Get Organized with Photos Part 2: Folders, Albums and Smart Albums

🔥📸 Frustrated with endlessly scrolling to find that one memory in your ocean of photos?
Your friendly MacWhisperer has the solution! This video will help optimize your Photos Library. Discover its magic without trial and error. 🌈💻
👇👇 Key Moments in this Video 👇👇
00:00 Intro 🚀
01:38 The Sidebar: Photos, Album, and Projects 📚
02:44 Media Types 🎥
04:32 Live Photos 🌌
05:25 Shared Albums 🔄
07:09 My Albums: Organizing your Library 📒
07:43 Folders and SubFolders 📂
09:19 Creating a Folder 📁
10:01 Adding Pictures to Albums ➕
10:45 Selecting Multiple Items 👥
13:05 Viewing your Folders & Albums from the Sidebar 👀
15:06 Smart Albums 💡
18:54 Bonus Tip: The 5-Folder Fix 🌟
20:08 Suggested Folder Categories 🏷️
20:33 The "To Sort" Smart Album 🗂️
21:40 Specific Steps to Get Organized Quickly ⏰
Stick around for my top organization and productivity tip that I use across my life! Spoiler: It works wonders with photos. 😉
🎉 This video is the second in the series on organizing with Apple Photos - stay tuned for more! 💙
Got questions or want to share your experience? Comment below. Let's make photo organization a breeze together! Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to keep up with all the tips and tricks on mastering your Mac! 🖥️🌐
#ApplePhotos #PhotoOrganization #MacWhisperer #DigitalOrganization #SmartAlbums #LivePhotos #SharedAlbums #ProductivityTips

[@mountainhealing]

Thank you Dylan! Great information.

[@donbiagio1]

Thank you again my friend. 👕👍😎 This video was GREAT. A LOT to unpack but I can hardly wait to put the tips and tricks to work. I got a lot of photos to go through and “CLEAN UP”. But you as always make it easy to follow and implement. Thank you again awesome part 2 and look forward again to the next ones. Stay safe 😎👕❤️👌 Biagio Bisignano

[@TheMacWhisperer]

Super excited about this series, so thanks for the suggestion. Next up we will talk about how to share Photos, and how to Edit them. Also working on a video of my favorite 3rd Party Mac Apps

[@60beats44]

So extremely useful Dylan. Thank you very much for this fantastic series.

[@TheMacWhisperer]

My pleasure! More to come! We will dive into the titling and editing questions in Part 4 - Next up the sharing tools!

[@jonseigel322]

Soooo good! The To Sort idea is genius. Thanks so much for the first two parts and I look forward to Part 3.

[@TheMacWhisperer]

You are so welcome! Working on part 3 now.

[@DD-mz4lr]

Genus. Pure genius!

[@TheMacWhisperer]

I am so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching! Any particular takeaway you would like to share from the video?

[@jennyanswerth5048]

Excellent advice! Can’t wait to get started organised my neglected photos!

[@TheMacWhisperer]

Glad it was helpful!

[@anngiuli]

Thank you again, so look forward to lesson 3.

[@TheMacWhisperer]

You are welcome! ;)

[@astronaute]

Amazing video, you deserve to be a LOT more popular. I like your style

[@TheMacWhisperer]

Thank you so much 😀. The channel is growing thanks to people like you! Keep watching, there's lots more on the way!!!

[@thel-js7716]

Great video thanks for the tips. I currently used a folder per year and then populated that with albums of all the different events that year. I love the idea of breaking it down into Holiday & Events etc. My 1 question is con I have the same album in 2 folders for example I can have an album of a wedding in my current year folder but also in my new weddings subfolder in my new holidays & Events folder?

[@TheMacWhisperer]

Absolutely. Any picture can be in multiple albums, and any album can be duplicated. Personally, I don't see the need to create folders by year (most people don't remember what year a certain photo was taken, although EVERYONE believes they do). Plus, the Photos app already sorts by year, so it has always felt like an arduous and unnecessary task to sort by year manually when it is already done for you. Of course, you should do what you feel comfortable with, but having events sorted based on topic rather than solely by year makes it much easier to find that picture you were sure was taken in a specific year (but wasn't). I only share that suggestion because, over 20 years of doing this, I have watched people spend an endless amount of time doing mental gymnastics trying to find a picture (it was from that trip we took in my old red truck, which I bought in 2012, but it was after the transmission went out in 2015, oh wait... maybe it was in the other red truck from 2017... etc...) As opposed to "That was from our trip to Napa... let's go to the travel, Napa folder... oh there it is. My mistake it was 2019...."

[@thel-js7716]

Good point. Thanks again for the tips.

[@davep6603]

What a great video. I use Lightroom to organize my photos taken with my dedicated camera, but my iPhone photos library is a mess! Not for long, after seeing this video. Thank you!

[@TheMacWhisperer]

So glad you got value out of it!!! Thank you!

[@gertleroy]

well explained. i come from a life of pc use and i find it extremely confusing organizing pics and videos in the ios eco system. to be honest, i don4t think it's intuitive, and not better than PC. The fact that pictures or stored in a separate app (Photos) than other file types is just not practical to work with for me. Some applications when you need to upload e.g. a profile pic they give you access to the Photos app, but if your profiel pic is stored on your mac outside of the Photos app, things become complicated..

[@DD-mz4lr]

Ditto for me. Lifelong PC user and struggling with MAC photo library and organizing/editing. Don't like I can't edit photo unless it's in the Apple photo library. Huge advantage though is viewing same pics both on iPhone and MAC via iCloud. Can organize pics taken on my phone from my MAC. This video was a big help. Tremendous organization tools I might like better if I can master!

[@TheMacWhisperer]

I know there are some elements that take getting used to, but as a lifelong Mac user, I prefer letting the app do the work as opposed to doing everything from files and folders. It's certainly easier than using than google photos (which makes zero sense)... Feel free to ask any specifics that you need help with, I have taught thousands of people how to use their photos app on all their devices and really get organized with it and learn how to use it. Even many lifelong PC users. In the long run I think it is a better system.

[@TheMacWhisperer]

You can edit into photoshop or other apps doreclty from the photos app by right clicking and going to "edit with". It will open the image into whatever app you like, and then when you save it, it will update the picture in Photos automatically. So you don't have to "only edit" in the photos app. For me ALL my pics are in the photos app, so I can't even imagaine where else I would have tthem organized? A bunch of loose folders. That's annoying, inconvenient and would make me crazy. The Photos app is mafe to managae all your pics, and once you get the hang of the automatic sorting, the folders and albums, it's super easy.

[@GeeWhizbang]

Love Love Love this series Dylan, pls keep on trucking! OK I have a sorting challenge that your bonus tip may serve to solve but wanted to get your thoughts. Last year I accidentally restored all imported items which added back every pix I took basically into my master library and created tons of duplicates that are unfiled & created clutter/taking up space. What's the best, most efficient way to delete all those unfiled photos (I've already tried the "duplicate" feature to rid some of them but still have many more to resolve). Thoughts??

[@TheMacWhisperer]

You could create a smart album with a rule based on when they were imported in, or something about the quality of the resolution of those images… Then it would pull all of them together in one place and you could delete or address them in one fell swoop. Another option is using the app PowerPhotos (which is a paid app) that can automatically find duplicates and clear them up in a better way than Apple built-in systems.

[@GeeWhizbang]

@@TheMacWhisperer BTW you're my go to Mac expert to send to my Pops who's a viral Senior, keep it up sir!

[@luclevesquephd]

Another excellent video. Thank you for making these. I agree with the post below, you should have millions of followers. I'm planning to transition to iOS within the next 6 weeks. One of the things that I would need to know at some point. I have at least 20 years of photos filed in folders on windows, structured by Year then event. However, I am unsure that all my photos are appropriately date and times stamped. I would need to check all these photos and batch update timestamps. How do we do this?

[@TheMacWhisperer]

The nice thing about the way Photos imports, is that it will make albums out of each of your folders preserving (for the most part) your current (even if inaccurate) chronological sorting system. Once it's done, you can batch re-date the albums, and then in the long run you can change the forced "I must put it in a folder based on year" system that ALL windows users use... BTW, when you change to iOS, I would wait until September when the new phones are released. With the upcoming addition of Apple's AI (Apple Intelligence) newer phones will be the ones to get the best functionality, so don't skimp (at least this first time), so you can enjoy ALL the latest features. Also, I do group classes, private lessons, and have a full course on how to master the iPhone when you are ready. let me know if you would like links for any of these services. Thanks for watching.

[@luclevesquephd]

@@TheMacWhisperer Thank you. I will try to wait until September, however, I am on a phone rental system with my phone provider, forcing me to upgrade in the next 6 weeks or so. I'll try to push it back. I got tired of Windows computer slowing down, and migrated to Linux desktop. While stable and fast, far too many limitations with this environment. I'm making the leap in the iOS world, I know that it will be a shock, but I learn fast. I will watch your videos, and turn to you for help. Thank you for creating this channel.

[@TheMacWhisperer]

Are you going to keep your Linux desktop? Or are you ready to go full Apple and get yourself a proper MacBook? I love the iPad, but in my world it's just not a replacement for a computer. Too limiting. To really make the most out of your technology, getting everything inside the Apple ecosystem is a huge benefit. Let me know how I can help.

[@susanlepich3914]

If I own the shared album and then delete it, will the people that I shared the album with have it deleted as well? Btw, your video is very helpful! Thanks!

[@TheMacWhisperer]

Yes, if you delete a shared album the recipients will lose access to it. They can manually download the photos to their own library by right clicking on any photos they want to keep and selecting import. When I delete a shared album I usually send out an email a week before and a day before, letting the recipients know to save the images if they want them. I can always re-share them later if I need to. And thanks so much for watching!

[@megansolis4917]

How can I share a folder so participants have access to all the albums inside of it?

[@TheMacWhisperer]

Unfortunately Apple hasn’t made that capability available. At this time you can share an album but you cannot share a folder or the album inside of that folder.