I created individual photo albums of photos I want to keep forever. Unfortunately when I delete in photos it ALSO deletes photo from my albums. How do I stop this from happening??
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: Duplicate Photos In Albums
iPhone 14 Pro, iOS 18
You don't.
Photos, (like iPhoto, Aperture, Music, iTunes) is a database. This means it can be very flexible and powerful, if sometimes a little confusing. The library is the core of the app. Every image is in the library. Albums are virtual, and are just subsets of the library. In fact, Albums are not places, they are lists - instructions to the app to 'display this group of images together'. So images do not get "moved" to Albums, they get added to that particular list. This means that an image can be in more than one album but use no extra disk space. Similarly in the Music app, all the tracks are in the Library and can be added to any number of playlists.
This is how the app works and it cannot be changed.
On a Mac:
If you're trying to organise your Library and want to find images not in albums, then a simple Smart Album
File -> New Smart Album
Album -> Is Not -> Any
will find these images. As you add them to albums they will disappear from the Smart Album.
On iPad or iPhone, which do not currently support Smart Albums, since iOS 18.3 identify images not in any album using a filter:
On the main screen tap on the up/arrow and select filter: Not in An Album. Further, you can check the bottom of the Info panel of a photograph for any albums that the image is currently added to.
You don't.
Photos, (like iPhoto, Aperture, Music, iTunes) is a database. This means it can be very flexible and powerful, if sometimes a little confusing. The library is the core of the app. Every image is in the library. Albums are virtual, and are just subsets of the library. In fact, Albums are not places, they are lists - instructions to the app to 'display this group of images together'. So images do not get "moved" to Albums, they get added to that particular list. This means that an image can be in more than one album but use no extra disk space. Similarly in the Music app, all the tracks are in the Library and can be added to any number of playlists.
This is how the app works and it cannot be changed.
On a Mac:
If you're trying to organise your Library and want to find images not in albums, then a simple Smart Album
File -> New Smart Album
Album -> Is Not -> Any
will find these images. As you add them to albums they will disappear from the Smart Album.
On iPad or iPhone, which do not currently support Smart Albums, since iOS 18.3 identify images not in any album using a filter:
On the main screen tap on the up/arrow and select filter: Not in An Album. Further, you can check the bottom of the Info panel of a photograph for any albums that the image is currently added to.
To Yer_Man's excellent explanation, I want to add how really cool this system is. You aren't limited to putting a picture in just one album! Again, think about music playlists-- when songs were on vinyl, they could only be in one place, but that's not necessary now. And pictures aren't pieces of paper any more.
So albums give a specific view of your pictures. The picture of "Aunt Ethel at the Grand Canyon" can be in the "Aunt Ethel" album with other pictures of Aunt Ethel, and it can also be in the "Grand Canyon" album with pictures of other people at the Grand Canyon. And it can also be in a the "September 2015" album with other things that happened then. Each album is pointing to a single file stored in the Photos Library, so having pictures in multiple albums takes up no more storage space. As you can imagine, this is very powerful in organizing pictures.
A database system like Photos frees us from having to remember which album we put a picture in-- we can put the picture everywhere that helps us find what we're looking for.
Deleting photos also removes them from albums in Photos app
