Did you also know that if you have a list of files in a folder you can press space for a preview & then scroll down using the arrow keys as a really lite photo viewer?
Abobe Bridge is free too…
https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/bridge.html
…and is a powerful file management tool.
Bridge is an excellent tool! I don't know why Adobe don't push it more. I use it as a navigation tool for everything. I use two screens and my second screen just has Bridge running constantly, and I browse, open and import everything via it. I'd be lost without it, but loads of people (some even using other Adobe software all day) don't even know it exists
I didn’t know you could just copy files, hence the monumental ballache. So I’m slowly learning that the photos app is just that, an app. Not the default way the mac deals with any image file as I first believed.
Yeah I really don't think bundled apps on both platforms do users any favours. Like iTunes - my Dad 'imported' tons of music from CDs, but then the iPod broke and he wanted to get at the MP3 files to use elsewhere - but he had no idea where they actually went. Labelling things 'my documents' or 'my music' etc doesn't really explain what's going on. I only know because I've been messing about with it all from the beginning so I know how it works under the covers.
Both platforms are now at the point where they work well but only when you use them the way they expect you to use them nice and simply - if you want to do something else you're in a bit of trouble.
maybe you need to go back to basics and get (and read!!) a complete beginners’ Mac/OSX guide?
A guide to computers generally would be a start and then it should branch out into what Windows and Mac actually do based on the basic principles.
Bridge might be good for me. I really need to somehow tame my image folders. There's so many duplicates or files from different sources, RAW from the camera etc. A mate recommended Lightroom but I haven't got round to investigating that yet. He's a professional photographer though so has to deal with hundreds of RAW's after a shoot. I'm not a photographer, I just like taking photos.
Another potential spot of upcoming ballache is whatever I choose to replace all the Adobe software that used to run on my Windows machine. I thought that with a new Mac I'd splash out and buy PS, IllustratoR, Premiere etc. But no, it's all subscription now. Which isn't happening. So far I've settled on Davinci Resolv for video work. Some of you chaps did recommend alternatives for the other apps ages ago, so thanks for that.
Adobe is fine is you are using it professionally - if you can't cover the £50ish a month it costs you are in the wrong game!
For personal use it's not such good value.
Affinity software suite is the go to paid alternative now.
Does the Mac not support some sort of file sharing that Windows will understand, like a SAMBA share or something? That's got to be better than cocking about with too-small pendrives.
If you have both machines on the same network then you can use scp to move all the files over (I use it frequently between windows and Mac machines)
That's a good shout actually, I hadn't thought of that. WinSCP takes the pain out of it at the Windows end, presumably you'll need to enable something like sshd on the Mac?
Mac is unix, so it already has sshd on it, you can enable it via the GUI too.
The USB thumb I have is quite large (120GB)* so I've managed to do it all quite easily. The penny dropped when somebody said to just move the files over rather than importing them with the Photos app. I just didn't get where they were put, so I was scared they hadn't been imported at all. So panic over, we're getting there... been using Windows since I was a nipper. Just jumping to Mac is quite the learning curve 😉
*bought a few years back so probably considered tiny now.
A mate of mine bought a pendrive this week. It's 1TB and cost him £15. 👀
Wow 😀
Some strange file handling behaviour I've noticed on the Mac when dealing with lots of files. There doesn't seem to be a 'cut' option. As in cut and paste. I mean you can select all your files try command and x but it just copies them. 'Cut' is there in the edit list but it's greyed out. This leads me on to the other irritation; 'select all' doesn't appear to actually select all. But just rather those you can see in the window 🤔
Well I'd love to help but I can't. MacOS has its good points but the ****ing Finder is not one of them. A horrendous piece of software that can't have changed in decades and makes no sense from a UX point of view, and I say that as a software engineer capable of critically understanding UX, not just a Windows user. I mean, you can do some things from the context menu, but not everything. Want a new folder? There's a menu option waaaaay over there in the top right of your large monitor miles from where you were working and focusing, but where does the folder go? It goes in the folder you had 'open' but you're exploring a directory tree and have clicked on one of the other places but is your new folder going there? Who can say?
If I want to move files I open a second finder window and drag them over.
Want a new folder? There’s a menu option waaaaay over there in the top right of your large monitor miles from where you were working and focusing,
Or simply hit Command Shift N, of just option click on the bit that then says ‘new folder’. Either works perfectly well without resorting to the nonsense you’ve just described
Mind-bogglingly difficult and complicated stuff, I know
Sorry Mols but maybe learn the absolute basics before slating it, eh?
Mind-bogglingly difficult and complicated stuff, I know
It's not difficult, but things are only obvious once you know them. If memorising keyboard shortcuts is considered "the basics" then the GUI has failed.
(Speaking as someone who is a keyboard shortcut junkie and considers the mouse to be a selection tool.)
Well I’ve given up today. Got everything off the Win machine and onto the Mac so progress. Thought I’d try to import the images again into the Photos app and after much whirring and promising little spinning disks I got the comedy message:
‘12955 files could not be imported due to; ‘unknown reason’.
🙃
Bollocks to it. Computers can get in the sea. I’m gonna edit video on a stapler.
I said earlier in this thread that putting me on a windows PC would be a nightmare as I wouldn’t know where to start after 30+ years of exclusivity using Macs.
That doesn’t mean Windows PCs are shite, it just means I don’t know how to use them
What you have to remember is that us graphic designers and creative types LOVE macs and we’re the most technologically disinterested people in the world. When IT people start talking about operating systems it literally sounds like this to me…
Make of that what you will
There doesn’t seem to be a ‘cut’ option. As in cut and paste. I mean you can select all your files try command and x but it just copies them. ‘
Surely you just click the Delete icon? Or did I not understand what you’re trying to do?
Sorry Mols but maybe learn the absolute basics before slating it, eh?
It's quite an interesting exercise to write up the exact sequence of things you do as though you were writing a manual for a total novice. Stuff that you think is simple and intuitive often requires a long sequence of steps that are not intuitive to a novice. Something that takes you a few seconds to do when you're familiar with it can often take a page of instructions to walk a novice through each step. Keyboard shortcuts are not intuitive and are not a basic skill for an OS with a GUI.
‘12955 files could not be imported due to; ‘unknown reason’.
That's just computers!
I get the same when sending files from my Mac to the software on my PC that drives my large format printer - it just doesn't like certain file names.
...and don't try dropping 12955 files at a time - not many pieces of software like that! 🙂
Sorry Mols but maybe learn the absolute basics before slating it, eh?
You should be able to figure it out without having to be told by someone else. I create many folders a day, I know how to do it, what I'm complaining about is that it's not intuitive. There's a context menu when I right click that contains functions that I can do related to the thing I've right-clicked on - great, this is a good feature. The problem is that on MacOS, at least one (or perhaps two according to Jambourgie) of the obvious features you would want are not in that menu, they are somewhere else or accessed via different means. This is not good UI design.
Keyboard shortcuts are not intuitive and are not a basic skill for an OS with a GUI.
Exactly, especially not on an OS whose supposed USP is being easy to use and intuitive. Kind of silly when fans of a computer who always go on about how intuitive it is tell someone with 40 years of IT experience they need to read the manual to be able to use it effectively 🙂
Surely you just click the Delete icon? Or did I not understand what you’re trying to do?
"Cut" isn't the same as delete. "Cut" removes the thing from its original location and remembers it - like cutting a picture from a piece of paper. "Copy" remembers that thing but leaves the original in place.
Cutting and pasting a file is essentially like moving it. In fact, the file won't move until you actually do the paste.
The cut, paste, delete - keyboard shortcut way of file management seems to be a Windows thing - IME most Mac users just drag and drop files.
Cutting and pasting a file is essentially like moving it. In fact, the file won’t move until you actually do the paste.
So move it, which IIRC is option-paste.
The cut, paste, delete – keyboard shortcut way of file management seems to be a Windows thing – IME most Mac users just drag and drop files.
This is a useful utility for making moving files around easier on Mac
https://dropoverapp.com/
So move it, which IIRC is option-paste.
Oh, that's totally transparent.
If I click on a file in Finder, I can then go all the way to the top of the screen and click the edit menu which has cut, copy and paste in it; but cut (command-x) is greyed out. Why? But I can click copy, and then do option-cmd-v as DrJ says and I get the cut/paste operation. What the hell?
The cut, paste, delete – keyboard shortcut way of file management seems to be a Windows thing – IME most Mac users just drag and drop files.
In Windows, drag and drop works differently if you're dragging to another directory on the same disk or to a directory on a different disk. Cut/copy and paste makes sure you get exactly what you want.
the default way the mac deals with any image file
is often to open it in ‘preview’.
Photos (formerly iPhoto) is a photo/image management app. Similar in so many ways to the one on your iPhone.
If you want photos to manage your images then dragging them onto the photos library in the app will copy them to the photos library folders if you use the default Photos options.
As has been said OP, if instead you want to copy images to a specific folder then you can just do that. No need to use photos.
Did you watch the MacOS introduction screens and those for each of the apps? Sounds basic, but they’re surprisingly useful.
Importing pictures from iPhone. Duplicates can occur in Photos if you have images as HEIC and JPEG if I remember correctly.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/photos/pht5a3157c1d/mac
Did you watch the MacOS introduction screens and those for each of the apps? Sounds basic, but they’re surprisingly useful.
No of course not. Who reads the manual? That would be far too sensible 😁
So now I have all my images on the Mac. I've also managed to import them all into Photos by doing a hundred at a time rather than 12000.
One of the reasons I want everything in the Photos app is that I want to trim this collection down and want to take advantage of the Duplicates feature especially as most photos have two -ten variations!
Can't see the duplicates feature though. Google tells me it will just appear one day when it's had time to scan your collection.
What a way to spend a week off.
The duplicates feature is shite! Only really works if the filename is the same. 🙂
We only used to bother with that sort of clearing out when installing extra storage used to cost more than the computer itself! 🤣
Greeeeaaat.
Oh, that’s totally transparent
Whereas cutting something but it not being cut, yes, suddenly everything makes sense 🙂
HTH! 🤣👍
It may have got better - I'm a couple of OS updates behind.
Indexing and scanning files does take ages though - it's not an instant thing.
Whereas cutting something but it not being cut, yes, suddenly everything makes sense
As soon as I heard about those three odd sounding words I realised it was an analogy to the old fashioned world of actually cutting pieces out of paper and sticking them somewhere else with paste. The same analogies that were coined right at the start of graphical computing (you know, that thing that Apple fans praise Apple for "inventing" or "perfecting") e.g desktop, documents, folders and so on. Seems entirely reasonable to me.
Also, cut, copy and paste are ubiquitous and not a Windows thing. But they also ubiquitous in MacOS, just not for the specific case described above. I mean cut exists, it's right there in the menu, you just can't select it? But you can still do it with a keyboard shortcut, which is NOT the one next to the greyed out menu item??
I'm not bashing MacOS in general - it has good and bad points just like Windows does - I'm just criticising Apple fanbois 🙂
I seem to have about ten of every photo. I'm guessing this happened when I was chucking the contents of my phone onto my old Windows machine and it would just add a number to the new (same) file. Others probably different file sizes resolutions. So if the duplicates feature is not going to help me here, I'm not sure how to sort this out. I can't go through 12000 images right clicking on each one to 'get info' about which has the best resolution etc. Is there not a way to show the info with the thumbnail? Or at least like Windows with hovering.
What are the criteria you want to use to choose which one to keep? And do they all have the same filename but with different suffixes?
Is there not a way to show the info with the thumbnail?
Adobe Bridge gives you all the info you need...
[img] 
[/img]
...unfortunately there's no quick fix for your problem. But that's not the operating systems fault.
Split into batches and do manually - it could take you months though.
But that’s not the operating systems fault.
Indeed. Years of just doing things wrong. I think I'm ok going forward though. Plugging in the iPhone into the Mac allows you to import 'new items' rather than everything again...
Just need to sort out the mess from the last twenty odd years. Will try Bridge, hope the Duplicates feature can sort it, but if not, life's too short.
I also had a catastrophic HDD failure about five years ago. I used some hardcore recovery tool that got back a lot of stuff, but like also every tiny little OS tile/graphic etc...
I’m just criticising Apple fanbois 🙂
Fine. Let us know how you get on when you find one.
Is there not a way to show the info with the thumbnail?
in Photos you can bring up the info window (command + i or click the (i) button on the toolbar. It gives you all the info on the photo. it updates as you move through them. Most easily used in full screen view imo. There’s a filmstrip at the bottom of that view too.
in Finder you can just use the List view and add the info columns you need.
the Duplicates View has this description when you open it
Duplicates are classified both as exact copies that may have different metadata, as well as photos that appear to be the same, but may have unique resolutions, file formats or other slight differences.
that’s from version 8.0
if you have not imported the files to Photos yet then there are some other ways to ID duplicates.
In Windows, drag and drop works differently if you’re dragging to another directory on the same disk or to a directory on a different disk. Cut/copy and paste makes sure you get exactly what you want.
In Windows the default behaviour works differently. Drag & Drop within the same disk (or actually the same logical drive, so eg "C:" rather than "Disk 0") will default to Move, to a different drive will default to Copy. If you hold the Ctrl key it'll override this and force a Copy operation, and if you hold Shift it'll force Move (literally shifting it somewhere else😁).
Alternatively, if you D&D using the right mouse button you'll get a context menu when you Drop asking what you want to do (including a Cancel option).