Apple’s Photos and the very old iPhoto are probably the only photo management applications left that take your photos captive. Apple, in their quest for simplicity has never trusted you, the user, to learn how to do things the right way…so it makes decisions for you. Granted, some of these decisions are good, but if you want to make any changes, you simply can’t. Therefore, if you want to move from Photos to any other photo manager, Apple makes it very difficult, but not impossible. Read on to find out how to move away from Photos on your Mac.
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Apple Photos Takes Your Digital Photos Captive…Still
Once you start using Photo (and everyone who has a new Mac uses Photos to some degree or another), Photos will automatically store your photos in the locked Photos Library folder just like the old iPhoto software on the Mac. If you just start using Photos with this default setting, it is difficult to move away from Photos if you decide to change photo management software.
Read more: The good, the bad and the ugly of iPhoto.
As a consequence, you cannot simply move your Photos Library sub-folders and afterwards delete them. The reason is that Photos locks the Photos library and this means you cannot see or change what is inside the Photos library file.
The first simple option is to instruct Photos to leave your digital pictures in the original folder location by going to Photos/Preferences/General and deselecting “Copy Items to Photos library”. This way you can keep using Photos but organize your own folders outside of Photos…and keep using Photos. Most likely however, your photos are already stored in the Photos library, because it is the default option.
What do you do then if you want to move away from Photos? How do you get your pictures out of Photos so you can rename the folders so that they make sense and help you?
First however, you must prepare by answering three important questions:
- Do you have enough room on your computer? Make sure you have enough room on your hard drive before doing this operation because this procedure will first create another copy of ALL your pictures. If you don’t have enough space, just export a few albums from Photos and then delete them from Photos…and repeat. To find out how large your Photos library is just Click on Finder then click on Pictures and notice the size of the Photos Library file. Then check your hard drive remaining space as well to make sure it will fit. If you find you don’t have room, move some files to a simple and reliable external drive.
- Do you want to still keep your pictures in Photos after the export? You need to decide if you want to keep your events still in Photos in addition to exporting them. However, if you are nervous about deleting your photos from Photos, you can keep them in both places until you decide. You just need to know that you will be creating two copies of your pictures and it becomes more difficult to keep track of which photos you exported.
- What program will you be using instead of Photos? Whether it is Adobe Lightroom, ACDSee or something else make sure you have it installed and ready to use. The good thing about organizing your pictures outside of Photos is that you can switch your programs later without losing any of your work. See my recommended software list for ideas.
1. Create One Export Folder for All Your Photos
Start your move from Photos with a very simple step. Having one folder with all your exported photos will help you slowly work through them and organize them as you have time. This is the target folder for all your pictures as you move them outside of Photos photo manager.
Create one export folder called FROM-PHOTOS.
2. Select All Your Pictures in Photos
Continue your move from Photos by selecting all your pictures. The new Photos photo manager allows you to select all your pictures in one operation which is great. This way, selecting all your pictures can be done quickly.
Select all your pictures in Photos
3. Export All Your Pictures from Photos
Now, we need to export all your pictures in order to complete your move from Apple Photos. Once you selected all your pictures, select the Export menu option.
Exporting pictures from Photos
You have two options available:
Export Photos – this option will export your photos with all the edits and metadata you have created in Photos. If you want to keep all the changes you have made on Photos, then choose this option. You need to understand though that if you have cropped an image in Photos and export it with this option, it is only the cropped image that will be exported and not the original picture.
In addition, this option will apply compression to your original images. This means that your exported images will have a decreased resolution.
Options for exporting pictures with all your Photos edits
Export Unmodified Original – this option will export your original pictures without any edits you have done in Photos. You definitely want to use this option if you have RAW files and you need your original files. This is the only option available if you want to keep the original resolution of your pictures.
Options for exporting original pictures from Photos
You have three options available for exporting original files:
Export IPTC as XMP – this option allows you to export the IPTC metadata to an additional XMP side car file. This means you get an extra file containing XMP metadata. If you don’t know what this means you probably need to leave it unchecked. However, if you have RAW images and you added metadata in Photos, then you need to check this checkbox.
File name – this option will maintain the actual picture file names that your camera produced. I recommend using the “Use File Name” option.
Subfolder format – this option determines the names of the folders resulting from the export operation. I recommend using the “Moment Name” option.
Now that you have exported all your pictures from Photos, your export folder (05-FROM-PHOTOS) should look like the picture below.
Results of exporting pictures from Photos
Notice that my export folder 05-FROM-PHOTOS contains all my pictures from Photos organized in folders with the date when the pictures were taken as the folder names. This is the result you want. These names are still not the final name you need but it’s a good first step.
4. Delete Your Exported Event Folders from Photos
At this point you have created another copy of all your photos. In order to cleanup after your move from Photos, you need to delete the old pictures inside the Photos library. Photos holds one copy in its Photos Library and in addition you have just created another copy by exporting your event to the FROM-IPHOTO folder. So the next step is easy!
Important note: If you are nervous about deleting all your photos from Photos, then you can do this step after you have organized everything in your export folder (
05-FROM-PHOTOS) outside of Photos.
At this point you have exported all your pictures (essentially you have created another copy of your pictures outside of Photos) Photos to another folder. You should still have them all selected in Photos and you can simply Command + Click (or both mouse buttons together) and bring up the context menu and choose the Delete option.
Delete your exported photos
This operation should successfully remove all your pictures from the Library folder that Photo uses as the main place for putting all your pictures. You can check in Finder the size of the Photos Library…it should be very very small now having no pictures in it.
Remember that this operation does NOT remove the Photos application from your Mac. It only moves your pictures from Photos to an external folder that you can organize as you want.
5. Make Photos Play “Nice” with Your Photos
In order to complete your move from Apple Photos, you need to “tell” Photos to behave. While Photos does take your digital photos captive by default, it does provide some simple settings that make it play nicely with other software you might want to use for managing your photos.
When your camera is plugged into your Mac, Photos opens by default but you can simply uncheck the checkbox for your camera to stop Photos from coming up automatically. You can always bring up Photos up manually so this doesn’t really break anything…it just stops Photos from coming up every time you connect a camera to your Mac.
Disable automatic import into Photos
6. Use Your New Photo Manager to Transfer New Pictures
Now, that you have completed your move from Photos, start using your new photo manager instead of Photos. Whatever software you decide to use instead of Photos (like ACDSee, Lightroom or Picasa), make sure that from now on, you only use that software for importing new photos…instead of Photos.
Once you have exported your organized events from Photos make sure you setup another folder to help you with transferring new photos from your cameras. In other words, once you get your photos out of Photos, stop using Photos to import new photos. Otherwise, you will have to repeat this procedure.
Setup that software so that it will transfer your new digital photos from your camera to the new folder you have created…the one you used for exporting (Pictures/TRANSFER).
Whether you use Picasa, Lightroom, set it up so all new photos will use the new TRANSFER folder as the destination for photo transfer.
At the end of the entire procedure your folder structure would look something like this:
Pictures
TRANSFER
FROM-IPHOTO
...lots of sub-folders from iPhoto.
Once your pictures have been exported, examine the folder names you have in your new folder structure. If you have not used Photos to cleanup and organize your events prior to exporting them, you must start organizing these events that you have exported.
Read more about Creating an efficient folder structure. If you’re still using Picasa after all these years, read my article about , transferring photos with Picasa.
Important note about connecting Android phones to Picasa on the Mac: it doesn’t work! Picasa on the Mac does not see Android phones at all. However, you can simply use Image Capture on the Mac to transfer your photos from your Android phone to your TRANSFER folder. Then you can simply organize them there.
Should you move away from Photos?
Photos is the Apple’s new photo manager which replaces the old iPhotos. While it is a powerful photo management tool, Photos maintains the same old approach from iPhotos. Apple has made some decisions for the sake of simplifying your digital life, but with these decisions they have essentially taken your digital photos captive.
The good thing is that you can export your pictures out of Photos and use something else…anything else that will allow you to manage your photo folders.
Should you move from Photos? The answer is yes if you want to have the freedom to name and organize your photo folders the way you want and be able to control your media library. If on the other hand you are not comfortable with manipulating file folders and files, then maybe you should not move from Photos and stick with the decisions that Apple makes for you.
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Great article! I have about 3 months of photos organized into about 30 albums. Each album represents an individual date. I would like to move these photos from my Macbook to my PC, where 15 years of pictures are organized using Window’s file system (ie. no specific software). If I understand correctly by following your operation I will end up with each album in a seperate folder each of which will be named by date. The names I have given to each album will be excluded from the transfer. Is this correct?
Incidentally all of the photos are still on my SD card in my camera. But, they are not organized into separate folders within the camera, they will copy onto my PC in one big folder. I have not been able to get this model of camera to group the photos by date (Panasonic Lumix).
Neil…as far as your photos from your SD Card being copied to your PC…it all depends how you transfer them to your PC. If you use a simple but powerful program like Faststone, you can instruct the transfer process to create a subfolders for each date the software finds in the EXIF data of each image file. This way, you get an automatic organization structure that will be much more helpful later on. If you use Windows to simple Copy and Paste from the SD Card, yes, it will dump all of them into one folder if you copy them all at once.
Iphoto use to export the events with the photo files inside so it was easy to see what the photos were grouped as. Photos stinks in this regard you can only export by “Moments” which is worthless as it is only dates. you can’t export all your albums as albums unless you do it one album at a time
76,000 photos exported in Moments is a worthless effort. there is no way to export Photos bulk in the albums you have made to import into ACDsee or Luminar
Doug…I understand the frustration you have working with Photos. Apple was very intentional about how they want users to use Photos and they made a lot of choices for users (mostly decent choices) and they don’t really trust users to make their own choices by design. So, as long as you work in the Photos parameters you’re good, but as soon as you want to leave the Photos ecosystem, the software doesn’t help you at all.
Lora asked if “export” retained more complete information in a transfer than “copy/paste.” You said you would get back to her. Have you found an answer? Thanks.
Vlad, this is a really basic question no doubt, but would appreciate confirmation that what I want to do is OK. If you back up your Photos library content onto an older Mac running an older MacOS system do the files remain unaltered? i.e. the older system won’t try to modify them in any way?
John…if you mean backup as in Time Machine backup or any other copying of the Photos library to an external drive should start moly copy the files without altering the photo files themselves. It should also preserve any edits you might have made or Metadata you have added as long as you keep using Photos.
Hi. Just was browsing and searching things about Photos. The short story is that I don’t like anything messing with my pictures or music files. I learnt this years ago with iTunes which really did mess up my strict hierarchical library I have in place for both music and pictures. Music and picture programs should be just viewers and that’s it.
But my question is that when I started importing with “Copy items to the Photos library” un-checked, I kept a shrewd eye on the PhotosLibrary file growing exponentially. After importing only a quarter of my pictures, I noticed the “Photos Library.photoslibrary” file was fast approaching 1GB at which point I thought this was pointless and cancelled the import.
If Pictures in this referenced only mode is only doing just that, then why does the “Photos Library.photoslibrary” grow so large? Is it the thumbnails it’s building?
Ross….depending of how many pictures you have, even in this reference only mode the Photos library can grow because it includes thumbnails and metadata. So, yes even without actual image files in the library, your Photos library can grow fast. Lightroom catalogs are also large even though they don’t contain the actual images.
Thanks Vlad,
I totally agree with your views on how Photos for Mac can hold users captive. It’s the same in many areas of computing but I have moved over to XnView MP which behaves beautifully. Arranging the windows is tricky but that is a consequence of the design and concept of the program. Reading the docs will probably help me! But once set up, the way it deals with large files stored on external drives is magic. Cheer’s.
Ross…I’m glad XnView MP works for you. It provides a view straight in your folders instead of a catalog as Photos and Lightroom provide and it gives you lots of power to organize your media collection. Even though the interface is a bit dated and clunky as you note, it is also free for personal use.
Thank you for a very useful article but
1. I see no mention of Time Machine – surely this gives you the option of recovering mistakes
2. I made the mistakes when I bought a large external drive (with mirrored disks) for both my Photos Library and my Time Machine (that I now see I shouldn’t have) and then went through my library adding key words – all apparently wonderful but recently pictures appear to be dropping out leaving blanks in their place but the information I have added still intact.
I have rebuilt the library but it doesn’t help. Is their any cure or do `i have to create a new library from my back-ups and reenter all the key words and descriptions again?
Richard…I don’t use Time Machine as I like the ability to actually see my backup folders and access them instead of relying on Time Machine. As to your second point….I am not sure why your Photos library has become corrupted. Not sure if you back up anything with iCloud and some settings are not right. Do you see the image when you try viewing it? Is it only the thumbnail that is empty?
Thanks for the article, It gives a ton of info in a clear way. I’ve been on a Mac for about 8 years. For the most part I’ve liked Photos but as has been mentioned, Apple locking and taking most control of my photos have been a struggle and due to this, I’m looking at moving away from Photos for a while. The one thing I really like about Photos is the facial recognition. The one thing I really don’t like about Photos is the ability to share/export photos in a managed way. My other challenge is that I have been very very VERY very bad at organizing/migrating/importing photos over the years and over the new computers. I have now undertaken gathering photos, video and photolibrarIES (yes, that is plural) into one folder. So needless to say, I have duplicates of duplicates spread across multiple subfolders. I’m thinking of using Photos to import all these photos into a fresh Photolibrary. I’m thinking of doing this because I’m not sure what other softwares will scan all subfolders and bring all the photos into a common area. Once Photos gathers them all together, I would then export again so that another software can access them. Any recommendations on if this is a good approach?
Tim…your plan and approach can work. You can also use AMok for bringing photos from multiple folders and sub folders into one folder separated by date. See my resources for a link for downloading amok https://www.organizepictures.com/recommended-photography-products
Hi, just to mention it: You may of course access all your original photo files in iPhoto and in Photos. Right-click the “photolibrary” file and select “show package contents” . Then, you may copy or move your original files wherever you want – but only do this if you really want to leave the Apple software. And better do a backup of your library before!
Hello Vlad
I am a professional photo organiser. My clients always have photos scattered over many computers (both Mac and PC), devices and storage systems., that I need to consolidate, de-duplicate and organise in user-friendly folders. Apple Photos presents particular challenges, and the knowledge you are shared in this article is very useful. I used to use a program named Photos-to-disk for exporting folders from Photos, but it has not been updated since Sierra. I have recently started using a new program called Photos Takeout (it’s in the Mac App Store), which automates the export of folders by album and year, keeps metadata intact and also exports iCloud and referenced photos. Has worked well so far, even with very large libraries (1 terabyte range).
Photos, like iPhoto before it, provides the option of a referenced library as well as the managed library you’ve spoken about as “locking” your photos inside the app.
Are you aware you can reference your photos outside the app, as with Lightroom? I was concerned that you’ve made a black-and-white statement without knowledge of this basic feature available to anyone.
MJS…thank you for mentioning using a referenced library for Photos. Even though Photos organizes everything by metadata without any control left to the user, I may mention it as an option when using Photos.
Photos doesn’t handle referenced photos very well. This is especially so with Photos 6 and macOS Big Sur. Please see https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002591
Hi,
to export your photos and videos with a better subfolder structure you can use the app “Photos Export Pro”. It can name the folders like your use the album structure in the Photos App, not on the moment names. Here is a link: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/photos-export-pro/id1484356283?mt=12
Thanks for this useful article. I was using Picasa when I had an old macbook – when I got a new one – I decided I would bravely attempt Photos – thinking I will be able to use the referenced folder feature. With the upgrade to Catalina – the sync with iphone is all messed up – so decided to stop using Photos – went through the tedious process of exporting all the photos I had imported – deleted the duplicates painstakingly – and realized that the photos I had imported over the months from my iphone – had to be identified and exported (GOSH what a painful task – but I braved through it all). Now I am stuck with which app to download and use. My criteria – a) Not cloud based b) something simple like Picasa c) Has to be free.
And the photo management should retain the pictures in my folder format including any file name changes I make. (basically how Picasa was).
What would you recommend?
Vela…wow, you worked so hard to keep your photos independent of Photos and organized! The only good free application that meets your requirements and works on the Mac is XnView MP.
I just have a question. I would like to know if you know of any software that will organize my photos library in folders and not have to scroll to look through for a certain photo?
I hope I explained it ok.
Shan….please look at my recommended resources under “Free software for creating date folders automatically”
Exporting unmodified originals for some reason takes far longer than copy pasting from source via Finder. Simply navigate to the Photos library, right click, show package contents and navigate to the Masters/Originals folder. Copy paste into a new location and save literally days of time for a large library (400GB+). Picktorial is a great alternative to Photos IMO
I understood that “export” moved a more complete data file while “copy/paste” or “dragging” the thumbnail moved a less complete file (less data).
Lora…I am not sure yet but I will check. Dragging might use some export defaults that guarantee a quick operation….but less data.
“The good thing about organizing your pictures outside of Photos is that you can switch your programs later without losing any of your work.”
This is not true. If you edit RAW files, every editor uses its own system for storing adjustments made to the photo. While these edits are non-destructive, they do not transfer to other editing programs. For instance, if you use Lightroom for several months/years and then move to Luminar 3, you start over editing the original RAW files in the new program. You can (and should) export your edited photos as well in TIF or JPG format, but your edits are gone. That’s the one big reason I will never go with Adobe and their subscription model. Once locked in, you are placed in a painful predicament – keep paying their monthly ransom or lose all your editing work. At least with ACDSee or Capture One I can keep using an older version if I do not wish to upgrade. With Adobe, you’re married and the only way out is a painful divorce! People need to know this as you are recommending Lightroom!
Dan…I see that my meaning can be misunderstood, so let me clarify. I have specifically said that organizing outside of Photos you can switch to organize with any other software. I did not say editing is transferable to any other program. When organizing with folders and tags that are embedded in the image files…that work is transferable. However, editing original images unless applied and exported in TIF or jpeg ( as you mentioned) is not transferable. I will probably make some changes to the article to clarify.
I want to leave Photos, but feel chained to it because I love my Live Photos. It gives context to funny things the kids have done. Do you know any way to leave Photos yet keep the Live Function? Also, for me, exporting unmodified original, not only split my live photo into a mov and jpeg (which I know is what Apple uses to create the Live Photo), but it also split my portrait photos into a regular photo and a low res blurry photo. Help?!
Kelsy…unfortunately no other software works with the iPhone Live Photo feature the way Apple implements it. It is a technical gimmick they have done…combining an mov and a jpeg when viewing the photos. There are two separate files. As far as the portrait photos go…try exporting modified photos and see if Photos will combine the two photos into one. I will try it too soon. I personally turn Live Photo off as I don’t really like the feature…but that is just me. Lots of people seem to like it.
I, too, love the live photos feature of iphone photos, which has kept my iphone library chained to Photos for the first step of editing. I end up importing everything from my iphone and ipad to the Photos app, then exporting selects to my Lightroom Classic catalog. Not perfect, but Live Photos are worth it to me.
Great article! Also here is a video about recovering deleted photos from Photos on Mac. If you deleted some important photos and they are not in ‘recently deleted’, just try this.
https://youtu.be/4Bn7DGqnHy0
Great article. Any advice though about the situation where photos have been partially synced with iCloud over several devices? I have a Mac, an iPhone and a MacBook, but live on an island with very slow internet. Foolishly perhaps I enabled syncing to iCloud which has never managed to complete and now have partially synced photo libraries in 4 places. Help!!
Keith…I completely understand your situation. The first advice is to turn off iCloud since it is not reliable in your situation. Secondly, pick one computer with the largest storage and make that your main media library which means to transfer & store all photos from all devices to this one device. I know….lots of manual work which is very tedious…but you will be in control.
Hello. I just tried doing this and after hours of transfer to external hard drive it only transferred 1100 pictures out of 21,000. Is there something else I should be doing? My HD is 4TB so it’s not space issue.
Dell…not sure what is going on but try these steps…maybe it will work:
1) On Step 2 make sure all the photos seem to be selected after you choose “Select All”. My suspicion is that somehow you only have a small subset selected. Just scroll through the photos fast, all the way to the end and make sure they are all selected. If not, try selecting them all again and try it again.
2) If #1 above fails…try selecting only one year worth of photos and export them to a local folder instead of your external drive. External drives are much slower, so maybe Photos has an issue with that. If this works, simply move this exported folder from your internal drive to your external drive.
Thank you for this article. I absolutely hate, loathe, and despise iPhoto/Photos! As you describe, it literally takes all of your photos hostage, in a terrible application which runs very sluggishly, slowly, with an absolutely terrible photo organization method. I got my master photos out of iPhoto–only to discover a MASSIVE amount of thousands of photo folders: they are organized by year, then month, and finally then abstract number codes are assigned by iPhoto to specific series of photos which were imported into iPhoto from your camera so, you have no idea what is in the folder! So, even after you export your master photos from iPhoto, you are then left with a gigantic mass of your master photos buried in sub folders with meaningless number code titles as assigned by iPhoto! So now I am doing the incredibly tedious task of going through every single one of these numbered files with the original photos to then put them into dated folders with a title that helps me know what is in the file. This is a massive, massive job! I really hate the Apple engineers who created iPhoto/Photos because they did not create a viable ergonomic way to export the master photos out of iPhoto with at least a more intuitive user friendly way. iPhoto/Photos is easily the WORST photo viewing/managing application I have ever used. That said, I’m really looking forward to when I have all my original photos back, and in folders where I can easily navigate and view them–i.e. the antithesis of Apple iPhoto/Photos!
Deschutes…I understand the frustration. It will feel good when you get them all organized. You need to arm yourself with lots of perseverance because this will take time.
Hello,
I’m not sure how old this article is, but its very useful.
I wondered if this export method will work for a very very large photos album (70gb). You suggest export all, so I gather this will take a while to process if i tried to do all at once?
Also is there a way to export in this way to an external hard drive or a cloud storage space (not apple), do you know?
Any advice would be appreciated. I need to get these pics backed up and stored elsewhere than this mac itself, as there is no longer any hard drive space to do anything, and a whole list of back ups and upgrades need to be completed!
Kind regards
Renee
Renee…great questions! I originally wrote this article a couple of years ago but I have updated regularly to keep up with the changes in Photos.
As to your questions…yes this process will work with large catalogs like yours and you should be able to export to a reliable external hard drive. Later you can upload to a good cloud backup service. But first focus on getting your photos on an external hard drive.
You can actually start with all the photos from one year and see how it goes. Create a smart album for that year, select it and then select all photos for that year….then export to your external drive.
Check your results and repeat.
I tested an iPhoto Original export to a USB external hard drive with 4 Pictures. It was successful and i noticed that it was still in iPhoto with the same specs. I then proceeded to export a large number of Originals to the same Hard drive. That hard drive got shorted unfortunately and I wanted to repeat. Most of the pictures are still exportable but lots aren’t. I says the original is no longer to be found. Any chance to create something exportable from what I am seeing in iPhoto? What am i seeing on iPhoto if its not the original? To recover my data from the shorted hard drive i got a 4 figure estimate so i hope there can be another solution. Thanks! Matthew ps For the record I am on a mid 2007 iMac with El Capitan.
Matthew…not sure I understand what you are trying to do, but you should be able to export from iPhoto as often as you want. You might have erased the images and only see thumbnails now…not sure but it is possible. In this case you see them but you can’t export them.
Maybe someone mentioned this in a comment above, but you left out a very important reason for everyone to export the unmodified original photo, regardless of whether they made edits to or modified the metadata of an image. That being that, when exporting without selecting the unmodified original version option, photos will export a file that is vastly smaller than the original. A 30mb photo will be exported with a size below 10mb. When viewing the images at first glance one may not realize how their photo has been altered, but when inspected closer the loss of quality due to compression is clear. Just something I feel like is crucial and should be mentioned when you explain why one should or perhaps should not check the ‘export unmodified original’ box.
Ryan…you are completely right and I will add a paragraph with your note. My thought was that people would lose their edits which most people don’t like. Thank you!
Using iPhoto I have exported all my events to a file folder on my desktop. In iPhoto an event may show 100 photos (files). Then when I open the file folder on my desktop for that event – I can count 100 photos, but on the info line at the bottom it shows perhaps 130 files. What and where are these extra files?
Judie…not sure I understand the question. Take a look at the extra pictures, look at the picture info and see the date…maybe it will give you a clue.
I’m leaving Photos too. Apple are trying to get me to pay a subscription for a service I don’t even rate. I want to manage my photos and one day be rid of my over-priced apple phone. Don’t appreciate the separate iPhoto album I have either. Needing to toggle between two periods rather than look at them collectively. Thanks for this article – very clear and helpful!
Loved iPhoto…Photos, not so much
Amen. Thanks for the great article Vlad. I am moving over to ACDSee Photo Studio for the Mac.
I realized years ago that as new software comes and goes, I wanted simplicity. So my photos are, and will always be, in plain old folders, by year, month, and then the group of photos labeled by event. I am considering using tags though, to differentiate families to make it easier to prepare gifts – slide shows, calendars, etc.
I know I can tag individual photos, as well as folders, which is great.
Can you give some tips on how to set up tags?
Assuming you are using Photos, you can select a photo and click the “i” button on the top right button bar. Then you can enter tags. You cannot add tags to folders though.
Or you can use a tool like NeoFinder, which has a great tagger for keywords, descriptions, ratings, and more.
NeoFinder writes the tags directly back to the file, so all of that is immedaitely available for other tools in your workflow.
And NeoFinder also handles cataloging, finding, and working withdata of offline volumes…
(sorry for the shameless plug, but this whole data caging thing in Photos bugs me a lot, actually)
https://www.cdfinder.de/guide/28/free_data.html
Thanks Vlad, i’ll get this done ASAP. The thing with Photos that i’ve found frustrating is that when I want to upload photos to a site to make a photo book i can only export these to desktop and then upload from there in small batches as i can’t find the location information of the photos in ‘Photos’, unlike when i had a PC and could just upload the contents of an entire folder containing an unlimited number of files.
Any tips on a decent photo manager for a Mac that isn’t ‘Photos’ that will allow me to store everything in one place (external or internal drive) and just click one upload button on a site that will just ask for the path to the files. (I know i can make Photobooks on ‘Photos’ but at roughly 400% of the price compared to the site i use, I’d prefer not too if i can get around it.
Martin…once you have your pictures out of Photos into folders, any photo book printing company will allow you to select multiple photos and upload in batch. The only problem is that there is no good alternative to Photos on the Mac. It used to be Picasa but it has been discontinued by Google. The only good option left for the Mac is Adobe Lightroom.
Would Adobe Bridge work for this?
Martin, not sure when you wrote this but you said you can’t find the location of your photos – you can right click on the Photos application icon in Finder and you will have an option to ‘Show Package Contents’ this is where all the originals are stored by date in Photos if this is what you are after.
Thank you for this excellent article! Very helpful and much appreciated!!
Can someone remind me why we are still buying Apple stuff? :)
Best wishes always
Mark…glad you liked my article. Apple’s approach to making things simple means not allowing the user to see complexity…so they hide it. This is the case with Photos.
Make things simple to allow to do things, ok, but for Photos I don’t agree with you: here Apple just disallowed to organize photo (and albums cannot be a workaround).
When I did read that Apple prepared a “new iPhoto” I could not imagine that they could remove the abilty to organize even just a little like I did with iPhoto.
Their approach here made things more complex for lot of users: if one wants to continue to use iPhoto and also have photos in iCloud, one has to use Photos AND iPhoto together which means lot of time lost.
If one wants to make iPhone to sync with iCloud AND iPhoto, then it is worse: some photos in iCloud, some others in iPhoto which cannot see all…
Where is simplicity ?
Your article gave me a possible solution, thank you very much, I’ll try it.
Fantastic, straight forward, easy to follow article with great explanations.
Dan…glad to hear the my article was helpful.
Hi, I have exported all my original unmolested photos from MAc Photos as described, and have a directory with dated folders as you show. However the File info showing creation date of a photo does not match with date of the folder containing it. I have exported all with ITPC sidecar files also. Any idea why dates dont match ? Thanks
Phil…the creation date of the image file is different than when the image was taken. Make sure you are looking at the EXIF data in your image file. In Image Capture for example, bring up the image and click Tools/Show Location Info. Then click EXIF in the small display that comes up. The date here should match the date in the folder name. Hope this makes sense.
Hi Vlad,
I have tried the steps outlined above to finally create my own library structure and become tool independent using embedded tags.
I do, however, have one serious doubt when I look at the steps outlined above: Is there a way to both –
a) keep the photo edits and tags etc.
b) have the exact same picture quality as before for not edited photos?
I have noticed that if I use the “Export Photos” option with JPEG quality “High” as in your screenshot, I will get JPEG files that are considerably smaller than my original files – even if I did not edit them in Photos.
– this seems bad, since Photos is messing with the files even without me asking for any “enhancements” – do you know what happens here?
If I chose JPEG quality “Maximum”, my photos suddenly get much larger even as the originals (sometimes x2), as if Photos was trying to “add” information to the image even though the pixel count stays the same…
– also not good, right?
But if I use the “Export Unmodified Original” option, I lose all my retouching and cropping actions, as well as all already embedded tags on all images, something I want to keep since I have spent quite some time on it already…
Is there a middle ground, where I get the originals from the images I did not touch including the tags and the optimal quality in retouched images if I worked on them in Photos?
Thanks and BR.
Christian…you hit it right on the head! Unfortunately there is no way to have both. You can either choose JPEG which will apply your edits, crops, keyword, geotags, facetags, etc…or unmodified and then lose edits and user created metadata. This is what unfortunately happens every time one tries to deviate from Apple software.
I think I have one solution on this…
If I create a smart album for modified pics and then export them with values of my choosing (or what Apple is allowing for me in the Photos export menu). Only thing is that the date of files are the date of when the files are saved to drive. So I need to export them maybe in groups arranged by the date or what ever I choose to. It’s cuite easy to harshly spread all modified pics in groups using smart albums unless there’s a LOT of pictures to export this way.
Now that I have exported all of my modified pictures, I just make one smart album for non-modified pics and export them as “original”. Of course I just arrange them before in many different smart albums like i did with those modified ones. Like by moments or what ever. Just arrange them first as you like, but at first you should move your modified and delete them and then you can freely export all of the rest as “original”.
Exporting modified as non-original with sidecar file (IPTC -> XMP) isn’t an option, but I think that it’s possible to arrange them first under certain date or month or so. Or you can use other ways but If I got this right, the original date is exported only when exp. as “original”. But in this way you’ll got to having only the modified pictures without original creation date in the mode that drives filing system reads them straight.
Also I thought to get those modified exported pics after to Ligthroom, since those have been the ones with the biggest interest from me :) Hope this helps too.
Thank you! This is extremely helpful!