How do you organize things in Photos?

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

I would like to hear different use cases on how you guys organizes events and things in general in Photos. So far I only see that it is possible to do manual folders or add tags when it comes to events, which is ridicilous. Can that actually be true? There are no events anymore, and no option to batch add descriptions, so I cant see how I should organize things without creating 8000 albums, and that is just not realistic from an ease of use POV, as they will only be shown in the side bar.

And no need for "i hate photos k thx bai" posts please.

 

[whitestar27]

I am sort of new here so feel free to disregard…

Formerly a user of iView then Aperture and Lightroom, I was used to extensive keywording and creating a complex folder structure which I have had to totally rethink moving to photos. Keywording is mostly out because I can't do that from the ipad, and I realised many of the zillions of folders were redundant (I do still keyword things like aircraft tail #s). I also had to get used to losing the star rating system I used to use.

I still use folders for real life events such as a car show I might attend. For people I no longer use folders, I use the faces feature. For geographic locations I use the geotag feature and then find photos using search. If you did want to tag photos with keywords or titles the latest version of photos allows you to add them to batches of photos. You can also use Smart Albums which can be helpful.

I guess what I am saying is I use far less folders and keywords than I ever did before because I am trying to leverage the features it has instead of doing everything manually. Instead of trying to bend photos to the way I am used to doing things, I find it works better if I use it how it was designed. It's certainly not perfect but it's definitely getting there with the latest changes.

Cheers

Chris

 

[robgendreau]

There aren't that many tools to organize, unfortunately, so yeah, it's true.

There aren't hierarchical keywords, but with some thoughtful use of keywords (like say "40th birthday" as a keyword instead of a "40th birthday" album, and then use search or smart albums to find say "birthday" you could do a lot. They are functionally the same as events, except of course that you have to manually create them. Using an application outside of Photos for keywording might make it easier, if you do it before importing into Photos.

The location view is nice, but mass geolocating is a bit of a chore. Again, using another application like HoudahGeo can help. And with that application you can add keywords as well.

This being said, I'm not sure I'd wanna do all the organizing in Photos only to finally hit a wall in terms of what you need to do. Not bashing Photos per se, it's fine for someone who is sorta doing what most of us do with our iPhone photos, which is leave 'em in one big shoebox. But it sounds like you need a better tool: if you need 8000 virtual containers, Photos isn't the place to do that.

 

[Murgatroyd]

I would like to hear different use cases on how you guys organizes events and things in general in Photos. So far I only see that it is possible to do manual folders or add tags when it comes to events, which is ridicilous. Can that actually be true? There are no events anymore, and no option to batch add descriptions, so I cant see how I should organize things without creating 8000 albums, and that is just not realistic from an ease of use POV, as they will only be shown in the side bar.

And no need for "i hate photos k thx bai" posts please.

I'm going to suggest you always start with one of these three tags: Person, Place, Thing, and from these three you'll have to use your imagination to chose what further describes any one graphic to have you remember more than less where and what set the specific graphic you want is at some future time.