doesnt photos recognise on import that folders are different albums?

[madeirabhoy]

am i being thick?

i did use iPhotos before, and I'm sure when i imported things into it, it realised that a folder with a name was an album of pics from the same holiday. however i like to keep a backup of pics in folders, and i like to be able to get to them easily, and i have my photos folders backing up onto flickr.

so i thought id give photos a try, but to save doubling the amount of space on my mac, i would create a new photos database, with the pics not imported into photos, so i untucked 'copy items to the photos library' and dragged my 'pictures' folder onto photos and left it to sort them out.

and then i look and its all one album.

how do i get photos to import these 100 folders and realise each folder is a different album or event or whatever it wants to call it, but not just lump it all together?

 

[cRuNcHiE]

It looks like you can't.

Whats even more annoying is that if you drag in a bunch of photos from a certain date, e.g 1st June 2015, Photos decides that it will stick them all in a folder with TODAYS date..... Ridiculous!

I think i'm going to abandon trying to work with Apple photos, keep my photos separately organised in their folders in a logical way ( Year/Month/ Event - Date )
Then just edit using another photo editor.

Shame as it basically means Apple won't get my custom using iCloud photos. Feels like 'Photos' hasn't really been thought through properly.

 

[madeirabhoy]

It looks like you can't.

Whats even more annoying is that if you drag in a bunch of photos from a certain date, e.g 1st June 2015, Photos decides that it will stick them all in a folder with TODAYS date..... Ridiculous!

I think i'm going to abandon trying to work with Apple photos, keep my photos separately organised in their folders in a logical way ( Year/Month/ Event - Date )
Then just edit using another photo editor.

Shame as it basically means Apple won't get my custom using iCloud photos. Feels like 'Photos' hasn't really been thought through properly.

me too, to be honest the way i want them is basically what flickr does so even on the computer where they are stored, its easier just to open flickr when i want to see my pics.

i dont know why though but its always dissappointing when there's an apple application that 'should' be useful and isnt..

 

[cRuNcHiE]

me too, to be honest the way i want them is basically what flickr does so even on the computer where they are stored, its easier just to open flickr when i want to see my pics.

i dont know why though but its always dissappointing when there's an apple application that 'should' be useful and isnt..

I found a good way to browse through all your organised folders is with ' Unbound' http://unboundformac.com

I'm not ready to let my hours of work organising them be undone by 'Photos'.

As for cloud it seems Flickr with its 1TB free seems my best option

 

[Notechy]

am i being thick?

how do i get photos to import these 100 folders and realise each folder is a different album or event or whatever it wants to call it, but not just lump it all together?

See this in response to my similar question on a recent thread:

"I don't think there is a way to automatically do what you ask short of a specialty app, which you might find in the App Store (but I could not). A workaround would be to open Photos on the Mac, show the Sidebar, and create the 200 descriptively named albums you want. Then, one at a time, drag each of your 200 album folders onto it's associated album folder in the sidebar. This imports the pictures into Photos and adds them to that particular album."

The workaround seems to work. But enjoy my trail around Apple Support, whose first tier all obviously believe that an easy route should be possible until they try and fail.

1 I have recently also bough Apple TV, almost wholly for remote viewing of my photos from iMac on to my TV in a different room. Apple TV also scrambled up all my pictures so I sought advice. Adviser eventually concludes that it cannot be done except via Photos, and that Photos can keep my folders - talk to the iMac support people. (He was wrong. Getting Apple TV to use one folder of pictures with one lower tier of folders within it does cause it to keep that lower folder structure, as I have discovered. Exactly the same seems to apply to syncing the photos into Ipad.)

2 Speak to iMac support. 40 minutes later they conclude that it cannot be done. I explain that I can get photos into iPad Photos by syncing, but I query the resolution carried on to iPad believing it to be less. They suggest that I should be able to pass back from the iPad despite me saying that seems to be a one way process. They conclude that they should transfer me to iPad support, which they do.

3 Speak iPad support. Query about resolution is ignored. Quickly conclude that it really is an issue for Mac people. They plan to transfer me to second tier support, but as 55 minutes had passed on 2 and 3 I ask for a callback instead.

4 Mac people callback. A repeat of 2 of similar duration but with a firmer conclusion, ultimately, that it cannot be done.

My son is now hoping to write me a program to achieve the objective, though I have said that I am not really sure what I will get out of Photos!

Good luck to all.

 

[madeirabhoy]

am i remembering wrong though, doesnt iphoto do it okay? im sure at some stage i tried to use iphoto, and went to the bother of setting up a library, and when i dragged all the pics in didnt it sort them into albums? or am i remembering wrong?

 

[robgendreau]

If you have already got a folder organization for your photos, then perhaps an organizer like Photos isn't necessary.

There are other organizers that are browsers (as in folder/file browsing) not database-oriented organizers like Photos, Lightroom, Aperture, etc.

Good examples are Lyn, XNViewMP (free), Graphic Converter, etc. If you uncheck the default "copy into..." option in Photos, so that it references photos in their existing folders, you can even use Photos effectively (sorta) with these browsers. For example, you can configure XnViewMP so that one (of many) applications it can "Open in..." would be Photos, which would then automatically import that photo. Since it's already in your designated folder it stays there. You edit it in Photos, then export it (since otherwise the changes only exist in Photos database) to the same folder, and voila, XnViewMP will then show it.

 

[Notechy]

am i remembering wrong though, doesnt iphoto do it okay? im sure at some stage i tried to use iphoto, and went to the bother of setting up a library, and when i dragged all the pics in didnt it sort them into albums? or am i remembering wrong?

I am new to Mac, so no experience of iPhoto.

 

[cRuNcHiE]

am i remembering wrong though, doesnt iphoto do it okay? im sure at some stage i tried to use iphoto, and went to the bother of setting up a library, and when i dragged all the pics in didnt it sort them into albums? or am i remembering wrong?

I still have iPhoto installed and it does turn the folder name into an 'Event' as its called in iPhoto.

 

[madeirabhoy]

I still have iPhoto installed and it does turn the folder name into an 'Event' as its called in iPhoto.

so actually bizarrely the answer for getting all my folders into a structure in Photos, would be to import the lot into iPhoto (with the copy into box unticked), then open Photos and update my iPhoto database to a Photos database. Once ive done that, any new imports will be one event at a time so its then easy to add an event one at a time.

 

[cRuNcHiE]

so actually bizarrely the answer for getting all my folders into a structure in Photos, would be to import the lot into iPhoto (with the copy into box unticked), then open Photos and update my iPhoto database to a Photos database. Once ive done that, any new imports will be one event at a time so its then easy to add an event one at a time.

Probably yeah, though when i did a test run of just 4gig of photos, iPhoto was crazy slow at importing vs Photos....
We can't win!

I sent several feature requests to apple about photo, maybe it will help one day.

I may have a go and do this, but first i'm going to rename EVERY folder/album i have in the format YYYY-MM-DD - Event/Album name, then in theory, even though Photos doesn't list albums chronologically, it should if i do this....