We take a lot of photos with our iPhones and even DSLRs and other cameras. Photos are great for capturing memories with others, or when you just want to get a snapshot of something beautiful. Photos on Mac can help you keep all of your photos in one place, and even help you organize them.
Mar 03, 2019 To merge in iCloud enable the smaller of the two libraries as your iCloud Photo Library.Wait for all photos to upload; that can take a very long time, a week ore more, depending on the size of the library. Photos will merge the the library into the. Apr 22, 2015 If you have divided a large photo library into small, more manageable libraries, Photos for Mac makes it easy to work multiple libraries. When you first set up Photos for Mac, it asks you to choose a library. This becomes your default library, or the System Photo Library.
How to add pictures and videos to albums
If you have a lot of photos and videos, one of the simplest and easiest ways to start organizing everything is to make use of albums, especially when you give them good names. And if you use iCloud Photo Library, all of your albums in Photos for Mac get synced to your iOS devices too.
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Optionally, you can make a new album at any time by clicking the + button that appears in the sidebar next to My Albums. Drag-and-drop the albums in whatever order you want to rearrange them in the sidebar.
How to organize albums and folders
When you have a lot of albums, it may be better to clean it all up by organizing albums into folders, which are like collections of albums. It's easy to do.
How to use Smart Albums
Smart Albums are like regular albums, but smarter, obviously. They're great for helping you quickly organize images without the need of manually adding each one to an album because it's all automated.
How To Merge Photos Libraries
Smart Albums have a large number of different parameters, such as photos, faces, aperture, ISO, Live Photo, RAW, Portrait, and more. With all of these options, you can create many different Smart Albums to suit whatever it is you need.
If you're not satisfied with the Smart Album, you can always tweak the settings by clicking on the gear icon that's next to the Smart Album's title, then re-select the parameters you want to use. Share photo library between macs and windows.
Unfortunately, Smart Albums do not sync to your other devices through iCloud Photo Library, as they're only available on your Mac.
How to navigate Photos for Mac faster with the sidebar
The Sidebar in Photos is a great way to quickly jump between various areas in Photos quickly and easily. Plus, it helps you find albums that may otherwise be hidden, so this was a design choice made by Apple.
However, if you are running macOS Sierra and older, you can actually hide or unhide the sidebar as you wish.
Merge Multiple Photo Libraries Mac
How to navigate moments, collections, and year views in macOS Mojave and earlier
One of the coolest things about Photos is that it intelligently groups all of your photos and videos into moments, collections, and years.
This means that your photos appear in a timeline and are grouped by things like location, or even event. It's a great way to take a look back at your memories and relive those specific moments in time.
The Moments, Collections, and Year views are only available in macOS Mojave and older.
In the Year and Collections views, thumbnails can be small. You can click-and-hold and then drag the cursor in any direction over the thumbnails to get a larger preview. Letting go will take you directly to the image that the cursor was last on.
Consolidate Photo Libraries MacHow to navigate through Years, Months, and Days in macOS Catalina
To replace the previous Moments/Collections/Years view, Catalina changed it to Years, Months, and Days for simplicity.
How to create a new library with Photos for Mac
You can create a new library for your photos at any time with Photos for Mac. To do so, make sure that you quit Photos and reopen it with the following method to get the Library options.
You've now created a brand new Photos Library. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to migrate over photos and video, so you will need to export the content you want, and then import it back into the new library.
How to switch between Libraries in Photos for Mac
When you create a new library, you may still want to go back to a previous library for something. Fortunately, it's easy to switch between multiple libraries.
Voilá! Just make sure to repeat this process each time you want to switch to a different Photo library.
How to move your Photos library to an external hard drive
If you're low on storage space on your Mac, you can just move your Photos Library to an external hard drive. Keep in mind though, that you will need to have this external drive plugged in to access your Photos Library, even if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled. And you aren't able to create a second Photos Library that has iCloud Photo Library enabled on your Mac, so be wary.
This process may take a while, depending on how big your Photos library is.
A note on reference libraries
The Photos app technically supports the management of images that aren't locally stored within its library — that is, you can keep a set of images in a folder called 'October Trip' and manage them within Photos without having to make a separate copy of them. You can do this by navigating to Photos > Preferences from the menu bar, selecting the General tab, and unchecking the 'Copy items to the Photos library' box under Importing.
That said, reference libraries won't play nicely with iCloud Photo Library users; you may run into problems when syncing, or not be able to sync at all. So if you plan on using a reference library, you'll have to opt out of iCloud Photo Library.
I also didn't have any luck getting referenced files to sync properly with Photos — I'd delete a photo, but the reference file would stay in its original location, even after deleting it from the 'Recently Deleted' folder. Not sure if that's a bug or just not how Photos wants us managing referenced photos, but worth noting.
Questions?
Sound off in the comments below!
October 2019: Updated for macOS Catalina.
Photos for MacMainFor all your USB-C needsThe HybridDrive is a USB-C dock with an SSD built in
You need more ports, right? And you probably need more storage, right? What you really need is the HybridDrive.
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