Getting things organized
Photos does some of the organization for you, but you can also take control to make it easier to find the images you want at a later date
upload your images to iCloud Photo Library for easy access on any device
The first step in using Photos to organize your images is to import them. Photos can import the images to your computer automatically if you like, but we don’t recommend this if you also want to be able to access your images with other software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, or Lightroom, or if you like the comfort of having images in a standard folder structure.
We recommend that you transfer images from your camera to a folder on your hard drive and then import them to Photos from there. You might also want, for example, to let Photos handle the importing and storage of the images on your iPhone, but deal with the images that you take on your dedicated camera yourself. That’s also possible.
When your iPhone or camera is connected to your Mac, or a memory card is in the card reader, Photos automatically shows any images on the device and indicates which are new, ready for importing. Click Import All New Items at the top left to import them directly. Alternatively, you can select the images that you want to import and then click the Import Selected button to just import the images that are important to you.
To import images from a folder, select File>Import and then select the folder where the images are stored. Your images will remain in the folder, with only their details and location imported to Photos, which means the files aren’t needlessly duplicated and don’t take up extra storage space.
If you wish, you can set Photos to open automatically when you connect a device with images. With the device connected to the computer, make sure it is selected under “Import” in the column at the left of the screen and then check the box marked “Open Photos for this device” at the top left.
Under Photos > Preferences > iCloud, you can choose to upload your images to iCloud Photo Library so you can access all your photos and video from your Apple devices, however they were captured. (See issue #123 for a complete guide to iCloud Drive.)
It’s a great feature, but if you’re a keen photographer you’ll likely fill the 5GB space you get for free in no time, which means you’ll need to purchase more. Thankfully, moving to 50GB of storage will cost you just 99¢ a month, which is incredibly competitive compared to other cloud storage solutions.