Hellobee Boards

Apple more or less makes you use the Photos app "library" function, which doesn't do a typical windows file structure. You can't really go "looking" for your photo files in the finder, you'll only see the library.
You could use something like Picasa to manage your photos, or photoshop elements (but I think adobe is stopping support for it).
I use Aperture on my mac, but Apple no longer supports it.

The gold standard would be Lightroom. Probably a bit of a learning curve BUT you will be able to structure your files how you were before. Its $$ though

the Photos app sucks. I wish apple would get its crap together and realize that a LOT of people want a smart, sensible solution to manage and edit their photos, not some watered down kids version.

This is why I still save all our photos onto a PC even though I use my Macbook for everything else. Following for any other ideas ...

@Banana330: that sounds like what I want to do - but doesn't your Mac automatically transfer them to Photos? Do you manually put them in folders when you upload to your computer?

We recently started uploading them all across to Google Photos which is pretty cool and gives you a free terabyte of storage. Some of them haven't come across yet and it takes a while if you have 1000s of photos, but I think it is a good backup solution. Just make sure you import them by file name (not Event) otherwise it will bring them over into folders sorted by date (think many, many folders with like a handful of pictures in each)...

I have a Mac. I hate iPhoto ... I just use standard photos ... I divide them into years and months (we take a lot of photos).

I always cull images as soon as I transfer them, so the only photos stored on my computer are *keepers*.

I use Lightroom to manage photos (and do some editing). I am planning to upgrade to LR6 for the facial recognition features. I gave it a try on the weekend and think its a worthwhile upgrade from LR5 which is what I currently use.

ETA: LR manages the folder structure, but it creates a year folder, then daily folders. I'm not sure if this is configurable or not, but this works for me.

@Nutella: I use image capture on the Mac. I close photos and upload the via image capture to folders.

I have a Mac and I use light room. It is so worth it to me to have the photos organized, and I really like that I can edit the photo and it will still save the original and all the edits. So I can make it black and white and easily go back without saving a million copies. I hate iPhoto. One thing that drove me crazy with iPhoto was that once you import your photos, it saves two copies. I think one is small and makes it faster to flip through the catalog but to me it was just a huge waste of space on my computer. LR is awesome but there is a learning curve. And I believe you can tell the program when you first start using it how you want them organized- I have mine by year and then by date within the year (365 potential folders within the 2015 folder) but in retrospect I wish I had it by year, then month, then date. I don't know how to change it now and it isn't a big deal. Anyway you can use LR to upload to many photo sites or services along with social media and you can also create books that you can print through blurb right in the program.