Deleting unused photos from Apple Photos (Mac)

TidBITS Talk
#1

Hi all,

I’ve started working on a much-needed cleanup of Mac Photos libraries. Deleting duplicates, similars, etc. In a few camp/event-specific libraries, I have Albums and Slideshow projects set up. And I want to keep those as-is. I don’t want to delete any of those photos.

The problem is I am unable to find a way to show me “photos which are unused.” I know I can create a Smart Album of photos not in any Album, but it seems like there is no way to do something similar for Slideshow projects. And I am not able to find anything in the interface which will help me identify, given any specific photo, what albums or slideshows it is a part of.

I welcome any help in my endeavor.
-Alan

#2

One thing that you could do is to select all photos in a slideshow (Cmd-A with the slideshow open), then type Cmd-I (or the menu option Window / Info), which will bring up the info window for all selected photos; it should show the count of photos at the top of the window. Then add a keyword (“slideshow”?) to each of them in the info window. Once you’ve done that for all of your slideshows, you can then create a smart album for all photos that include the keyword “slideshow” and then you’ll have an album with those photos in them.

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#3

Check out the Powerphotos app. It has many tools for managing a Photos library:


I use it to archive old photos to a separate library to keep the active library a reasonable size. I wish that the Photos app had this feature built in.
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#4

I do use PowerPhotos. Unfortunately, it cannot copy Projects (slideshows).

#5

Doug, Thank you! This suggestion to tag the photos in the slideshows has worked out great! I was able to use it on the first library to remove almost 700 pictures, about ½ of the library size.

Using this on the remaining libraries will allow me to clean them up prior to using PowerPhotos to merge the libraries together.

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