Photos revised... Everywhere

The Photos App on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro, only keeps one copy of a photo.

If you place a photo in different albums, then its just placing a pointer to the base photo and not a copy of the photo, as such any changes you make to a photo, are of course seen in every other album the photo is placed in, since its just referencing the base photo that has the changes applied to it.

The only way to avoid this, is to duplicate the photo, so changes apply to one copy, but not the other copy that may be referenced from another album.

click here ➜ https://support.apple.com/en-al/guide/iphone/iphb08064d57/ios

If you are using iCloud Photos, then those changes are additional synced to iCloud and visible on other devices using iCloud Photos that are logged in to the same Apple Account for iCloud.

If you are referring to something else, then please clarify.

To add to what Phil0124 said the photo in the album is not a copy of the photo in your Photo Library, it is simply a link to that photo. Any changes made to the photo in the album, changes that photo in the Photo Library.

To achieve what you want you will actually have to duplicate the photo in the Photo Library. You do that by press and holding on the photo in the Library and choosing Duplicate. Add the Duplicate photo in the Photo Library to an Album of your choice for any Post Processing you want to do on that photo and changes made in that Album will be reflected on the Duplicate photo in your Library.

The reason why Albums don't duplicate your photos is because the storage required would be increased substantially just by creating albums that are used to provide a window into your Photo Library. You can have several albums that represent that same photo, for example a person, vacation, by location, by time, etc, and if each was a copy that would require 4 times the amount of storage in just those examples. for that single photo.

I suspect there would be a huge uproar if Albums ending up consuming the storage space on the device, and also iCloud storage space where users would be accusing Apple of intentionally forcing users to higher capacity phones and/or paying for more iCloud storage space simply because they want to have Albums to organize their Photo Library to view the photos they want for a specific event or subject.

Richard.Taylor wrote:…It seems perfectly reasonable to me, actually.

Oops-- didn't finish. I think that the ability to have multiple edits or crops of the same picture is a common enough need, and it would be a worthwhile addition to Photos. You should let Apple know what you think:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

ikol_22 wrote:

First of all, thank you Phil for your reply. However, I am sorry, I don't exactly understand the "Apple idea" to manage photos.

Nowadays in Photo are available really wonderful tools to post-produce photos *but* if I create three different Albums for three different purpose (i.e.: Apple TV, Instagram, Printer) and I need three different post-productions for same photos in each of them, I need to duplicate three times same photos (once per Album) with, if not enough, the huge trouble to recognize them (because, of course, they don't have anything that let understand which one is the duplicate...).

If I have well understood and if this is the only way to mange them... Let me say that this is insane.

Not sure how needing 3 copies of a photo that need to have vastly different edits applied to them is insane.

you just said you wanted different copies of a photo with different edits applied to each stored in different albums?

Why is having copies now an issue?

Are you honestly expecting to have just a single photo with 3 different edits applied to it? How would you even change between the edits then?

Also, when you duplicate a photo in the library you can add identifiers to it in it's meta data so you know which one it is, like a title and if you are adding them to different albums, then you know which is which based on the album they are in.

See this:

Basic Concepts and Terms About Photos

It talks a bit about how Photos really works.

First of all, thank you Phil for your reply. However, I am sorry, I don't exactly understand the "Apple idea" to manage photos.

Nowadays in Photo are available really wonderful tools to post-produce photos *but* if I create three different Albums for three different purpose (i.e.: Apple TV, Instagram, Printer) and I need three different post-productions for same photos in each of them, I need to duplicate three times same photos (once per Album) with, if not enough, the huge trouble to recognize them (because, of course, they don't have anything that let understand which one is the duplicate...).

If I have well understood and if this is the only way to mange them... Let me say that this is insane.

Thank you so much Richard about the link. I have carefully read both articles you wrote but unfortunately I didn't find the answer to my questions and doubts and troubles. I don't repeat them here, please, give a look to my reply to Phil.

ikol_22 wrote: the huge trouble to recognize them (because, of course, they don't have anything that let understand which one is the duplicate...).

Of course, if we could tell which is which, it wouldn't be a true duplicate. However, there are differences. For instance, a duplicate made in the Library view isn't born into an Album, so I can go to File>Show in Album, and I can see which is the newly made one.

Photos works with APFS to reduce the amount of duplication, so a duplicate doesn't necessarily take up much more space.

I also have made duplicates with alternate cropping for photo books, web pages, and so on. After a time I usually store those in alternate Libraries or in Finder folders, keeping the original edits and cropping in the System Library. It just doesn't seem like much of a hardship.

If I have well understood and if this is the only way to mange them... Let me say that this is insane.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me, actually.