How to Organize Your Photos On A Mac

Summary

In this tutorial by Tech Talk America, David Cox shares a refined workflow for organizing your Mac's photo library effectively and efficiently. He emphasizes starting from scratch by deleting all existing albums, reassuring viewers that doing so won't erase the photos themselves. The focus is on creating structured albums and folders by year, utilizing smart albums for customized searches, and organizing photos into traditional albums. He also covers adjusting dates for photos with incorrect metadata and addresses common issues like duplicate photos, recommending Power Photos for this task. David concludes by encouraging viewers to follow along on their Mac devices for best results, and offers private lessons for personalized guidance.

Highlights

• David Cox shares his perfected method for organizing your Mac photo library. 🖥️
• Begin by watching the entire tutorial, then follow along on your Mac for practical application. 📺
• The key to organization is understanding that deleting albums doesn't delete photos. 🗃️
• Create annual folders and organize events into albums to streamline your photo library. 📆
• Smart Albums are great for sorting, but be cautious—deleting there affects the entire library! 📸
• Fix incorrect photo dates easily with the Adjust Date and Time function. 🎛️
• Tackle duplicate photos with the help of Power Photos, saving time and supporting the channel. 🔗
• If issues arise with smart albums, consider updating to macOS Big Sur for optimal performance. 🧩
• David offers personalized private lessons for organizing photos and more. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Start fresh by deleting existing albums; it won't delete the photos! 🗑️
• Organize photos into folders by year and create albums for events within those years. 📅
• Use smart albums for custom searches, but remember: deleting from them deletes from the library! 📂
• Adjust photo dates for scanned or photos with incorrect metadata to keep everything organized. 📸
• Consider apps like Power Photos to handle duplicate pictures efficiently. 🔄

Overview

David Cox from Tech Talk America invites you to revolutionize your Mac photo library organization. With a refined workflow, he suggests starting from scratch by deleting all albums, which frees up space without affecting the photos themselves. He encourages viewers to watch the tutorial first, then proceed step-by-step on their devices, ensuring a comprehensive learning experience.

The tutorial teaches you to create a tidy and easy-to-navigate library by sorting photos into year-based folders and event-specific albums. Key tools include Smart Albums for personalized searches—mindful that deleting photos here removes them from your library. You’ll also learn how to fix dates on photos with broken metadata, ensuring your memories are chronologically accurate.

To address duplicated photos, David recommends using the Power Photos app, which not only declutters but also supports his channel. He wraps up with solutions for common issues like smart album settings, urging users to update to the latest macOS for best results. Whether you go it alone or seek a private lesson, organizing photos on a Mac is made fuss-free and effective with David's expert tips.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Overview The chapter 'Introduction and Overview' begins by addressing the need for organizing the max photo library effectively. The author introduces a refined workflow designed over the years to streamline the organization of photos efficiently. This introduction promises to share tips and tricks that will help in managing photo collections swiftly, as part of the Tech Talk America series. The setting is welcoming as if joining a class session, indicating that the author is revisiting a familiar topic they have taught multiple times before, aiming to impart this knowledge once again.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Setting Up the Workflow In this chapter titled 'Setting Up the Workflow', the instructor, with nine years of experience on YouTube, shares their teaching philosophy of continuous improvement with each session. The focus of this chapter is to introduce a reproducible workflow for organizing photos. By the end of this segment, participants will learn to set up folders for each year and categorize events from that year into separate albums, facilitating organized photo management.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Understanding Albums vs. Photos The chapter emphasizes the importance of using a Mac for this tutorial on understanding albums vs. photos, as it includes a critical feature not available on iOS devices. It suggests first watching the entire video to get a broad understanding, and then rewatching it while following along on a Mac. It acknowledges the portability and convenience of viewing from an iPhone or iPad but reiterates the necessity of using a Mac for certain functionalities.
• 02:00 - 03:30: Cleaning Up Existing Albums In this chapter titled 'Cleaning Up Existing Albums,' the instructor begins the lesson by explaining the concept of an album, using a comparison to a playlist in iTunes. Just like adding a song to a playlist doesn't duplicate the song but creates a reference, albums work the same way. The chapter seems to be about understanding and managing digital music collections, focusing first on clarifying fundamental terms for better comprehension.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Creating a New Album and Folder Structure The chapter discusses the concept of managing songs and photos through albums and playlists, emphasizing that removing an album or playlist doesn't delete the actual content; it only removes the organizational structure. Multiple references to a song or photo are possible without duplication. The chapter encourages deleting photo albums, implying it's a method to simplify organization and management.
• 05:30 - 10:00: Working with Smart Albums This chapter guides the reader through organizing photo albums by using smart albums. Initially, it emphasizes starting from scratch to create an organized structure. It includes practical steps like selecting all albums using a shortcut (`Command + A`) and deleting them to begin anew.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Organizing Videos The chapter discusses organizing videos by first cleaning up album space without deleting the actual photos within those albums. Once the space is clean, the next step is creating a new empty album. This can be done by clicking a plus symbol or secondary clicking to select 'create a new album'. An album named 'wrong date' is created, the significance of which will be explained later. Finally, the chapter hints at going back into albums for further action.
• 11:00 - 12:00: Handling Duplicate Photos The chapter titled 'Handling Duplicate Photos' discusses a systematic method to organize photos by starting with the current year and creating folders for each subsequent year. The author suggests this approach as it seems easier and more efficient. As you go back in time, you might encounter periods with fewer photos and may consider adjusting your organizational strategy.
• 12:00 - 13:00: Troubleshooting Common Issues In this chapter titled 'Troubleshooting Common Issues', the discussion revolves around organizing a large collection of photos spanning multiple years. The speaker records the video in March 2021 but uses the year 2020 for demonstration purposes. They instruct on how to manage photo collections by creating a 'smart album', which is described as a customized search feature allowing users to set specific criteria for photo organization. A 'smart album' can improve the ability to effectively sort and locate photos within a potentially overwhelming digital archive.
• 13:00 - 13:30: Conclusion The chapter delves into the nuances of using smart albums within a photo management system, specifically highlighting their functionality on Mac. Smart albums allow users to create collections of photos based on specific conditions or criteria, leading to dynamic inclusion of photos that meet those criteria. A significant limitation noted is that smart albums are accessible only on Mac. To counteract this, users can isolate groups of photos in smart albums and convert them into standard albums to ensure compatibility and synchronization across all iOS devices. A critical reminder for users is to distinguish between the static nature of standard albums and the dynamic, criteria-based nature of smart albums.

How to Organize Your Photos On A Mac Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 if your max photo library could use a little organizing then get ready because today i'm going to teach you a workflow that i have refined and perfected over the years that will have your entire max photo library organized in no time my tricks to organize your photos coming up next on tech talk america hey folks and welcome to the class you know i have taught this class a few times over the years since i first
• 00:30 - 01:00 started my youtube channel nine years ago and like all teachers i find that every time i teach it i get a little bit better so let me set up how this class is going to work the first thing that i'm going to do is teach you a workflow that you can quickly reproduce at home when you're done you will have a folder for every year of photos here in the album section and all of the events that took place in that year will be broken down and organized into individual albums if this is the first time that you've watched this class i would like
• 01:00 - 01:30 to make a strong recommendation that you first start by watching the entire video all the way through then come back and watch it again but then follow along on your mac speaking of the mac while there are many things that you can do in the ios version of photos there is a critical feature that we are going to utilize which is only available on the mac so my recommendation is if you do have an iphone or an ipad you might want to consider watching this tutorial video from one of those devices that way you
• 01:30 - 02:00 can follow along from your computer you ready to begin all right let's start the class i would like to take a quick moment to review the definition of an album because after working with thousands of clients over the years i know a lot of people find this term confusing an album is a little bit like a playlist in itunes or whatever we're calling it these days if you have a song in a library and then add it to a playlist that does not duplicate the song it's just a reference file the same is true with albums when you remove a song from
• 02:00 - 02:30 a playlist that does not remove the song from your library the same is true with albums and if you have a song in multiple playlists that does not duplicate the song it's just referenced in multiple places so what i'm saying here is when you delete an album or albums you are not actually deleting the photos that live inside of them you are just deleting a method of organization and that being said i now want you to delete all of your photo albums i'm sorry what you want me to delete all
• 02:30 - 03:00 of my albums david yes self in order to create an organized structure it is so much easier if we start things from scratch trust me i have pretty eyes so if you're following along from home i want you to start by clicking right here where it says my albums i'm now going to click on any of these albums and press command and the letter a which is the shortcut for select all now take a deep breath tap the delete key and just keep telling yourself deleting photo albums
• 03:00 - 03:30 does not delete the photos inside those albums deleting the photo albums does not delete the photos inside of those albums now that we have a clean space to work in the next step is we are going to create a new empty album to do that you can either click on the plus symbol which can be a little bit hard to see quite frankly or the other option is you can secondary click and select create a new album i'm now going to name this album wrong date you'll see where this comes into play later on now we're going to go back into my albums secondary click again and
• 03:30 - 04:00 this time i'm going to create a new folder which i'm going to name the current year by the way i have found it to be a lot easier to organize your photos when you start with the current year and then work your way backward the next step which i will speed up in editing is to repeat those last two steps so that you have a folder for every year for many people as you go back in time you'll probably hit periods where you have significantly fewer photos so at a certain point you might want to consider changing it so that
• 04:00 - 04:30 your folder contains a decade of photos or something like that i'm recording this video in march of 2021 so because we're not that far into the year for this demonstration i'm actually going to be using the year 2020. so at this point you want to secondary click also known as right click on the folder for the year and we're going to create a new smart album if you're not familiar with the term smart album let me take a quick moment to explain how they work a smart album is basically a customized search we're going to create some terms and
• 04:30 - 05:00 conditions and if a photo matches those terms it's going to appear in this album one of the weird things about smart albums is that you can only access them on the mac so what we're going to do is we're going to use the smart album to isolate groups of photos and then turn them into albums when we're done all of this structure will synchronize across all of your other ios devices one of the important differences that you absolutely must remember about smart albums is that unlike a normal album if
• 05:00 - 05:30 you delete a photo from a smart album it does delete them from the library that feature by the way is really going to come in handy when it comes time to clean house but we'll save that for later this next part may be a little bit confusing but the good news is we only need to set this up once and then we're going to be able to duplicate this smart album and just simply change the year so let's continue i'm going to name my smart album the year that we're working in so right now i'm going to call this 2020. now we're going to click into this
• 05:30 - 06:00 first field where it currently says photo and i'm going to change this to date captured in this next field we're going to change it from is to is in the range of and now we can manually change the date so that it goes from january 1st to december 31st in addition to knowing when a photo was captured the other critical piece of information that we need to know is whether or not that photo has already been organized into an album so we're now going to add a second rule that will automatically remove that
• 06:00 - 06:30 photo from the smart album once it has been turned into a traditional album when i click the plus symbol to add a second rule you'll see this option appear here at the top just make sure it says match all of the following rules for the second rule we are going to set this first field to album then in this next field we are going to change it to is not and then we are going to leave this last option as any and now click ok so now here are all of my photos that were taken in 2020 please take a quick
• 06:30 - 07:00 moment to look at this number here at the top left where it shows how many photos and videos are in this smart album that number is essentially a countdown you don't necessarily need to get it to zero but the idea is that if you did get it to zero that would indicate that all of your photos have been organized into albums starting to see how this works oh yeah so now that you can see all of the photos for the year that you're working in the first thing i recommend you do is go through this list and find your
• 07:00 - 07:30 absolute favorite photos and mark them as favorites the easiest way to do this is to use the period key on your keyboard so let's quickly scan through my photos from 2020 and i'm going to hold down the command key on my keyboard and just select my favorite photos individually i'll now press the period key to mark them as a favorite you can tell that it's marked as a favorite because of this little heart icon down at the bottom right corner of those photos i'm going to now click outside of this group so that it clears my selection as many of you may know i
• 07:30 - 08:00 moved across the country at the end of last year so for this example i'm going to use this group of photos that i took while visiting the grand canyon the next step is to turn these photos into an album and the easiest way to do that is to press the command key and the letter n on your keyboard the next step is to rename this album as you can see here it has taken on the name of my smart album so since the text is already highlighted i can just simply type over it and i'll rename it grand canyon now i'll press
• 08:00 - 08:30 the return key to lock it in if we now go back to the smart album and look at the number at the very top you'll see that it has now gone down by the number of photos we just organized into that last album like i said that number is basically a countdown when you're done going through this process the final remaining photos will most likely contain a lot of photos that you maybe don't care so much about so at this point i'd like to remind you that if you delete photos from a smart album that does delete them from the library so now
• 08:30 - 09:00 i can select all of those photos that i don't care about and then press command delete to send them to the trash and rather than having to recreate this smart album for every single year you can save a ton of time with this next trick all we need to do is secondary click on that smart album for 2020 and select duplicate i'm now going to move the extra smart album into the folder for 2019 now we do need to adjust the date so let's now secondary click again
• 09:00 - 09:30 but this time we're going to select edit smart album i'll now change the name up top then i'll click into the year for each of these fields and i'm going to click on the down arrow to the side now press ok and you're good to go now as you go through your photos at some point you are probably going to encounter photos that were either scanned or have broken metadata and thus will not have the correct date and that is the reason why we created that first album at the very beginning of the class
• 09:30 - 10:00 appropriately named wrong date for example here's a bunch of adorable and occasionally awkward photos from my youth i only scanned these last year so instead of creating an album that's going to live inside of the 2020 folder instead we're gonna drag and drop these into the wrong date album let's now go into that album and i'll select this first group of photos now i'll go here into the image menu at the very top and select adjust date and time my recommendation for this part is to focus
• 10:00 - 10:30 on the year things don't really need to be exact the point is to make it so that they're all grouped relatively close together so for now i'm just going to say these were all taken in 1989. so at this point you can turn these photos into individual albums once again by pressing command n and then you can manually drag and drop those albums into their respective folders the next thing that we're gonna organize are your videos and all we need to do is make one minor change to the smart album we already created so let's go back into that 2020 smart album secondary click
• 10:30 - 11:00 and i'm going to select duplicate now i'm going to secondary click on it again and select edit smart album i'm going to start by renaming this smart album 2020 home movies and now i'll change the second rule to say photo is video and then click ok so now you can see we have every single video that i shot on my iphone from 2020 let's now talk about duplicate photos duplicate photos is something that a lot
• 11:00 - 11:30 of people encounter there's a lot of different apps out there that claim to remove duplicates but for me there's an obvious winner there's an app called power photos that works amazingly well and if you use promo code techtalk10 all one word you can save 10 and also help support my youtube channel in the process i have an entire class on how to use powerphotos which i created last year and all of the information in that video is still relevant now so if you would like more detailed directions
• 11:30 - 12:00 on how to use it check out that video in the video description when i was putting this class together i went back and looked at some of the comments that were left the last time i taught this tutorial one of the common issues that a lot of people described happened when we added the second rule to the first smart album that we created the problem was when they added that second rule where it says album is not any the total number of photos went down dramatically if that happened to you i strongly encourage you to consider
• 12:00 - 12:30 updating your mac to the latest version of mac os known as mac os big sur at least that's what it is today if you're not comfortable updating to big sur or if your mac is older and can't be updated another option is you can just take out that second rule just understand that as you go through the process of turning your photos into albums the smart album is not going to remove the photos once they've been organized into a legitimate album so if that is the way that you decide to go my one piece of advice is that you might
• 12:30 - 13:00 want to consider working in chronological order i truly hope that this video helped you organize your photo library if you would ever like to work with me privately it is one of the things i do on the side you can find out all the information on my website at techtalkamerica.com privatelessons thank you so much for watching everyone this is david a cox with tech talk america class dismissed [Music]