Using Smart Albums In Mac Photos

Smart Albums are a handy tool in Mac Photos that can be used to view photos in your library that match certain criteria. Unlike regular albums, you don't add photos to the album manually and they automatically update as you add new photos.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use Smart Albums in Mac Photos.
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So a great tool that's available in the Photos App is the ability to create a Smart Album. A lot of people don't take advantage of this. A regular album is when you create a new album, you name it, and then you can drag photos to that album. You're basically manually creating this album by adding photos to it. You can go into the album and remove photos from it. It's all manually built. 
But Smart Albums are different. The contents are automatically created based on some search criteria. So to create a Smart Album go to File, and then New Smart Album. Then you can name it something. We'll just name this one Test. Then you have to give it the criteria to create the album from the photos that you've got in your library. So first is the aspect of the photo that you want to look at. So, for instance, it could be something like Date Captured. The date the photo was taken. So you could have all photos where the date is equal to a certain date. Or you can click here and do something else. Like, for instance, you could say if it's in the last, let's say, 300 days. Then you could see here that 18 items in this library match that criteria. You could change it from days to weeks, months, or years. There are a lot of other ways to do it as well. For instance you could have is after a certain date, is before a certain date, or is in the range. So you could say it's from July 1, 2020 to July 13, 2021. You could see 33 items are matched. So if I simply hit OK here I get this Smart Album listed under My Albums. When I select it I could see all the photos that match that criteria. To Edit this I can Control click on it and choose Edit Smart Album. Then I can go in and change things. 
So other things you can do are Date Added, Text that's in the Caption, Text that's in the File Name, Key Words if you've added key word tags to your photos. It could look for people inside of the photo based on face recognition that you've setup. It could search for text which includes objects in the photo. For instance I could say Text and then look for things like boat. You can see twelve items are matched. I can hit OK and you can see any photos where it finds a boat it's placed in this Smart Album.
Now here's where it gets really interesting. When you create a Smart Album it's not static. It doesn't just show those items that are there when you first create it. It's dynamic. Meaning that as you add new photos to your library they would automatically be added to that Smart Folder if they meet that criteria. So in this case if I took a new picture of a boat and added it to my library and then looked in that Smart Folder instead of twelve pictures I would see thirteen. The new one would be there. 
So continuing here you can see it can also look for text in the title. Anytime you're looking for text you have a variety of ways to search for that text. Like if that text is included in there or does not include or it's exactly that or not exactly that, starts with, ends with. You can even see if the title, say, is empty. You can see 521 items have an empty title. Or is not empty. 27 items actually have a title. There's also a whole list of criteria here that matches the metadata in the photo. So, for instance, if you wanted to see photos taken only with a certain aperture or greater than or less than that aperture you could do that. You could look at the list here and the list is based on all of your photos that are in there. You can look at the camera model and you could see if it includes and you can see a list of all of the different camera models used for everyone of my photos. So your list is going to look different. You've also got whether the flash was used. You've got the focal length, ISO lens, and this list is also generated from your photos and shutter speed as well. For things like shutter speed you can even use ranges. So you can get between a certain range. 
Now the most interesting of all of these things is Photo. Because hidden inside of Photo are a lot of different things. You've got Photo is or is not and then you have a bunch of different things in here. Whether it's been favorited, whether it's been hidden, whether it's been edited. If it's a raw photo. If it uses HDR. The type of photo it is like a video, a selfie taken with the front camera on an iPhone, a live photo, a portrait photo, a panorama, a time-lapse, a slo-mo, a burst. All different types of iPhone photos. Also whether this is a screenshot or whether it's an animated GIF. So there's a whole ton of different ways to categorize things. 
For instance we could say let's just see portrait photos. Now here's where it gets really interesting. You can have multiple criteria here. Click the Plus button here and now you can see I've got another thing here. In this case Date Added within the last 300 days. You can see 14 items match that the photo is a portrait photo and it has been taken within the last 300 days. Notice up here you can set Match All, Match Any. So Any would give me any photo that's either portrait or taken within the last 300 days. Whereas All would require both of these to be true in order to be in the collection. Remember this stays up to date at all times. So the next time I take a portrait photo it will be added in here and there will be 15 photos. But since this is Date Added is in the last 300 days if one or more of these photos suddenly becomes more than 300 days old as time passes then fewer photos would be found in here. So I can remove this first bit here and you could see now I could just get photos taken in the last 300 days. So this album would just show me my most recent photos. Then I could add another bit to it and say Photo Is Raw. Now I'd see only raw photos I'd taken in the last 300 days. 
So this is highly customizable even though you've got under Media Type things like videos, selfies, raw, and all of that, this here would just show me all my raw photos at all times. But with a Smart Album I could have it only show me, say, the raw photos taken in the last 30 days or one year. Of course you can have as many Smart Albums as you want. So i can create a new Smart Album here and add it and you could see I could have two there. I can click here and have a folder and put Smart Albums into a folder. So I can organize things. Anytime I want I can Control click on a Smart Album here, edit it. I can duplicate it to make a variation of it. Rename it or Delete the Smart Album. 
Smart Albums are extremely useful especially because of their automatic nature. You don't have to manually add photos to the Smart Album. All you need to do is take new photos and if they are of the right type they will go into the Smart Album. As you tag the photos, Favorite them, and make other changes to the photos they may also fit into or be removed from Smart Albums depending upon whether they still meet the criteria to be in there. That's why it really doesn't hurt to create Smart Albums. You're really not doing anything except setting them up. So experiment with them. Add a few Smart Albums now. See what they can do. See how useful they can be to you. Learn how they work before you need them. 
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 15 Responses to “Using Smart Albums In Mac Photos”

Karl

3 years ago

Very powerful tool. Can you do it based on location? And I’m guessing this only works on Mac and not iPhone or iPad?

Gary Rosenzweig

Karl: Try "Text" "is" and the name of a location. This is only for the Mac Photos app.

Eric

Nice rundown of the powerful features, thank you. You mentioned adding a folder (around 6:43 mins into the video). Could you expound a bit on what a folder is and how it can be used?

Eric: It is just an organizational tool. Instead of having all of your albums and smart albums in one long list in the sidebar, folders lets you group them. Try it and see.

Rohit Aggarwal

Hi
I want to create a smart album where I want to include three names but exclude one "Key word". Anyway to do this?
Thanks

Rohit: Sure. Why not? Just add al of those as items in the Smart Album. Try it.

Gene

Is there a way to use pattern recognition and have a smart album find people in the pictures in which they appear?

Gene: Yes. Look at the list of criteria. Person is one of them.

Lois Morris

I can only get one name in the list when I select the person option for a smart album. How do I add additional people?

Louis: Just add another line with another Person.

Graham

Gary - great video - thanks
Is it possible to have a smart album that 'collects' all photo's say below 50 mb in size- As I am plagued by 'thumbprint' type images
Thanks

Suzanne

Do smart albums show on iPad or just on Mac?

Suzanne: Mac only.

Suzanne Sanger

A REALLY smart album would capture photos and then remove them from the Library. In fact, if all albums at least offered the option of either continuing to show “albumed” photos or hiding them in that Library feed, searching and organizing would be SO much easier! Is there a way to do this? Have I missed it?

Suzanne: The Library is ALL of your photos. Albums are curated subsets of your library. What are you trying to do, exactly? If you want to see a list of the photos not currently in any album, create a Smart Album with the criteria Album, Is Not, Any.

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Using Smart Albums In Mac Photos

Comments: 15 Responses to “Using Smart Albums In Mac Photos”

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