Photo organisation when digitalising old photos

If you want to keep two separate libraries in iCloud Photos, you can set up a Shared iCloud Photos Library. Then your iCloud Photos Library will be split into two compartments, a Shared iCloud Photos Library and your personal iCloud Photos Library. You can move photos freely between the two libraries and you can switch easily between both libraries, or view the photos from both libraries together. I am moving my best photos to my Shared Library, so I can easily find them on all devices and show them around, and the photos I am currently working on remain the personal library.

Even if we do not want to share our Photos Library with others it is very useful and the only way to have two libraries in iCloud : Set up or join an iCloud Shared Photo Library on Mac – Apple Support

I am using the Shared iCloud Photos Library only to share it with myself.

Switching back and forth just makes both Libraries the same. Photos makes iCloud Photos and the connected Library exactly the same. When you switch the System Library from "A" to "B," then all the pictures in "B" are copied to iCloud Photos, and all A pictures that were in iCloud Photos are copied back to "B," making "B" and iCloud Photos identical--now "B" has all pictures from A and B. Switching back to "A" copies all the from iCloud Photos back to "A," so now A, B, and iCloud Photos are all the same. No pictures are lost. All those pictures would sync to connected iPads and iPhones.

So no, you don't "temporarily" connect to iCloud Photos.

Teachergirl1963 wrote: backed up to an external drive. … I would like to be able to store all my old Photos also in the iCloud in case some terrible accident occurs to my Mac book.

"also" is good. iCloud is only a limited backup, since it synchronizes mistakes as quickly and completely as it copies pictures.

I have had a Quick Look through the website and It appears to say the second Library cannot sync to Icloud? Is that correct? I quite liked having my old photos in a second library as it didn’t clutter up my phone and stuff.

I have many Photos Libraries on my Mac.. I also have more on external drives. I have my wife's old family pictures in one Library, and I have my own family's old pictures on another. I have a Library just for my Nikon's pictures. And I have a "Favorites" Library that is my System Library that is connected to iCloud and synchronized with my phone and iPad. A Mac can have many Libraries, but iDevices can have only one. Perhaps " second Library cannot sync to Icloud" means that they can't both be connected to iCloud, and that's true.

Here's a link to a guide to making a new Library:

Make a New System Library connected to iCloud - Apple Community

You don't need all of that, but you will need to designate your "Favorites" Library as the System Library.

I keep my smaller "Favorites" Library on my MacBook rather than on an external drive. With a portable MacBook, I can't keep an external drive dangling as I move around. I do have other Libraries on a small, 1 oz SSD that I carry with me. But the System Library needs to not be plugged and un-plugged all the time-- that gets very confusing to iCloud.

Most of us started by duplicating the big Library and then removing pictures-- that's easier than selecting pictures and copying them to another Library.

An important part of having multiple Libraries is using the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($40.) PowerPhotos makes it easy to copy pictures from one Library to another, and copies can maintain our Albums and Folders organization. I think pretty much everyone who maintains multiple Libraries uses PowerPhotos.

So there's lots of experience here. Don't hesitate to ask…

Teachergirl1963 wrote:

I have had a Quick Look through the website and It appears to say the second Library cannot sync to Icloud? Is that correct? I quite liked having my old photos in a second library as it didn’t clutter up my phone and stuff.

Only the Library that is set as System Library will sync to iCloud. Other Photo libraries you access through the Photos app will not sync to iCloud.

iCloud is not a backup for photos. It is a sync service, any action you take on a local library will be synced (replicated) on iCloud. so if you delete something by mistake, it will immediately be deleted from iCloud too.

Of course, with "organisation" (which upsets my spellcheck) I could tell you were in the UK. I taught physics in London for a year, and I miss that world! It's different from Texas!

The most important thing to understand about iCloud is that it does whatever it needs to do to make your System Photos Library and iCloud's Photos Library exactly the same. That is its whole purpose! It does its best to avoid duplicates, so it's a great way to merge two Libraries.

When I want to see pictures from my wife's family on my iPad, I copy them from that Library to my Favorites Library. Pictures I take with my iPhone go to the Favorites Library and iCloud, and then on my Mac I copy them to my iPictures Library, and delete the dumb ones from Favorites.