Apple Photos on new M3

[repro_Glenn]

At home I've just upgraded from a 2012 MacBookPro to a 2024 MacBookPro.
Because almost all Apps on the 2012 Mac won't run post-Mojave on the new one I decided to not to use Migration Assistant and transfer the bits I want manually.

I thought I'd share some things about the upgrade to the latest Apple Photos.

The upgrade process was easier than I thought: Copy the Photos Library.photoslibrary across to the New Mac and double click and few moments later you have a new Photos Library.photoslibrary. I checked a few images that I knew I'd changed the time and date and a few that I knew I'd done some edits and all looks good.
Was about to delete the copy on the HDD but noticed if you look inside the new Photos Library.photoslibrary the structure is very different to before and not in a good way for people like me who keep putting off organising the photos to another day.

Since 2018 and using Lightroom I've rigidly stuck to a YEAR>MONTH>DAYorEVENT>CAMERA1/PHONE1/...CAMERA4/PHONE4...EXPORTEDfromLR Folder structure.
And I before I delete from the SD cards or Phones I back all of this up with same Folder Structure. Then repeat the back up when I need to usually at the end of editing and culling a family holiday.

With iPhoto and Photos its been a similar back up strategy, just copy the files (almost all jpegs (only started with RAW in 2014)) and the folder structure made sense:
Inside iPhoto YEAR>MONTH>DAY>Roll (this would be the Import Day)
Inside Photos YEAR>MONTH>DAY (this would also be the Import Day)
Inside these folders your Originals RAW and jpg would all be there with the original file date.
So in my case sometimes the camera date would be very wrong 1/1/2000 1/1/2023 or 1/1/1970 and there are a lot of IMG_0001.jpg I've also got a lot where the day and month are transposed BUT when I back up I can throw these into the correct EVENT folder. I've also got the Import Date and Filename numbering order to assist with sorting.

The 2024 Apple Photos that ships with Sonoma has none of this.
Inside 2024 Photos the Originals Structure is
>0
>1
>2
>3
>4
>5
>6
>7
>8
>9
Inside Folder 0 are all the new filenames that start with a 0
The New filenames have no relevance to how they were shot nor the date they were shot and definitely no reference to when they were imported and not even able to use the sequential numbering as a clue.
That information is all there still in the Photos App but for backing up manually its useless.

I understand that Photos can no longer have multiple images called IMG_0001.jpg because its cloud based but wasn't expecting it to have to rename and move everything.

I'm still planning on sorting this 300GB mess out another day but am now thinking it might actually be easier to start again with Lightroom.
At least I know not to discard the old copy of Photos Library.photoslibrary until it is sorted.

So hope this info might help someone else with a shiny new Mac

 

[Conrad Chavez]

If what you want is for Photos to work a little more like Lightroom Classic, there are still some things that can move you in that direction. Mostly about using Photos in Referenced Files mode, not its native mode of copying photos into the Photos library.

The reason you might want to do this is that you can maintain and back up just one set of folders containing originals, and have both Lightroom Classic and Photos draw on the same original files. (However, I think edited derivatives might still live hidden inside the Photos library.)

First, set up Photos so that it does not make its own copy of imported images; instead it leaves the originals where they are and simply catalogs the path to the original…like Lightroom Classic does. To do this, in Photos Settings, deselect Copy Items to the Photos Library.

Second, when importing, you may want to set Album to None, and enable the Keep Folder Organization option. If you do this, Photos will automatically create Albums organized in the same way as the folders in the macOS file system where the originals are stored. This organization only affects the virtual Albums in Photos (similar to Collections in Lightroom Classic), because referencing doesn't alter the originals out on the desktop. If you don’t enable Keep Folder Organization then all photos are dumped in whichever one Album you select.

When you use Photos this way (referencing instead of copying), you can always find out where an original is stored: Select an image and choose File > Show Referenced File in Finder (also available if you right-click an image). This switches to the Finder desktop, opens the folder containing the image, and selects the image. This works the same way as the Lightroom Classic command Photo > Show in Finder.

In short:

• If Copy Items to the Photos Library is enabled, Photos works like cloud Lightroom. It copies all imported original photos into its own private area so that they can be managed in a way that originals can be synced with iCloud Photos.
• If Copy Items to the Photos Library is disabled, Photos works like Lightroom Classic. It references all imported original photos in their current folders, leaving them visible to all other apps and for manual handling by the user, and cannot sync originals to iCloud Photos.

 

[repro_Glenn]

Thanks Conrad,
My real issue is that I don't have the nice organised Folder Structure for these images. They were copied direct from the Cameras or SD cards into iPhoto or Photos and then backed up. With the Sonoma Photos you no longer have the Import Date Structure, and you no longer have the Original Filenames, these only exist in its Database.

At some point I need to manually create the nice organised Folder Structure for 2005 to 2014+ and then decide which way to handle things and my gut is telling me that would be easier to do this with LR. Creating that nice Organised structure is also going to be easier from the back ups of old Photos and iPhoto rather than the current Sonoma version.

 

[LRList001]

At some point I need to manually create the nice organised Folder Structure for 2005 to 2014+ and then decide which way to handle things and my gut is telling me that would be easier to do this with LR. Creating that nice Organised structure is also going to be easier from the back ups of old Photos and iPhoto rather than the current Sonoma version.

Why do you need to do this? It might satisfy your desire to have a neat and tidy files structure on your disk, however LR is perfectly happy for you to create your own virtual structure and organise your images within it. That is the point of using LR's organisational capabilities. There is no absolute need to move the files on their disk drive. You could then use a new disk structure for new images. Just asking.

 

[clee01l]

and not in a good way for people like me who keep putting off organising the photos to another day.

The Photos Library.photoslibrary. Is a package and you are not supposed to need to care what is inside. The Photos app exposes those contents that you need to see or access. By leaving the organization up to the app. Apple has taken care of the internal organization so the "people like you" don't have too. The same is true for Lightroom and to some extent Lightroom Classic.

I understand that Photos can no longer have multiple images called IMG_0001.jpg

This is not true. The Cloud (both Apple iCloud and the Adobe cloud do not store image files as files. Instead the image data is stored in special database container called a "Blob". Other metadata is stored with the "blob" in database record that are uniquely identified "Filename" is just another piece of metadata associated in the same record. You can have a thousand "IMG_0001.jpg" files in the data base and the database won't care. So you should not care either.