How to transfer Mac Photo Library Photos to actual images?
I use Photo library on an external ExFAT drive and want to put all my photos in formats I can access on windows. Suggestions?
I use Photo library on an external ExFAT drive and want to put all my photos in formats I can access on windows. Suggestions?
Put simply - you are going to need two external hard drives. One formatted suitably for photos (APFS or Mac OS extended), and one formatted suitably for reading both on a mac and a windows machine. If you continue to use photos on the Exfat machine you are risking losing access to all your pictures.
So if you want to to this, you need to do the following.
Finally if you don't already have a backup process in place, get one.
A Photos library can't be accessed by a PC so the images must be exported out of the library to a hard drive that a PC can access, i.e. MS-DOS (FAT). So if you export as I showed in my previous reply you'll get folders of image files that a PC can access with whatever app it uses to view image files. Exporting leaves the Photos library intact so you won't lose anything.
Here's how you can produce all jpeg files for use on the PC.
You should export them to the external HD what is formatted
so that both the Mac and PC can access the image files that have been exported.
So let's assume I want to keep the photos in Photo Library, so I can access all the features. What I want to do is have the drive able to be read and written on by Windows and Mac computers because I want to transfer all my photos from my old windows computer to my mac. What format can I use to do both of these things and how do I get to that format without losing the many photos I currently have on my Photo library?
All I want to do is put my photos in regular image formats. I have to make my drive a different format first?
How do I put it in a different format without losing my stuff?
Put what?
See there where I explained about exporting?
If I want to continue using photo library while also being able to access my photos on Windows, how do I put my HDD into a different format without losing everything?
First, running a Photos library on an ExFAT drive is not supported and a recipe for disaster: Where is it safe to store a Photos Library - 2019 Version
Copy it to a correctly formatted volume - Mac OS Extended (Journaled) preferably with ownership set to be ignored.
Now try to open it there. Hopefully you will be able to. Now you can export the unmodified originals with the following settings:
This will put the image files in folders named for the location and date taken to help with out of library organization.
If you want to change the formatting on a drive that contains data you care about, you have to move the data you care about to another drive first, then change the formatting, then copy the data back.
However, there is no format that can allow a Windows PC to read the contents of a Photos library. You have to export the pictures to simple files, then read the simple files with the Windows PC.
How to transfer Mac Photo Library Photos to actual images?