User profile for user: lfiano92
lfiano92 Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Merge two photo libraries

Hello, my wife and I have an old Mac in which we have around 40GB of pictures in around 30 albums that we would like to transfer to our new Mac that has around another 20GB of more recent pictures. The old Mac is in her Apple ID the new mac is on mine.


My question is, how can I transfer and merge the old Mac library to the new one? I see there’s a 40GB library file but I can’t transfer it through AirDrop I guess due to file siZe, but even if I do can my merge the two libraries once I got that file on my new computer?


finally any recommendation to transfer it? The old Mac is a 2012 MBP non-retina and the new one is a 2020 MBP.


Were looking to donate that computer to someone who needs it, but also we’re scared that we lose that 40GB of memories if the computer all of the sudden dies!

MacBook Pro 13″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Sep 12, 2020 8:02 AM

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User profile for user: PhillipU
PhillipU
User level: Level 2
486 points

Posted on Sep 12, 2020 9:13 AM

You've got some options to consider.


  1. If you both use iCloud Photos, you can use a little trick to link the library on the newer Mac to the iCloud account used on the older Mac by signing in to your wife's account on your new Mac and then setting the library on the newer Mac as the "System Photo Library" for that older Mac's account such that it will restore the items from your' wife's iCloud account into the library of the newer Mac. This will result in a merged library and it may take several hours to complete. The merged library will be linked to your wife's iCloud account. This may be fine for you and you could stop there, but if you really want it under your iCloud account, you would then need to sign out of your wife's iCloud account on the new Mac and sign back into yours and set the now merged library as your System Photo Library which will again merge your iCloud account with the stuff that was brought in from your wife's. At this point, you will actually have two complete libraries stored in your respective iCloud accounts. Whichever one is not being kept should be cleared out so that you're not paying for more space than you need. This might not be a big deal if you've already got a shared iCloud storage plan that is large enough to hold both, but I thought I'd point it out.
  2. Another option would be to export the items from your older computer to your newer one. For this, you'd have a few sub-options:

a. You could use an external drive to shuttle the files from one computer to the other

b. You could set the older laptop into something called "Target Disk Mode" which would allow your new computer to see it as an external drive when connected using a Thunderbolt cable

c. You could share a folder on the new computer over your home network so that your old computer could export it's pictures to that shared folder


Once these files are exported and accessible on the new computer, you would then just import them into your library. Note that exporting files from a library has some limitations that might make it less desirable. You can either export the modified files with all of your adjustments but then you lose the unmodified originals or you can export the originals and lose any adjustments you made. If you are a photography enthusiast and you shoot in RAW, exporting only the modified images means sacrificing those RAW files. Personally, this would be unacceptable and I wouldn't use this option which leads me to…


3. The last option I can think of would be similar to option two but instead of exporting your images from the old library, it would involve using a third party utility to merge the libraries. Photos does not include such a capability but there are paid apps that do. This would preserve both your originals and your adjustments (if you use an app called PowerPhotos on Catalina) but would come at the cost of whatever app you purchase to perform the merging. This is going to be a fairly nominal cost. Another benefit of this option is you don't really need to copy the old library to the new computer as long as you connect your old laptop using either Target Disk Mode or share the folder that contains the old library over your network, a third party library utility like PowerPhotos can work directly over those connections.

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User profile for user: PhillipU
PhillipU
User level: Level 2
486 points

Sep 12, 2020 9:13 AM in response to lfiano92

You've got some options to consider.


  1. If you both use iCloud Photos, you can use a little trick to link the library on the newer Mac to the iCloud account used on the older Mac by signing in to your wife's account on your new Mac and then setting the library on the newer Mac as the "System Photo Library" for that older Mac's account such that it will restore the items from your' wife's iCloud account into the library of the newer Mac. This will result in a merged library and it may take several hours to complete. The merged library will be linked to your wife's iCloud account. This may be fine for you and you could stop there, but if you really want it under your iCloud account, you would then need to sign out of your wife's iCloud account on the new Mac and sign back into yours and set the now merged library as your System Photo Library which will again merge your iCloud account with the stuff that was brought in from your wife's. At this point, you will actually have two complete libraries stored in your respective iCloud accounts. Whichever one is not being kept should be cleared out so that you're not paying for more space than you need. This might not be a big deal if you've already got a shared iCloud storage plan that is large enough to hold both, but I thought I'd point it out.
  2. Another option would be to export the items from your older computer to your newer one. For this, you'd have a few sub-options:

a. You could use an external drive to shuttle the files from one computer to the other

b. You could set the older laptop into something called "Target Disk Mode" which would allow your new computer to see it as an external drive when connected using a Thunderbolt cable

c. You could share a folder on the new computer over your home network so that your old computer could export it's pictures to that shared folder


Once these files are exported and accessible on the new computer, you would then just import them into your library. Note that exporting files from a library has some limitations that might make it less desirable. You can either export the modified files with all of your adjustments but then you lose the unmodified originals or you can export the originals and lose any adjustments you made. If you are a photography enthusiast and you shoot in RAW, exporting only the modified images means sacrificing those RAW files. Personally, this would be unacceptable and I wouldn't use this option which leads me to…


3. The last option I can think of would be similar to option two but instead of exporting your images from the old library, it would involve using a third party utility to merge the libraries. Photos does not include such a capability but there are paid apps that do. This would preserve both your originals and your adjustments (if you use an app called PowerPhotos on Catalina) but would come at the cost of whatever app you purchase to perform the merging. This is going to be a fairly nominal cost. Another benefit of this option is you don't really need to copy the old library to the new computer as long as you connect your old laptop using either Target Disk Mode or share the folder that contains the old library over your network, a third party library utility like PowerPhotos can work directly over those connections.

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User profile for user: lfiano92
lfiano92 Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Sep 14, 2020 5:36 PM in response to lfiano92

Hi all, first of all thank you so much for your responses. To summarize, with all of your help I was able to do it today, but it was a bumpy road


First thing I did on Saturday was update the 2012 Mac to Catalina, it crashed but magically it installed, however then it wouldn’t log on, I thought I was going to wipe it and lose everything, but after restarting probably 50 times (not exaggerating) it booted!!


Second was open the old library on the new OS, this was crashing every time, so I literally had to delete all of my non-native Apps (this Computer hasn’t been used for the last 3-4 years so didn’t care) and I was able to reopen Photos after waiting ~1 hour for it to boot. Worth noting I didn’t want to restart because I was scared it wouldn’t boot the OS again.


When I had my new library file ready I tried was able to successfully (again, bumpy lol) transfer it through a shared folder between the two computers on my home network. AirDrop wasn’t working i guess it just don’t support 40 GB files even though theoretically it should. I wasn’t to scared about this because worst case I would buy a thunderbolt cable and link the two computers and ultimately transfer but didn’t want to spend the extra $


Once all file was successfully transferred to my 2020 i7, 16GB ram, SSD computer it was a walk in the Park lol. I did buy PowerPhotos and the merging was incredibly easy, also it deleted around 5K duplicate pictures of around 70K in total, and created a new 79GB file that works like a charm. I thought the new computer had 20GB but apparently it had more.


THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who took time and helped out. My old computer is already wiped and it works much more better after a fresh Catalina start ready to be given to the next owner!

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User profile for user: léonie
léonie
User level: Level 10
203,829 points

Sep 12, 2020 11:25 AM in response to lfiano92

For a lossless merge PowerPhotos requires macOS 10.15.1 Catalina or newer. On previous systems it is very limited and cannot keep the originals and the edited versions paired. Before using Power Photos to merge libraries, I strongly recommend an upgrade to the recent system version, if possible.

Do the merging on the new iMac, if it has Catalina installed.


PowerPhotos is a Swiss-army knife for Photos, a very useful companion, not just for merging libraries or finding duplicates. It is a second browser for Photos. We can compare libraries in two windows, display the metadata of the photos as list view, sort by the filename or the file size, many things, that I wish, Photos could do on its own.


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User profile for user: Old Toad
Old Toad
User level: Level 10
218,040 points

Sep 12, 2020 9:22 AM in response to lfiano92

A second method is to use the paid version of PowerPhotos. You would do the following:


1 - copy Photos library from the old Mac to the new Mac. Rename it so you know which library is the 40 GB library.

2 - open the old library with Photos on the new Mac to make sure they both are the same version.

3 - open the paid version of PowerPhotos and merge the smaller library into the older and larger library. This PowerPhotos help file describes the process: Merging libraries. This method isn't a complete as the iCloud Library method but will be faster and easier to do.


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Merge two photo libraries

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