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Need strategy to convert Live photos to .jpg in bulk

I have a small HD on my Macbook and and no space on iPhone. iPhone takes pictures with Live feature which takes up more space. Thousands of my pictures on my Mac are Live.


I saw I could export the photos from the Photos app to another folder and save as .jpg. Then delete the Live photos. But when I do that the new files don’t carry the original creation date.


Is there another easy way to do this conversion while keeping the original creation date? What other cons does exporting to .jpg have? I don’t care about choosing from different frames (Live). Thanks

MacBook

Posted on May 8, 2022 11:09 AM

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Posted on May 8, 2022 2:02 PM

Why do you need the HEIC as jpg? Just delete the live photos, then re-import the HEIC, then export as jpg whenever you need a jpg.


If you want to bulk convert them to jpg first then use preview app. But bear in mind they will take aprox twice the space for no benefit.

8 replies

May 8, 2022 11:55 PM in response to trvljwllr

The Live Photos are a pair of a video clip (MOV) with the animation and a high resolution image with a still frame (JPEG or HEIC). My older Live Photos are JPEGs, because I used a third party app to create them. To save storage and to get rid of the

To convert the Live Photos to still images, you have to remove the video clip.

  • Select all Live Photos together with ⌘A.
  • Use File > Export > Export unmodified original. Enable the checkmark to "IPTC as XMP" to save the metadata in a sidecar file. and Subfolder Format "None" to get all images into the same folder,
  • When the export has finished, open the folder with the exported items and sort it according to the KIND, so all .MOV files can easily be selected together and deleted.
  • Delete the Live Photos in Photos and remove them from recently Deleted. Then reimport all items from the folder with the exported items together. Photos can recreate the titles and locations from the XMP sidecar files.


May 8, 2022 11:14 AM in response to dariuchi

Try export unmodified original - you may retain the (file) creation date but export a jpg and mov file. You can then just delete the mov file.


Note in your example, the FILE date might change, but the content created date in the exif data is retained. If you re-import the resulting jpgs to photos, they will display in the correct date based on when they were taken.

Need strategy to convert Live photos to .jpg in bulk

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