Organize Photos Automatically with Smart Albums

In this video, we are going to look at how we create smart albums in the Photos app on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

So I’m in my Photos app, and if you’re following along, you know what albums are. Basically, albums are where we place our photos and videos. In that album, we have to do this ourselves. It’s manual. I either select all of my photos and videos and create an album from what I have selected, or I can create an album. And then I place the photos and videos into that album myself.

Well, with the smart album, these photos and videos are placed in there automatically based on specific criteria. As an example, I have a smart album here called iPhone. All of these photos in this album were taken with an iPhone. If I were to take another photo with my iPhone, being that I’m using iCloud photo library, it would sync up with my Mac here and then it would automatically go into this album. Because this album is showing me every photo that was taken with an iPhone. It’s going to add and remove photos from there automatically based on the criteria. In this case, if it was taken with an iPhone.

So, how do we create these smart albums? Well, let’s go ahead and delete this and we’re going to recreate it. So I control click on it, and then we delete the smart album. So I want to recreate that.

When I delete this, it doesn’t actually delete any of the photos. There’s still going to be all in my library. All it did was delete the album.

So I want to recreate that. I go under File in the menu bar. And then we go over to New Smart Album. We have a window that opens up, and the first thing we need to do is we need to name it. So I’m just going to call this iPhone.

Now, what I need to do is I need to set the criteria. By default, it’s going to set it for Is Favorite. So if I were to click on okay, this will basically create a Favorites album. That’s not what I want to do. I want to find all of my photos that were taken with an iPhone. If I go over to the left, I can change my criteria. We’re going to go to camera model. And then I go over to the right here and I type an iPhone. So now what it’s going to do is it’s going to include all of my photos, all of my videos that were taken with an iPhone. I have 115 items that match that criteria. So now I click on, okay, we have my smart album here. And again, all of these photos here were taken with an iPhone. I take another photo with my iPhone. It’s going to be automatically added to this album.

Let’s take a look at how we can edit that criteria. We can actually add more criteria. I go over to my smart album here. I control-click on it, and then you’re going to see at Edit Smart Album. From here I can go and rename it and I can change the criteria.

So now what I want to do is I want to find all of the photos that were taken with an iPhone and that the flash went off. So how do I do that? Well, all I have to do is just go over to the plus here and I add more criteria to it. So I add another rule to it. We’re going to go to Flash and Did Fire. I have one photo that matches this result. It was taken with an iPhone and the flash went off. I don’t use the flash that often. So now I click on OK, and there’s my one photo.

Let’s flip that around. We’re going to find all the photos that were not taken with the flash. So now I go back over to my smart album. I control click on it. We go to Edit Smart Album. It opens up and now I just select Did Not Fire. And there are my hundred items.

Now, when we use multiple criteria, you do have to be a little careful. You’re going to see up at the top here we have Match All of the Following Conditions. What has to happen right now is my criteria has to match both of these conditions. So these photos have to be taken with an iPhone and the flash has to not fire. So this is what we call an And. The camera model has to be an iPhone and the flash did not fire.

Well we can go and change that to an Or. When I click on this and go Any, it’s basically an Or statement. Now what it’s going to do is it’s going to include any photos that were taken with an iPhone or the flash did not fire. Remember how I had about a hundred photos there. If we look here, you’re going to see we have 313. That’s because it’s including photos that were not taken with an iPhone. Remember this is an Or statement now. So it’s going to include all of my photos that were taken with an iPhone, or it’s going to include all of my photos where there was not a flash. When I go back to All, now we’re back down to our hundred items because it’s including any photo that was taken with an iPhone and the flash did not fire. So this is a key ingredient. When you have multiple rules in your criteria, do you want to match all of the rules or just any of the rules?

So that’s how we create smart albums in the Photos app on the Mac. Basically with smart albums, the Photos app will add the photos to that album automatically. This is based off of a set of rules. We can have multiple rules. When you do use multiple rules, you want to make sure that you set up your criteria right. Do you want to include all of those rules? Or any of those rules to create a smart album? You just go up under File and create a New Smart Album. From there, you name it and then add your rules.

So that’s how we create smart albums in the Photos app on the Mac.