Duplicate photos in "Photos".

When one imports pictures into Photos they appear in a "main" area along with all the others. I want to sort them into categories, e.g. Butterflies, Insects etc. So far I have created albums with these names and I want to MOVE the pictures into them, not SHARE them which seems to be the only option. If I share them and then delete the original, the shared one also goes! So now I am talking up even more space by having at least two of every photo.
Can one MOVE photos into a dedicated album or only SHARE them?
I've checked the HELP option but nothing about moving photos there.
Frustrating!

OK, I just tried to duplicate what you did. Here's what I did.... I created a new untitled album and gave it a name. I then moved 5 photos into that album. Now when I click on the new album the photos are there. But just like you said, they also show up in the all photos category. What I can't determine is if the photos I placed there were actually duplicated or instead a pointer to the originals was created.

I also did this: I then placed a picture that I was going to delete anyway in the new album and went back to the all photos and deleted it from there. It was also deleted from the new album and "one" photo was placed in the Photos Trash. That leads me to believe that pointers are created when you move photos to an album that was created rather than the original being duplicated.

What do you think?

I think what happens in Photos is that there is one original and edits and album copies are actually non-destructive instructions that use that original. But not being sure about this I sometimes use File Duplicate. What I think happens then is that Photos creates a new original. But I could be wrong.

If it works like iPhoto then the actual image is held once only. All other instances (and you can have the same image in many albums) are virtual, having pointers to the original. No duplicates are created unless you specifically create a duplicate.

That's not actually how iPhoto has (ever) worked, so I'm pretty sure that's not how Photos works either. In iPhoto, there are two copies of any image -- an untouched "master," and the altered/edited version. A quick look in the Photos Library package suggests that little has changed from iPhoto in this regard.

chas_m said:

That's not actually how iPhoto has (ever) worked, so I'm pretty sure that's not how Photos works either. In iPhoto, there are two copies of any image -- an untouched "master," and the altered/edited version. A quick look in the Photos Library package suggests that little has changed from iPhoto in this regard.

Click to expand...

I was referring to unedited images, in which case one one copy exists.

Demapples said:

I think what happens in Photos is that there is one original and edits and album copies are actually non-destructive instructions that use that original. But not being sure about this I sometimes use File Duplicate. What I think happens then is that Photos creates a new original. But I could be wrong.

Click to expand...

Correct..

When you duplicate a file, what you actually get is a virtual copy. Photos creates a virtual file in the library that only holds meta data and file edits. It still requires the original photo, however the benefit is that it doesn't take up the amount of file space a new image would.

Exodist said:

Correct..

When you duplicate a file, what you actually get is a virtual copy. Photos creates a virtual file in the library that only holds meta data and file edits. It still requires the original photo, however the benefit is that it doesn't take up the amount of file space a new image would.

Click to expand...

Some confusion here surely. When you purposely create a duplicate iPhotos creates a second file. You can delete the original with no ill effects the duplicate is still there. Would this be the case if the duplicate was a virtual file (like those 'copies' in albums)?