What an album really is
When you import into Photos, every photo goes into the Photos library: a single package in your Pictures folder that only Photos is meant to open. An album is a list inside that library. Put one photo in three albums and there's still one file; delete the album and the photo stays. That design is why albums are quick and free, and why sorting into them never changes anything you can see in Finder.
Albums and folders, compared
| Albums in Photos | Folders on disk | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the files are | inside the Photos library | wherever you put them, including external drives |
| One photo in two places | yes, at no cost | only as a copy |
| On your iPhone too | yes, with iCloud Photos | no, unless you copy them |
| Opens in other apps | through Photos, or after exporting | in anything, on any computer |
| Giving a set to someone | export it, or share an album | copy the folder |
| If you stop using the app | the albums stay in Photos | nothing changes |
When Photos is the right home
If you take most of your pictures on an iPhone and look at them there, Photos is hard to beat: it syncs across your devices, recognises people and places, makes Memories, edits without touching the original, and on macOS Ventura and later finds its own duplicates (Utilities → Duplicates). Sorting inside it is best done with albums, or with a swipe app like Slidebox.
When real folders are better
- The photos are on a drive. Backups of old phones, a laptop that came before this one, a camera card. Importing them all into Photos to sort them is a big detour.
- You want them to outlast the app. A folder of JPEGs and HEICs opens on any computer, in any app, in twenty years.
- Someone else needs them. A folder copies onto a USB stick or into a shared drive as it is.
- They came from several people. Family archives arrive as folders, from several phones and cameras, and are easiest to keep that way.
Can you have both?
Yes, in two ways. You can sort in folders first and import only the keep folder into Photos, which keeps the library small. Or you can tell Photos not to copy what it imports (turn off “Copy items to the Photos library” in Photos settings), so it points at files where they already are. Those referenced files don't upload to iCloud Photos, though, so they won't reach your phone.
Getting photos out of Photos and into folders
- Select the photos, or an album, in Photos.
- Choose File → Export → Export Unmodified Original to get the files as the camera made them.
- Pick a subfolder format if you want them grouped, for example by moment, and choose where they go.
Then sort the exported folder like any other. One thing not to do: don't move files around inside the Photos library package, and don't point a sorting app at it, or at a Pictures folder that holds it. Moving files out of the library damages it. Export first, and sort the export.
The sorting itself is in how to sort thousands of photos into folders on a Mac.
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