Storing Photos in Finder Folders As an Alternative to the Photos App

If you prefer to not use the Mac Photos app, or would like to store some of your photos in a different way, a viable alternative is to simply store them as files in folders. You can use subfolders, file names, comments and tags to manage and organize these pictures. You can use the four different Finder views to view the photos, and Quick Look and Preview for other views and editing. You can even use aliases to create albums.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to store and organize your photos in the Finder instead of using the Photos app.
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So I love using the Photos app. That's where I put all of my personal photos. But sometimes I want to store a separate group of photos. Maybe for work. Maybe a clipart collection. Maybe I'm working with a set of photos from somebody else. You could store these as Folders in the Finder and there's a lot of functionality there. You can use the four Finder views to easily view the photos. You can use QuickLook. You can use Preview for editing. You can even do things like a slideshows and use comments and tags.
So what I've done here is I've created a Library 1 folder in my Pictures folder. That means it won't be synced with iCloud. I could put this in my iCloud Drive folder if I want that. I can then create multiple folders like Library 1 and Library 2 or give them different names in my Pictures folder here. Then I have folders in them that contain the different photos. Now I can use the four different views of the Finder to view these photos.
So here I am in Column View and I can select a photo and see a big preview of it on the right. If you don't then you need to go to View, and instead of Hide Preview this will say Show Preview and you can turn this on. Grab the line here and shrink or grow the preview area or the right side of the window as well. In addition to the photo you're going to see all sorts of information here about it. So depending upon what type of camera was used you can see here I've got, for instance, longitude and latitude information even because it's from an iPhone. So it's not as useful as location but at least you can see there's location data there. You can see all the camera settings here 
Now let's switch to List View. In List View you only see stuff in the current folder. I can go up a level. I'm going to use Command up arrow and I can see the various folders here. I can click this Reveal triangle to reveal the photos in there. I can use the arrow keys to get around inside. I can also bring up a preview area here which is useful for photos. I'm going to do View, Show Preview and now when I select a photo I can see the Preview there. I can drag this line here to make that a little bigger. So I can use the arrow keys now to go through here. If I want to open up a folder I can use the right arrow when I'm over the folder and it will open up the folder and I can go down. I can use the left arrow to close the folder. So I can still navigate using the keyboard to get nice previews with all this information here in List View. List View also allows me to sort really easily so I can sort by Date Modified or different things.
Icon View is very useful because you can see your photos as thumbnails. So I'll go into here and I can see these thumbnails here. I can use the slider at the bottom right corner to change the size. If you don't see the slider do View and then you want to say Show Status Bar. So you turn that on and that's the slider there at the bottom. So I can increase these to quite a large size to be able to see them. I can also sort them by using Sort By and then I can sort by name which would then put them in the order for file names here. I can also do it by Date for instance. You can still bring up the Preview on the right if you want. So you can select a file and still see all this extra information. You can navigate using the arrow keys left and right and up and down to get through all these photos. To go up I'll just use Command up arrow and I'm back at the top level. I can move over to another folder and then Command down arrow to go into that folder. Then use the arrow keys here to navigate around inside them.
Now Gallery View is really made for this. So you can see a list of photos at the bottom. You can use the arrow keys to go through them and you see a very large preview in the middle of the screen. You get all your information here on the right as well. 
So what about metadata? You can name photos very easily by selecting a file and then hitting Return. Now you can rename them something you want. So you can create titles for each one of these by changing the name of the file. You can also do Command i and in here you've got Tags which are Finder Tags shared with all the files on your Mac. But you can type comments as well and these will be searchable. So you can actually add descriptions for these and you can see Comments in List View as a column if you enable it. You could use Comments as Titles. For instance I can name this one Bridge and then if I go into List View I can do Command J to turn on Comments as a column. Then if I hide the preview here so I have more room you can see I have Bridge right there. I can even sort by these.
Also note that if you don't want to use Command i for each and every photo you can do Option Command i. This brings up an Inspector which changes with whatever you have selected. So you can use the arrow keys. Go through and you can see all this information. You can even have this preview in here so you can expand this window a bit. Then you can turn off the preview here on the right. Now you can use this Inspector here for preview, for changing comments, for changing the file name and adding tags. 
So for more viewing you can use the spacebar and that brings up QuickLook which is this huge window here. You can still click on things in the Finder there and QuickLook will just adjust it to show what it is you have selected. But you can also use the arrow keys. So I can use the arrow key to go up and you can see it changes the file and changes QuickLook here. You can expand QuickLook to full screen if you want. Enter Markup or Rotate through QuickLook. There's an Open with Preview button here but you can also just double click on a file and it will open it up in Preview.
Here you can do a little more with it because in Preview you can Export the image so you can do stuff like compress it, change it to another format. You can also go into Markup here which is a little different because it has these color adjustment tools. So you have some color adjustment tools. Not as much as you have in Photos but you can make some adjustments here in Preview and Save. Also note that editing in Photos is nondestructive meaning that you can always revert back to the original. You can kind of do the same here if you're using Preview to edit things. For instance let's add a shape here and let's also do some color adjustments and then I'm going to Save. So Command S for save. Now you can see that's what the photo looks like. But if I go back into Preview and then I go to File I can do Revert To and I can browse all versions. I enter a Time Machine-like mode here and I can go back to previous versions like this one and restore it. Now you can see I have that version back. So in a way it's even better because you can go back to previous versions not just the current version or the original.
You can even do slideshows in the Finder. You can just select a photo. So I can select a group of them in here by Shift clicking. Then you can see I have a bunch of them there. If I hit the Spacebar for QuickLook I can flip through them with the arrows here. I can also click here to see this thumbnail view all of them. If I change to full screen by clicking that button then I can hit Play, in addition to the arrows, and now I can actually have it go through the slides automatically one by one.
Now a fundamental difference between using Files and Folders and Albums in the Photos app is the photos are really in here. Files are really in this Folder. So I can't have the file in more than one folder without duplicating it. But you can use aliases to kind of do this. So, for instance,  let's go and create a New Folder and we'll call this Favorites. Instead of dragging the actual photos in there what I'm going to do is hold the Option and Command keys down and drag this in there. You can see that little curved arrow that was over the icon. This creates and alias to that folder in there. So I can do this with a bunch of other photos here. Let me drag this one in here. Let me go to these photos here and I'll just drag this one in here. Another one. Drag that one in there. Now I've got a Favorites folder but these are all aliases. You can see the icon shows they're an alias or a shortcut to the file. But if I select it I still see the photo just as before. I can double click and it will open it up in Preview just as before. So it's a link to the photo where it actually is. In fact you can select one of these and Control click on it and then use Show Original to go to where it's originally located. So you can, kind of, create albums like this Favorites album even if you're organizing your photos in the Finder.
You can also use a system like this for your videos. I like to store my videos separate from my Photos Library since they take up so much space. Also I find this works better than having multiple photo libraries because you have to restart Photos and switch between them. You can't work with photos from more than one library at the same time. I store my huge collection of personal photos in the Photos App and then I use a system like this to store things for work and other projects.

Comments: 5 Responses to “Storing Photos in Finder Folders As an Alternative to the Photos App”

nick

5 years ago

Great suggestion Gary, I had been looking forward to this video since you first told me about it. I have a gizillion photos on an external hard drive, and thankfully I've always kept them in very organized folders right from day 1. No software or hardware will replace good organizing habits when it comes to photos. Happy Holidays.

Ellen

Hi Gary. I was a happy user of iPhoto 9. (I'm not young. Ha! Ha. I liked the way photos could be stored in albums with whatever picture you wanted on the front. Is there any way to to this now?

Gary Rosenzweig

Ellen: View the photos in the album. Control+click on one and select "Make Key Photo."

Nick Greaves

Terrific video Gary... so much information compressed into 10 mins that I'll have to watch it several times to absorb it.

Denise

Another fabulous presentation. Started experimenting immediately. Thanks Gary

Comments Closed.

Storing Photos in Finder Folders As an Alternative to the Photos App

Comments: 5 Responses to “Storing Photos in Finder Folders As an Alternative to the Photos App”

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