I have been considering moving a considerable photo collection I have amassed for a few years now after getting my first digital camera. I used to take a lot of pictures before that with a beloved Cannon SLR that belonged to my father. Sadly that camera got stolen in a holiday in Cancun… but that is a story for another time.
Anyway, I used to use Picasa to organise my photos into albums and upload or share some with friends and family. Picasa was superseded by Google Photos and I never quite liked losing some control on where my photos went.
I have been an iOS user of Apple Photos — I like the simplicity of taking a picture and it being part of an album that I keep in my phone until I clean the album… I did try using the Mac version, but as I said I never liked just getting a soup of pictures. I wanted to keep them in the album/folder hierarchy I curated myself. It is until now that I have found a way for Apple Photos to respect my hierarchy. Here is what you need to do:
- Find the place where your pictures are organised folders and drag the top folder onto the Photos App icon in the Dock. It does not matter if the App is running
- NOTE: Do not drag it to the Photo App window. If you do, the applications behaves in a different way and you will end up with a soup of photographs.
- At the top of the window you will see a checkbox that reads “Keep Folder Organisation” on the top right (see the screenshot above)
- Click the blue button, “Import All New Items”
Et voilà! Your imported photos will show up in an organised folder in the sidebar.