Confusion, Confusion: Photos

Tech Support
1

Background:

  1. I was a fan of Picasa. Quick photo viewer, great for a 'folder only slideshow.

  2. I’m still in the folders and files world, so would prefer that my photos remain in this format. I can simply go to “2012-> FIFA World Cup → Finals photos” and see photos. If Apple Photos open, the edits should reflect in the folder structure as well.

  3. At times, we’ll share photos with people who don’t own a Mac or an iPhone. So directly copying a folder to a thumb drive is an added benefit.

  4. All my photos are on a Samsung T7 1TB that also contains my files and is always connected to the Mac mini.

  5. Photos from iPhone are also automatically uploaded to OneDrive (Camera Upload). That acts as a decent backup. The T7 is also backed up using Carbon Copy Cloner.

  6. Not big into editing photos.

  7. We’re an iPhone family and have a 200GB iCloud storage plan.

  8. Photos + Videos size is around 600GB

Questions:
(i) What would the best photo management workflow be? I’d love a folder->file structure and the benefit of a Photos search ability but also with a quick preview/slideshow (like Picasa).

(ii) How are you handling sharing pictures with family and friends?

(iii) Realistically, can we have a workflow that’s good for cross-platform and easy?

(iv) Can a single photo library be used on multiple Macs?

Thanks!

Tech: M1 Mac Mini 256GB/8GB, MacBook Pro 8GB, 512GB, iPhone SE 2020, iPhone X

2
  1. Still haven’t found the “best” but Photos works well enough for me.
  2. Shred albums
  3. No, not that I’ve found.
  4. I have my Photos library on my iMac and MacBook Air synced through iCloud. Each Mac has to be signed into the same iCloud account.
3

For 4 - photo library - you do need local storage on each account? Or do you download originals on one and optimize storage on all others? I believe I’ll have to upgrade my iCloud plan for this.

For 1 - do you still have your photos in a folder structure?

4

I don’t optimize Mac storage. I have a 1tb SSD on each Mac.

No folders, I use albums and smart bums to organize.