Add pictures to Photos.app

photosphotos.app

Until now I have all my photos in a folder 'Images' on my Mac. To organize them better I want to start using the photos.app. When I open the app there are no fotos, so I guess I have to import them first. A few questions:

  • Can't I tell Fotos.app just where to look for photos and use that folder?
  • If I use the Import functions, will I then have duplicates of all photos? Where will the photos be stored after importing them and can I delete them from the original folder?
  • Weh I try to import all my photos my Mac tells me that I don't have enough space (it's a lot of pictures), so how can I import the pictures without duplicating them?

Tanks

Best Answer

By default Photos copies everything into its own library on import. You can disable this in Preferences->General

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Pictures which are not kept within the library itself won't be available in iCloud though (which may or may not be a problem for you).

If you want to use iCloud (e.g. for sharing of pictures between iPhone and Mac) you can keep the option selected and import the pictures into the library in batches. You could then also decide to keep the originals in the iCloud library only, and just have Photos automatically download hires pictures on demand. Settings for this are in the iCloud tab of Photos' preferences.