torbeni

I am 64 years old. So I can remember when MSDos version 2.11 was introduced in the mid 1980's. Suddenly you could create folders on your floppy disk. - Ever since then PC users have become used to believe that storing data in folders was the right thing to do. And it was, then, because it was the only available sorting option.

But sorting does only work if your data (document, photo, music number) only needs to be found in one folder. When your data has to be in more than one place at once you have two options: 1) Make a copy; but then you have two data sets or more and have to maintain order in a very difficult way. 2) Use keywords or "tags" to attach to your document. Then you search for the keyword or "tag" when you need to find the document or photo. - Then you only have one document/photo but you can find it in a lot of different ways.

You probably know about playlists for your music. Imagine that a folder or a smart folder in Photos is a playlist. You only store the music number once, but you can put a reference to the number in as many playlists as you want. It is the same system with Photos and folders.

I have about 80 "keywords" in my Mac Photos app. I also have a smart album for each of the keywords. Also for keywords i have not used yet. But when I start using a keyword I already know where to find the photo. In the smart album for that keyword.

I also have ONE smart album containing ALL my keywords. This particular album negates the search for keyword " keyword is not xxx". I use the "all" criteria for the searches within the smart album. - This way I can find all the photos which do not (yet) have an attached keyword.

This works very nicely on my Mac. - But there is a problem on my iPad which is sync'ed through iCloud: The "smart folder" type of folder is not sync'ed to iPad or iPhone IOS 9. Only the "not smart folder" type is sync'ed. So I have to make a little collection of photos of my dogs and children in a "not smart folder". This then gets sync'ed to my iPad and iPhone.