How to move pictures and videos between Photos albums

Photos lets you organize your images into albums, an obviously useful feature. But what might not be clear, even if you’ve used Photos for years and iPhoto before that, is that Apple doesn’t copy or move images to albums. Rather, it creates a kind of alias or shortcut. This can add confusion when you try to move photos or videos from one album to another, only to find that they stay in both places.

Photos keeps only one version of each image or movie in the library that you have open. (Technically, Photos keeps an original, unedited version, then saves any changes you make. This lets you revert to the original or export it.)

When you create an album, Photos actually says, “Point in this album to this particular stored media.” This approach allows you to assemble many albums from the same photo or video library without the storage costs of creating a separate copy on your drive of each media file for each album.

You can drag media from one album to another, but this never removes it from the source album. Unlike the Finder, there is no modifier key that alters this behavior; the Finder allows you to invoke modifiers to change a drag operation from copy to move or from move to copy.

To move photos or videos from one album to another, use Cut and Paste. It looks like a rollback, but it gives the correct result:

1. In the source album, select one or more items.
2. Picking out Edit > Cut or press Command-X.
3. Navigate to the destination album. (Create this album if it does not already exist.).
4. Picking out Edit > Paste or press Command-V.

Warning! Photos uses a clever internal approach to handle this, but if you quit the Photos app between steps 2 and 4, only a small thumbnail is pasted instead of a link to the original image as it should be.

It may take a while for images to disappear from the album due to behind-the-scenes recording that Photos engages in. If you don’t like the result, you can undo (Edit > Undo or press Command-Z) in multiple steps.

While the above works, I think it may introduce more potential issues. What I would suggest instead is to tag the images with a keyword, use a smart album, and then remove the images via filtering. Although it requires a bit more overhead, it means a more precise and easy to control process. It also allows you to collect media from many places to take action.

Here’s what to do:

1. In Photos, display the information palette via Window > Information.
2. In the original album, select the media you want to move.
3. Once you have selected these items, enter a keyword in the information palette that is unique, and you can use it to search for these items later. It can be long, like move-june-16-2022.
4. Hurry Come back to apply it to all selected items. Note that applying keywords can take a few seconds or longer, so at first it may seem like nothing happened.
5. Create a smart album for these keywords. Picking out File > New Smart Albumname it descriptively and set the criteria to “Keyword is your keyword”. (You can click the keywords pop-up menu and then start typing the keyword to jump straight to its point in the menu, which can be time-consuming if you have lots of different keywords in your library.)
6. Click on OKAY.
7. Photos switches the view to the new smart album. Select all media in the album (Edit > Select All or press Command-A).
8. Drag the items to your new album. Or, you can Control-click an image or video in the set, choose Add toand select the new album.
9. To remove the images from the old album, go back there, click to the right of the Filter by link in the upper right corner, then select Keyword manager.
10. Drag your keyword, like move-june-16-2022in the Quick Group box.
11. Close the Keyword Manager and choose filter by your keyword in the Show only keywords section.
12. Select these items and press Wipe offChoose Image > Delete X photos from albumor Control-click any item in the selection and choose Delete X photos from album.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Mary Jean.

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To remove these items from the source album, select them, control-click any item in the selected set, and choose Remove from Album.