Events in Photos Question

No. It doesn't use the Events paradigm anymore.

It turns all of your prior Events into static Albums, so it didn't leave you high and dry, but those are only for legacy purposes.

for me the lack of Events support is an annoying omission in the new Photos app. Or at least the different way Photos handles importing folders of photos is a pain.

with iPhoto, I would first copy any new photos into a Finder folder with a descriptive name (e.g. YYMMDD_nameOfEvent). Then I'd drag that folder into iPhoto which would automatically create an Event AND and Album of the same name. This made it very easy to organize everything, group albums in folders of my choosing, later search by descriptive event/album name, create an easily searchable backup archive separate from iPhoto, etc.

Now when I drag a named folder into the new Photos app, the descriptive name of the folder is completely ignored/lost. It seems the only way to simulate my old organizational scheme is to:
- drag new photos into Photos
- manually create a new Album with some descriptive name
- select the photos in the "Last Import" album, and drag them manually into the desired named album

Sure, it's not the end of the world. But the new app isn't making things easier.

At least when importing photos from a folder, if the new Photos app could automatically retain the folder name and create the same-named Album, I could live without Events

Same issue here - also wanted to keep feature of events auto created by month directly from photoStream

porkozone said:

No. It doesn't use the Events paradigm anymore.

It turns all of your prior Events into static Albums, so it didn't leave you high and dry, but those are only for legacy purposes.

Click to expand...

Wait, the new Photos basically kills all prior Events? Are the new, static albums editable, or are users stuck with them after the transition?

I still haven't moved from Photos to iPhoto. I was hoping Photos would *add* functionality, but it looks like I need to do a lot of work in iPhoto before even considering moving to Photos.

Right now, I have dozens and dozens of Events from when random photos were imported. Should I delete or merge those Events before moving to Photos? Thanks.

jk73 said:

Wait, the new Photos basically kills all prior Events? Are the new, static albums editable, or are users stuck with them after the transition?

I still haven't moved from Photos to iPhoto. I was hoping Photos would *add* functionality, but it looks like I need to do a lot of work in iPhoto before even considering moving to Photos.

Right now, I have dozens and dozens of Events from when random photos were imported. Should I delete or merge those Events before moving to Photos? Thanks.

Click to expand...

this is why I'm just trying out Photos with a copy of my iPhoto library on a second Mac - not gonna commit to it with my real library on my main Mac just yet...


anyhow, here is my observation about the old Events:

when you first open Photos and it converts your old iPhoto library, what you find is a new Album called "iPhoto Events", and in that album (folder?) are all your old Events from iPhoto. Each of your old Events seems to be just an ordinary Album, contained within "iPhoto Events". You can sort the old Events by title or move them around manually (both in a grid/icon view, or in the sidebar). You can change the names of the Events/Albums. You can add photos to an Event/Album, and you can delete them. You can create a new Album within the iPhoto Events album (I think it behaves just like a Folder). You can delete any of the Albums within iPhoto Events - and as expected when you delete an old Event (Album) it doesn't delete the actual photos inside.

in other words, what were before your iPhoto Events seem to become just ordinary-behaving Albums. All previously created Events seem to all be there (as Albums) You can do what you want with them after converting to Photos, but looks like you'll never be able to create new Events like you used to, only new Albums.

not sure why the previous poster called them "static" ? But as I mentioned in my previous post here, the old functionality of Events being automatically created when you drag a folder of photos to iPhoto is gone.

for me, Events was a very useful feature, it allowed me to treat an entire set of photos imported to iPhoto at once as a single collection (kind of like a "roll" of film covering an event, except arbitrary size), another specific way to group a set of photos aside from just the date. Now it looks like I have to manually create that grouping after importing. IMO a dumb decision by Apple to reduce the number of ways a user can organize photos!

Sorry for any confusion. b.c. Explained this better than I did - by static I meant "regular albums" not smart albums or part of the hybrid timeline/events view of iPhoto.

I too really miss the events feature, but am going to do my best to leave it behind. It was great for combining photos that were taken within a few days time if the same thing, and made more sense combined than scattered into the separate minutes that they were taken.

I found Events to confuse a lot of users on Macs. I do Mac tutoring for a living and it always takes a long time to get (older) people's heads around there being Events and Albums. Most of them just wanted to create albums.

I like Events, but I will change. I'm going to change my thinking and treat the main Photos feed "camera roll" as just a flood of all images. And I should create an Album for any that belong in a group for me to view in a slideshow etc.

That simplifies the thinking. No more Albums and Events. Just a flood of everything, and then Albums for a neat way to look at groups of photos.

Hope that helps.


***I hate that the big Places Map has gone, I will look for a 3rd party app that can scan my pictures' locations and put them on a map.