What’s your number? Your PHOTOS number.

When people reach out for help with their pictures, the conversation always starts with their number.

“I have 40,000 photos and they’re out of control!!! I need your help!”

Last week there was a 20k and a 75k inquiry. Now and then a 100k+ “emergency,” but not so much.

Yet.

So the numbers change but the desperation is the same.

Then I had one for a 2500 piece photo library, and it got me thinking.

Everybody has a number.

On one level, I think people freak out because forty thousand individual items seems inherently unmanageable. But that was also the case with the 2500 guy.

So what’s up?

Mostly, we are trying to apply real-world experience to a digital space. We don’t want to be the person with ceiling high stacks of saved newspapers filling their basement. In our mind’s eye, tens of thousands of photos fills that same basement with shoe boxes, albums and slide carousels even though they’ve been converted to digital code. So, internally, numbers matter. And big numbers - whatever we consider that to be - seem to matter a lot.

Then, the natural extension of an analog mindset is that we bring along analog filing systems too. Folders, sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders bring a natural sense of order.

Until we get hundreds of folders and they become overwhelming on their own.

But here’s the thing.

Digital photo management is totally different than physical photo organizing in 3 ways that change the number you should care about.

First, space is essentially infinite.

Yes, you can fill up a hard drive, but you can easily replace it with a bigger one as your collection grows. You don’t have to hire 3 guys from the school rugby team and a large van to clear out your basement and move things to a storage unit. So it’s not about the total number that matters, but the clutter it implies. It’s really about what’s there that doesn’t need to be.

Second, the essence of photography is changing from the image to the story. Sequences. Memories. Rich media.

In 2015 I have kept 1136 photos that represent 168 Moments (stories) that year. They range from a single image on one day to as many as 70 for a trip. Photos have always been bookmarks for our memories, but now we get a whole movie trailer instead of just the poster. So more photos can create clutter, but it doesn’t have to. They can offer background, depth, and rich variety to a moment. So focussing on the number of photos alone doesn’t offer any context other than how many times you tripped the shutter button. Noting the Moments you captured, on the other hand, tells something about your life.

Finally, the notion that more photos makes finding one that much harder is no longer true. Once we get out of the filing cabinet mind set, we can apply the same search strategies we use online every day to find the pictures we want. Apple Photos and other apps have become excellent search engines. Not only can they do complex searches on names, dates, and text, but they recognize thousands of objects. So if you are trying to find a photo shot on the beach in Malibu, it stands to reason that it’s statistically easier to zero in on it if that Moment contains several photos instead of just one.

So what’s YOUR photo number?

PHOTOS PER YEAR - Enter a year in the Search field to see how many images you took in that year. Because your Photos Library is growing every year based on how many images you take, this is a handy way to anticipate when to upgrade or curate your collection if you are short on space. It’s also a reminder that there is never a “right” number of photos because your library is a living document that mirrors your life.

MOMENTS PER YEAR - When you enter a year in Search, the Moments identified for that year are in the second group, right below the photo count. Moments are a group of photos related by time and/or location. Click the “See All” button and you can count all the Moments that Apple Photos has identified for that year. Note that some Moments overlap or may be one day of a different multi-day Moment. Don’t sweat the details, it just gives you a rough measurement of your photo taking style. I know that I take between 250 and 300 Moments yearly on average with about 8 images per Moment.

There’s no right or wrong answer here either, but the numbers can inform you of how you shoot and where you might make changes. If you have only 50 or so Moments a year but they average dozens of images, then you are probably taking most of your pictures at events like weddings or birthdays. If you aren’t sharing all those photos, you might want to edit down a bit. On the other hand, if you have a Moment of 1 image almost every day, then there are probably opportunities to add some support images here and there to create a richer collection.

MEDIA TYPES - If you are in an organizing or curation mood, breaking down your photos into media type can make the process seem smaller. The Media Types Album on the Mac Photos sidebar and the Albums tab in iOS show the count of each type and makes it easy to do some micro organizing.

DUPLICATES - One task that no one debates is the value of deleting duplicates. Photo Managers often see 50% - 60% duplicates on older photo collections that just take up space and complicate editing. Until now, there’s not been an easy way to assign a number to the duplicates in your Photos Library, but in the upcoming releases of iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, Apple has added a Duplicate album that will give us metrics on that task too, so stay tuned.

The takeaway is that there is no right or wrong number for the images in your Photos LIbrary. If you are overwhelmed by the state of your collection, it’s not the overall number that’s causing the frustration but is more likely the result. Adjusting your point of view about photo management and understanding what all the numbers mean will deliver a happier outcome.