6/17/24
9:00 am

Understanding How Your Photos Are Stored in Your Mac Photos App

When you store photos in the Photos app, they become part of your Photos Library. But you can also create albums to view your photos in a different way. What exactly happens when you put a photo from your Library in an album?

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's talk about your Photos Library and how the photos in your Library relate to the photos you see in Albums. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 2000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/Patreon. There you could read more about it. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. 
So I often get questions about how photos are stored in the Photos App. All your photos in the Photos App are stored in what's called a Library. Your Photos Library. There's a way to view them all. But you can also create Albums and view your photos that you place inside of a particular album. But often people get confused about where the photos are actually located and if they create albums and put photos in them whether or not there are duplicates of the photos now in their Library. 
So basically when you use the Photos App you can see here on the left the top item is Library. If you choose that then you're going to see all of the photos in your Library. You can actually choose at the top here to view them by years, months, days, or All Photos which gives you a complete list. So All Photos is a way to view every single photo in your Library in chronological order with the oldest at the top and the newest at the bottom. But you can also create Albums. Let's do that by going to File, New Album. You can see it's going to add it here on the left under Albums. I'll call this My Album and it's empty. It says there are not items in here. But I can go to my Library and I can select different photos here and Add them. An easy way to do that is just to drag and drop. So I'm going to drag the second photo, the third photo, and also the seventh photo to this album call My Album. Now when I select it I'm just looking at those three photos. So I'm just seeing the ones in the album called My Album. It could be confusing to think that these three photos are located here and they are also located in the Library. Are there actually two copies of them? If not, where exactly are the photos. Are they in the Library or are they in this album. 
So it is important to remember that the idea of calling these albums, that's kind of a light metaphor. Don't really think of it as a physical photo album where you would actually have the photo itself on a page in that album. In the Digital Library of your Photos App all of your photos are in the Library once. Everyone is listed here in the Library. The albums are just a different way to view these same photos. So here using All Photos I'm viewing every single photo in chronological order. But, by creating an album and putting three photos in there what I'm actually looking at is a subset of that. These three photos are still in your Library. I've just chosen a different way to view those three. This doesn't show me all my photos. Just these three photos. But they are the same three photos. They aren't duplicated. 
So here's another way to look at it. Here's your Photos Library and you can see it's got all of those photos in there. Let's say you want to create an album. So you create an album and then you want to put photos in it. Let's choose those same photos. The second, third, and seventh photo. Now let's put them in there. So now your Photos Library looks like what is on the left and the album looks like what is on the right. But the photos are in two different places and they are not duplicates of the same photos. It's more accurate to think of the album as linking to the original photos. So something like this where when you view the album you see the three photos but it's really just showing you the photos from your Photos Library.  There is not a separate copy of the photos. 
I find that some people that have trouble with the idea of photos albums can more easily understand it if they think of them like playlists in music. There is something about that word playlist that kind of makes it clearer. So here I'm in my Music App and I'm looking at my Library and I'm looking at a complete list of all my songs. Looking at songs in your Library in the Music App is very similar to looking at All Photos in the Photos App. So here I see a list of all of my songs. Now, I can create what's called a playlist here by going to File, and then New, and Playlist. I'm going to call this My Playlist. It's going to create it here on the left. If I select it I can see nothing is in it. But if I go back to songs here and I select, say, three songs and drag them into My Playlist. If I go to it I can see those three songs are there. But these aren't copies of those three songs. It is kind of understood that  a playlist is just a different way to play your music. The songs are all just here in the Library at one time but you have a playlist to be able to play a special set of those songs in a special order. 
In the Photos App an Album is the same thing. It's kind of a playlist of photos. These photos are all in your Library but this is a way to just view these three photos in this order. 
There are many different reasons you may want to use an album.  You might want to have an album and then gather all the photos from a specific event or a trip or you may want to gather photos that are of a specific type, like all photos of waterfalls or all photos of flowers or all photos of some other type or having some other meaning to you. You can have the same photo in multiple albums. So if you took a picture of a flower while you're on a trip you may have that photo in that album for the trip and you may also have it in an album of your best flower photos. 
But you can also not use albums at all. That's perfectly okay. If you go to Library here you're going to see buttons at the top or drop-down menu depending upon how wide your window is. You can view by years, months, days, or All Photos.  So if you group together by say Months you kind of get a natural listing here. The same thing by Days. It kind of groups them together according to days and location. For some this organization is great. It takes no time to do it and it more or less works. But other people like to actually create their own albums and curette their own collections of photos like that. It's really up to you whether you use albums or not or how much you use them. 
Now it is also important to think about albums in terms of how you delete photos. So let's say you want to Delete a photo from an album. It's also important to think of the terminology correctly. Instead of thinking about deleting a photo from an album, think about removing it. This word gives you much clearer picture of what's going on. So let's say we're going to Remove the last photo from this album. So remove this one. When I do so it's removed from the album but it hasn't touched the actual photo in your library. It is just gone from that album. So removing photos from albums does not get rid of them out of your Library. So just as it when you Add a photo to an album it is not duplicating that photo. When you remove it from an album it's not deleting it from your Library. It is still in your Library. You've just removed it so it is no longer in that playlist or album of your photos. 
What about the other way? If you were to delete a photo from your Photos Library. So I"m going to say Delete this one. This will get rid of it completely from your Photos Library. It won't be in your App anymore. So, of course, When you do that now there is nothing for that album to link to so it is automatically removed from that album. 
Now a question I often get about this is from people who like to create albums that include all their photos. So if they go on a trip and they take a bunch of photos. All of those go into one album. If they go to an event and they take a bunch of photos. All of those go into another album. So all the photos are represented at least once in one album. Having that they just want them to be albums. They don't want them to be in Library, All Photos. But that's not how it works. Remember all photos is a complete list of all of the photos you have. By definition every photo in your Photos Library is in your Photos Library. So when you view All Photos well you're going to see literally that. All of your Photos. If you'd rather only view them in albums then certainly just do that. Only ever look at albums. You don't have to go to your Library and view things as All Photos. You never have to do that. It's there for you if you like and obviously if you were to have a photo that wasn't in any album, the only way to actually see it would be in All Photos. But if you're constantly putting every single photo in at least one album then you don't need to look at All Photos if you don't want to. You can just ignore it and never use this view of your Photos Library. 
Note that all this is exactly the same on your iPhone, iPad, your Library, and your Albums all work the same way in Photos. If you're using iCloud Photos it works the same way. It doesn't matter if the Photos Library is just local to your Mac or it's iCloud Photos. Your Library is all of your photos and Albums are kind of like playlists where you select certain photos that you can view there, but they are not duplicates of those photos. 
So I hope this makes it a little clearer as to how the Photos Library and Albums work in the Photos App. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 24 Responses to “Understanding How Your Photos Are Stored in Your Mac Photos App”

Vera Adamovich

5 months ago

You must be psychic Gary. Just yesterday I was wishing for this very explanation. Thanks for the great clarification.

Vera
(Long-time grateful subscriber)

nick

5 months ago

Gary, I've always wondered where the actual files of the photos are located in Finder. Seems like the only way to access photos is through the app, and I appreciate the utility of that. They must be stored in their original format somewhere. Thanks

Ken

5 months ago

If I want to have a different crop of the same photo in 2 albums does the duplicate the photo

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Ken: You can't have two crops for the same photo at the same time. You'd need to duplicate the entire photo if you really want that I suppose.

Skip Taylor

5 months ago

Is it necessary to back up the Photos Library frequently on another drive so the photos are safely stored? How do you find the library?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Skip: You should back up everything frequently. Use Time Machine, back up to an external drive, that would include your Photos library and all of your other files.

pete

5 months ago

Hi Gary, would be great to also understand the other folders directly under the photos menu tab. ie. recents, imports, duplicates etc. I find these the most confusing and if they are doubles or seperate locations on the hard drive. cheers love your work.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Pete: They are never doubles. Recents is just another way to view your most recent photos. Same photos as in your Library, just another viewing option. Imports shows you your photos grouped by import sessions. Same photos, just another way of looking at them. Duplicates is a special function that allows you to view and merge any duplicate photos you may have. See https://macmost.com/finding-duplicate-photos-in-the-photos-app.html

Anju Tampy

5 months ago

Very clear, thanks. It would be also good to understand library photos versus iCloud Photos. For example, how to move out older/lower priority photos to separate storage and free up iCloud capacity. Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Anju: That's just a matter of exporting (Unmodified originals) and then deleting. No magic to it. But I try to avoid that as I want all my photos available in one place. I would hate to have to search multiple places for a photo, or to have some of my photos in my pocket and others not. That said, I do tend to keep videos as files outside of Photos, because they take up a lot of space and I think of videos differently anyway.

Jill

5 months ago

Thank you so much for this very clear video tutorial. Do you have or would you create a video explaining shared albums?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Jill: https://macmost.com/sharing-photos-online-from-your-mac.html

Kathy

5 months ago

Thanks so much! I had previously organized my pics in albums, however I also use folders to organize the albums. Say I have a Trips Folder, with various trips in separate albums in that Folder, or a folder for Birds & albums of types. Using '21 M1 desktop iMac (Sonoma 14.5) that many of the albums are no longer located in their appropriate folder & I have to often reorganize them manually. Is there a reason for this I wonder? I asked Apple support & they didn't have an answer. Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Kathy: Sounds like a bug, perhaps?

Kathy

5 months ago

I use iCloud Photos & have them also downloaded to my iMac. Do you have any suggestions Gary as this actually has happened many times over the years, I even recall it happening on my previous 2019 Mac now that I think of it. This Mac I'm using now was set up as new, and I didn't use migration assistant as I was afraid to bring any cruft over to the new one. Thanks very much.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Kathy: Sorry, not sure what to suggest. It shouldn't move your albums to different folders like that.

Kathy

5 months ago

Hi again Gary, I started creating 'smart albums' using keywords to organize my trips etc in the hopes that the smart albums wouldn't be randomly moved on me like the 'regular' albums in folders that I have been having issues with...do you think this may help? I also noticed in iCloud.com that smart albums are not synced to the cloud. Maybe this isn't such a good idea to go through all this, but I thought I'd ask you your opinion as to whether this may be of help with my situation . thanks Gary.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Kathy: Smart Albums are just for Photos Mac. I don't know if they will solve your folders issue.

Karen

5 months ago

1. a photo linked to an album is (or is not the same) as an alias?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Karen: Aliases are something specific you use for files. I would not use the term "alias" here to describe albums/playlists/smart folders, etc.

Diane

5 months ago

If I edit a photo in the library, is it safe to assume, the change will appear in its respective album?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Diane: Yes. The photo is there only one time. It is the same photo, no matter where you look at it. Try it and see.

Michael

5 months ago

Hi Gary, When using Photoshop or Lightroom, where are the photo files located for importing into those editing apps? I seem to have trouble locating them using Finder. I can see them in the photos app, but finding the actual file location can be a bit daunting for some reason.
Also, should I import all my photos not taken using an I phone into the photos library for convenience sake? Right now they sit on Google photos. Maybe the correct question is should i sync I phone library and Google

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Michael: In Photos them are in a library, not meant to be directly accessed as files. You access them through the Photos app now. Think of it this way: Photos becomes like the Finder, but specifically for your photos (and videos).
It is up to you what you import into Photos. I certainly put all my photos in there. Why not? Why make it harder to find and work with photos by scattering them in different locations? I would avoid using both iCloud Photos and Google Photos. They do the same thing and it will get very confusing and duplicate everything if you link them. I would imagine there would be quite a mess if you did that.

Understanding How Your Photos Are Stored in Your Mac Photos App

Comments: 24 Responses to “Understanding How Your Photos Are Stored in Your Mac Photos App”

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