Photos app on iMac, what other options are there?

[Mr Noble]

I'm sorry if this has been asked a lot before, I've had a hunt but nothing's come up.

I'm about to migrate 10 years worth of photos (8000) from my old iMac to the new one that was delivered on Monday.

I'd much prefer to have all my pictures organised in normal folders on the mac, but they're currently half in the Photos app (mainly iPhone imports) and half in folders from my cameras.

Is there a way to import from iPhone onto the Mac without using the Photos app?

Which program can I use?

[steveatesh]

Lightroom?

[CoolHands]

Why don't you want to use it? I would use it. I like it. I really can't see why you would want to avoid it.

[Salesy]

All my photos are in the photos app on Mac, then backed up to external HDD in folders from Camera. I also have a Flickr account which my Apple devices automatically backup to.

[Gad-Westy]

Depends what you do with your photos. If it's just importing them and minor adjustments, Photos is fine. If you're managing raw files and more serious editinng and cataloging, I'd go with Lightroom. Aperture 3 used to be the best option as it did both things so well and was part of the Mac 'ecosystem' but it's long since been abandoned by Apple.

[Mr Noble]

I guess I could just continue to use Photos.


Do you lot import your camera pictures into Photos too, or just use it for iPhone snaps?

I think I've got myself in a mess after 10 years of iPhone imports into Photos and desktop folder imports from my cameras. It's all half and half now and I figured it's easier to sort them all in Finder than in Photos.

Adding pictures to Albums seemed a bit hit and miss when I tried it yesterday. At the moment, I have about 5000 pics just arranged by the date I took them.

[StevieBee]

I spent quite a while bemoaning what I thought was a retrograde step by Mac when they introduced Photos but exerted some effort to properly understand it and now find it is an excellent tool.

Migrating from iPhotos to Photos is not that efficient though. I used it as a way to rationalise what I kept. Best way is to dump your originals onto a hard drive into folders and then import them into a new Photos library, folder by folder, ditching the naff stuff as you go, creating albums and organising as you wish. It does take some time but worth the effort.

I now have a clean Photos library linked via iCloud to my MacBook, Phone and the iMac at home. Works very well.

I use Lightroom and migrate 'key' photos to Photos as the navigation is easier and my family don't know how to use Lightroom (and I'd rather they not try!)

[Mr Noble]

Question.


I just spent the 1st of many hours going through pictures in the Photo app, deleting all the guff. I expected there to be hundreds in the trash can, but there are none!?

Please tell me the pictures aren't STILL on the iMac's HD after deleting them from Photos???



OK!! Just googled this and found the "Show Recently deleted" button and deleted them all.

Neat feature to delete them after 30 days in case you change your mind.

Maybe the Photos app isn't bad after all

Edited by Mr Noble on Friday 18th August 10:04

[StevieBee]

Mr Noble said:

Question.


I just spent the 1st of many hours going through pictures in the Photo app, deleting all the guff. I expected there to be hundreds in the trash can, but there are none!?

Please tell me the pictures aren't STILL on the iMac's HD after deleting them from Photos???

The images are moved to the trash on Photos. Click on the 'recently deleted' icon. You can then highlight them all and hit delete. If you do nothing, they will disappear but only after 40 days or so.

If you have an iCloud account, the pictures will keep reappearing until you delete them from that.

Alternatively, find the originals in the Photos library on your system drive and just dump them from there (though back up first).

HTH

[Mr Noble]

Presumably once you're deleted them from the "recently deleted" folder in the app, they'll be properly gone off the HD?


I need to find a good Photos app tutorial.


Look like I may as well import all my folder pics into Photos too, and just use thet for everything.

It's going to take days of organising!

[CoolHands]

I have all pictures from all devices in photos, eg nikon camera pics etc. They're all in there and I don't have a problem finding pics as can see all by date. Also you can add keywords which I do it makes it easy to find what you want.

You can do that for whole tranches of pics. Eg highlight all 50 pics you've taken on holiday and add keyword 'monaco' or wherever, and then you can easily find you're monaco holiday pics. I add 'gsxr' for all my GSXR1000 motorbike pics so I can just search gsxr and find them all. Etc there is a search box top right.

Edit
Use the 'import' function to import all pics from other folders so it imports them properly.

Edited by CoolHands on Friday 18th August 10:50

[abzmike]

I use Photos for my iPhone pictures, and also import from my Nikon. I also keep folder copies of each separate as well, and never select to 'Delete after import' or whatever. One really good feature of Photos which I like, but struggle with is uploading to iCloud. I have very poor broadband after moving house (another story, but upload is 150Kb) so copying a batch of pictures up to iCloud after a trip takes a very long time. This is mainly down to my BB, but the Photos upload process seems very inefficient, and impossible to control apart from do it and pause for a day. You just have little idea where it is, and a while ago mine got in such a state it had to resync 7000 pictures - That took over a month!.

[StevieBee]

Mr Noble said:

Presumably once you're deleted them from the "recently deleted" folder in the app, they'll be properly gone off the HD?

I need to find a good Photos app tutorial.

Look like I may as well import all my folder pics into Photos too, and just use thet for everything.

It's going to take days of organising!

Yes to the first question.

Second question....There's some on the Mac site but to be honest, just get stuck in.

On on the last one....yes! Lots! But is worth the effort. I had about 20,000 images all over the place including CDs. Here's what I did.

Got an external HD. On this I created a Folder (called Photography) in which, I'd then create separate folders (Holiday '08, Brands Hatch, etc...) then copy into these folders the relevant images so they sat there as JPEGS/NEFs or whatever.

Then create a brand new Photos library and begin to import those images into it.

The trick is to do this gradually. So, If I imported all the pictures from 'Holiday '08, I'd then make an Album for that, going through and editing the pics before importing the next batch.

It really is worth the time!

[Craikeybaby]

I'm also a fan of the Photos app, mainly for how well it works with my iPhone, which is the camera I use the most these days. The photosharing feature is great too, it is like having your own private social network for sharing photos and commenting on them etc.

I tend to export key photos from Lightroom to Photos, as it is easier to share/view them later.