Sorting photos without importing them and taking up storage

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Level 1

8 points

Sorting photos without importing them and taking up storage

Hi

I recently bought a Fujifilm x100vi and I am just learning how to use it. The other day I went to a concert and took a lot of photos. Now I would like to sort out the photos and delete the ones that are blurry. I have a card reader that I plugged into my Macbook, but I have a lot of difficulties importing all the photos.

The photo program on my Macbook opens up when I plug in the SD card and then I can choose the photos I would like to import. First I tried selecting all the photos, but that did not work. Then I tried selecting 100 at a time, which worked first, but then it stopped working. My Macbook now says that it is full, and I don't know what to do. I don't want to take up storage on my Macbook and I do have iCloud sat to save my photos (but it still seems like it is taking up a lot of storage). How I am doing it right now seems completely like a waste of time and I do not believe that there is not a better, faster and smarter way. How can I look through my photos and sort them without importing them and take up a lot of space on my macbook? There must be a better way. Please help me!

All the best,

Evi Brygmann

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 15.3

Posted on Apr 13, 2025 5:04 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,912 points

Apr 13, 2025 7:07 AM in response to evi160

The way the is designed to work - and this is true of apps like Photos as well as industry leaders like Adobe's Lightroom Classic - Is that you import all the images into the app, then, when you can view them at fill size, you delete the unwanted ones from the app. It's faster and more simple than all the other ways.

However, if you have no space on your MacBook HD then you have a major problem and you must solve it immediately. If you run an overfull computer you risk file corruption and dataloss, as well as many other issues with the OS and your apps.

First priority: make space on the HD. Get an external disk, formatted Mac OS X Extended, Journaled or apfs and move any space hogs to that disk: Photos, Movies, Music. Only then can you begin to devise a workflow that makes sense adn works for you.

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Answer 2

Apr 13, 2025 7:26 AM in response to evi160

I just want to chime in and emphasize what Yer_Man said-- many problems people complain about here can be traced back to lack of storage space. I carry a small SSD with my laptop, weighs less than 2 oz, for all the junk that used to sit on my internal drive that I was sure that I might need someday. I still carry that stuff around, and it's just a quick plug-in when I need it.

Apple recommends at least 10% of your internal drive be kept free. I've seen problems with less than 150 GB free.

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Sorting photos without importing them and taking up storage

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