Storying photos in Files, or in Photos.app?

[Padcatt]

Sorry..meant to say, “Storing”

While I get - and have used - the benefits of the Photos app, I'm not wild about the management of my photos using Photos.app

I've begun to store photos by category in Files, and am contemplating the tedious task of moving photos which are "in" the Photos app to Files.

Before I do so, are there any pitfalls to doing this, any advantages I'd be leaving behind if I stop using Photos? I'm a professional designer, and have plenty of image-editing software, so that isn't a concern for me.

Thank you for any information and opinions on this.

 

[LannyC]

I organize most of my photos--mainly scans of 35mm slides up to 50 years old--into folders on my Mac, and synch them to Photos on my iPad via iTunes. On the iTunes Synch settings, I can choose hard drive folders to synch by checking boxes.

This works well for organizing images by event, but getting the iPad to maintain the folders' order, or images' display order within a folder, is frustrating and unreliable. Somew apps appear to use last-modified date, others several flavors of alphabetizing.

As long as you have backup copies on your computer, you can afford to play with the Files app. But I have no experience doing what you propose.

 

[twerppoet]

The biggest advantage to using Photos is the organization. Using folders, if you want the same photo to appear in multiple locations you’ll need to duplicate it, and if you want it to be the same photo you’l have to revise all copies manually. Also, the system integration makes it easy to edit/save/copy/send photos in other apps. Using files is doable in many apps, but not as universal. Photos uses only one image file no matter how many albums it may appear in, so revision and duplication are moot.


The biggest weakness of using the Files app is that the burden of organization is completely on you. The freedom to organize any way you want comes with the necessity of maintaining that organization, and remembering where you put everything. The tools for searching in Files are no where as powerful as the same tools in Photos (for photo specific searches). The only way to make up for (and possible improve on) the Photos search would be extensive and consistent use of tags.

In short, if you want to manage a huge set of photos in files, you’re going to have to work far harder than you would to keep the same photos in the Photos app; or some other photo managment app.

If I needed professional level photo editing and managment, I’d go upscale rather than old-school. Adobe Lightroom has all the advantages of the Photos app, with more organizing and editing tools. It’s also synced with other Adobe tools. The downside is that you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription to get the full power of the app (and other Adobe apps).

I still miss Apple’s old Aperture app (OS X), which was Lightroom's only real competitor.