Saving photos on Apple computer

bjbyorkshire

Shopbot, I read all the article you posted above and it seems it's not just me who finds these duplicates more than annoying. The following posts were all saying just what as I was trying to infer. Photos on the Mac is far from ideal.

If I use dropbox on the Mac I think I will also get all the duplicates as well unless I disable i cloud completely. Flipping heck. How to waste half my life on something that really should be simplicity itself. I almost feel like buying a windows computer just to manipulate my photos back into named folders and view them. Trouble there is most people seem to hate Windows 10 which is what I would get if I did buy a new windows computer.

I love this Mac for its clear screen and speed of use but as a novice where techy stuff is concerned, its way too advanced for my little brain.

shopbot

I think your question is one that needs to be dealt with in person rather than on the forum. I would find out who your local independent Mac expert is and ask them to set everything for you. Once you have a system in place then all you need to do is stick to that system.

As you have a Mac and an iPad I would suggest that basing a system around the 'Photos' App would be a good start.

Hope that helps

SB

bjbyorkshire

Thanks, I quite agree really. My son is a document controller for his work, is very clued up on Mac's and he saves all his photos to folders and backs up every week to a hard drive and now doesn't use the cloud at all. It was he who set me off with all this a few weekends ago when he was visiting. Trouble now is he works 200 miles away and has deserted his old mum. I can ask him things but as you say someone who could get me set up and is nearer may well be the way to go.

Thanks for trying to help. I can see that it is a problem that a lot of people have come across and all have their own ways around it.

I looked on a seldom used dropbox account that I have and there are some of my holiday folders on there and also some cloud??? which cloud I know not, lol, photos too.

I could laugh really. Who cares when I'm dead and gone which photos are saved and where they are saved. Why am I even wasting my life on all of this "stuff" It certainly keeps the old brain cells ticking over.

securityguy

"My son is a document controller for his work, is very clued up on Mac's and he saves all his photos to folders and backs up every week to a hard drive and now doesn't use the cloud at all."

Which is fine, if you know what you're doing. What you need to do is just use Photos, with automated back you to iCloud, as what you have is complex and likely to end in tears.

bjbyorkshire

Thanks securityguy, point taken.

I have just opened a file called WD, my son put this on my desk top when I first bought the Mac. On opening this up I see it has all my old photos in their respective folders saved just how I would expect to look at them ( a folder for each holiday or occasion) and I presume this gets backed up each time I do a full system back up to the hard drive, so this may be the point where I find someone to show me how to just keep the important photos that I take from now onwards in this format. The non important stuff can just keep getting saved on any old cloud!

Not very scientific but hey its blooming complicated.

shopbot

Here is my suggestion for how to set up your photos.
1. Keep all of your photos on your Mac.

2. Have two external hard drives. They need to be the same size or bigger than your Mac hard drive. Use the inbuilt Time Machine program on your Mac to fully back up your Mac to each one.

3. Keep one external hard drive at your house. The other moved offsite somewhere you trust (family members). This is so if there is a fire or serious event at your house, you still have your photos backed up.

4. Regularly back-up using Time Machine and every few months swap the two external hard drives over.

5. Using the Photos App upload your favourite photos to Photostream.

6. You will then be able to view those photos on your iPad. You also have a Cloud back-up of them too.

shopbot

bjbyorkshire wrote: »

Thanks securityguy, point taken.

I have just opened a file called WD, my son put this on my desk top when I first bought the Mac. On opening this up I see it has all my old photos in their respective folders saved just how I would expect to look at them ( a folder for each holiday or occasion) and I presume this gets backed up each time I do a full system back up to the hard drive, so this may be the point where I find someone to show me how to just keep the important photos that I take from now onwards in this format. The non important stuff can just keep getting saved on any old cloud!

Not very scientific but hey its blooming complicated.

The issue is with folders is that they are incompatible with iPads or iPhones. Yes, you can create a folder but it's not the same as on a laptop or a desktop. iOS isn't designed to use folders.

So whilst your son knows his job, there are other ways that are better for tablets and phones.

bjbyorkshire

Shopbot, thanks, the detailed description in post 17 is excellent and very clear advice. When I have done all this I am still left with the photos on the iPad or laptop in a random order, i.e. they are in a date order but not necessarily the date they were taken.

For instance I save photos of crafts that I like, then I might take a photo of the snow outside, then perhaps a photo of the dog next door doing something funny. I get these saved in the photos app in the order they were taken but if I wanted to keep all the relevant craft items together and all the dog next door photos together, I would make albums on the i pad and save each photo in the relevant album...Yes????

This seems reasonably easy going forward, it is the 600plus photos already saved in the photos app in very random order that I can't put into any semblance of order.

I think you may well have to stop reading/helping me at this point as it

The dropbox option might be a possibility as I said. They will still be saved in one cloud or another but I will also have them in folders on there and will back up regularly as you suggest.

Thanks again for all your time and help.

shopbot

bjbyorkshire You're welcome! Happy to try and help.

You can save the photos of the neighbours dog and your crafts into albums like you said. For the backlog of photos you can add select multiple photos to add to an album. You don't need to be doing it one by one.

The other way to do it would be to use an app like the ones on this page: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2016/07/01/3-free-note-taking-alternatives-evernote/

You'll be able to take photos using the app and organise them exactly how you want. You can also add notes and tags. So for example if you tag each dog photo with the word 'Dog' then you can simply type 'Dog' and it will bring all of those photos together.

Dropbox is very good. There is a basic free allowance but after that you pay a monthly subscription. Having multiple cloud services is in itself not a bad idea. However if the same image is being uploaded to several services this will really slow your home internet down.