delete photo from album but not library

is there a way to delete a photo from an album but not the library?

Control click deletes from library after 30 days.

Alternatively, is there a way to recover albums from Monterey photo Library?

I tried repairing the library, but that was no help.

Mac mini

Posted on Aug 14, 2025 11:53 AM

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5 replies

Aug 14, 2025 12:04 PM in response to Fritz Lang1

Fritz Lang1 wrote: is there a way to delete a photo from an album but not the library?

Select the picture and hit Delete.


If you delete an album, the pictures remain. There is no "un-delete" for an album.


The thing is, 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.

Aug 14, 2025 12:49 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

I ended up making a smart album, removing a handful I didn't want. Making a new "dumb" album and transferring from the smart to the dumb.

Then deleted the smart.

Too bad Photos doesn't import albums.

Photos is broken like iTunes/Music is.


There's a lot of too bads about Sequoia. But alas, Apple is a phone and streaming company, not computers and software as they started out.

Aug 14, 2025 01:20 PM in response to Fritz Lang1

Fritz Lang1 wrote:

it didn't when I imported my Monterey library to Sequoia.
It just imported all the photos and no albums .
Or are you saying the albums of pictures should really be saved as folders?

Importing photos from a different Photo Library only imports Photos:

Import photos from another library in Photos on Mac - Apple Support


It is the Photo Library that contains the photos organized into Albums/Folders and you are not importing the Photo Library:

Create additional photo libraries in Photos on Mac - Apple Support


delete photo from album but not library

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