photos library is automatically updated with iCloud Photos, the entire contents of the library will re-updates with iCloud when the repair process completes.
The other alternative way to repair corrupted Photos Library is to create a new Photos Library on Mac. By doing so, you'll have your Photo Library back and reuse it to edit your photos again:
Step 1. Hold the Option key and double-click the Photos icon in the Applications folder (or click the Photos icon in the Dock).
Step 2. In the Choose Library dialogue, click Create New.
Step 3. Type a library name and choose a location to store the library. Click OK to confirm.