Importing Photo Albums
Is there any way to import photo albums from iPhone to iMac without using iCloud? I don’t want the photos from the iMac going onto my phone because I have limited space. Thanks!
iPhone XS
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iCloud Photos is the only way to import the photos from the iPhone with the albums, the captions, the favourite hearts, and all. But you do not have to upload all your Photos from your Mac onto your iPhone while downloading the photos from your iPhone.
You can have more than one Photos Library on your Mac.
- Create a small or empty new Photos Library for syncing photos and albums between your iPhone and your Mac.
- Make this library your System Photos Library and enable iCloud Photos, without Optimise Storage enabled.
- Enable iCloud Photos on the iPhone as well.
- Now wait for the photos from your iPhone to download to your Mac.
Once the photos have been downloaded, you can export each album separately to a folder, named like the album and then import the albums to your main library, or use a third.party app like PowerPhotos to merge the new, downloaded photos into your main Photos Library.
I have used this method for many years - a small library with only the photos I want to keep in iCloud -my favourites and the photos I am currently working on, and a collection of archive Photos Libraries on an external drive - one library for each year and each major event with with all my photos. I nearly need to connect this archive drive to my Mac, only to add to the archive and make a backup.
Photos for Mac and on the iPhone and iPad is much easier to use, if we keep the library small . And only with iCloud Photos we can sync the library between our devices as a library with all albums, folders, with all metadata and adjustments we add.