I find it hard to believe that Apple won’t allow me to organize my photos. I need to declutter Photos by MOVING certain photos into Albums, NOT just copying them.
If Microsoft allows me to organize and declutter, why can’t Apple do the same?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: Decreasing clutter of photos in Library
Is setting the filter to "Not in an Album" not working for you?
As Old Toad said, it's really hard to help when you don't even tell us what device you're using.
Perhaps you don't understand how Photos works? Be careful--if you only look at pictures not in an album, how will you find pictures that need to be in multiple albums? Would you really want your Music Library to work so that when you put a song in a playlist, you can never see it in the Music Library again?
In Photos, pictures aren't exactly "in" an album. When you "put a picture into an album," its name is added to a list of pictures from the Library that display together when the album is clicked, kind of like a music playlist, but for pictures. So two albums can both have the same picture name in their lists (like two playlists with the same song,) and that picture will show up when you click either album, but there's only one picture file-- it's just on multiple lists. And when you remove a picture from an album, its name remains in the lists of other albums, and the file still remains in your Library.
So albums give a specific view of your pictures. The picture of "Aunt Ethel at the Grand Canyon" can be in the "Aunt Ethel" album with other pictures of Aunt Ethel, and it can also be in the "Grand Canyon" album with pictures of other people at the Grand Canyon. And it can also be in a the "September 2015" album with other things that happened then. Each album is pointing to a single file stored in the Photos Library, so having pictures in multiple albums takes up no more storage space. As you can imagine, this is very powerful in organizing pictures.
Is setting the filter to "Not in an Album" not working for you?
As Old Toad said, it's really hard to help when you don't even tell us what device you're using.
Perhaps you don't understand how Photos works? Be careful--if you only look at pictures not in an album, how will you find pictures that need to be in multiple albums? Would you really want your Music Library to work so that when you put a song in a playlist, you can never see it in the Music Library again?
In Photos, pictures aren't exactly "in" an album. When you "put a picture into an album," its name is added to a list of pictures from the Library that display together when the album is clicked, kind of like a music playlist, but for pictures. So two albums can both have the same picture name in their lists (like two playlists with the same song,) and that picture will show up when you click either album, but there's only one picture file-- it's just on multiple lists. And when you remove a picture from an album, its name remains in the lists of other albums, and the file still remains in your Library.
So albums give a specific view of your pictures. The picture of "Aunt Ethel at the Grand Canyon" can be in the "Aunt Ethel" album with other pictures of Aunt Ethel, and it can also be in the "Grand Canyon" album with pictures of other people at the Grand Canyon. And it can also be in a the "September 2015" album with other things that happened then. Each album is pointing to a single file stored in the Photos Library, so having pictures in multiple albums takes up no more storage space. As you can imagine, this is very powerful in organizing pictures.
Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem in detail:
Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community
What device model and year do you have your photos on?
What system version are you running?
Are you using the Photos app to manage your photos?
If so where is the Photos library located?
If on an external drive how is the drive formatted and connected to your device?
Unable to move photos into albums on the Photos app
