Moving photos from system library to another library in Photos

Hello all,

My apologies if this is posted somewhere and I haven't seen it.

I want to keep 2 years of photos on the Photos system library synced to iCloud which is used on the same AppleID on multiple devices and phones. Currently there are 5 years.

I have another library on an external hard drive (backed up) with all of the other years (2009 to 2017). I wish to move years 2018 to 2021 from the system library synced to iCloud to the other library on an external drive. My question, what is the best way to do this. I have some thoughts and would greatly appreciate help from the pros.

Turn off sync to iCloud from the system library (Library A) with the computer (Mac Studio) where the other library (Library B) is where I want to import them to. This will cause the photos to download to the Mac Studio.
Open up the non-system library (Library B) in Photos and use "File/ Import" to import photos from years 2018 to 2021 from the now non-synced system library (Library A).
After import and back-up of years 2018 to 2021 to Library B, re-sync system library (Library A) to iCloud and delete years 2018 to 2021 from system library (Library A).

Is this correct? Please advise.

Sincerely,

Rick

Mac Studio, macOS 13.4

Posted on May 29, 2023 10:27 PM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

203,557 points

Posted on May 30, 2023 12:39 AM

Your plan should work, but will be a lot of trouble. It is just to expensive to toggle iCloud Photos on and off for large Photos Libraries. Do you have plenty of free storage on your external drive?

Then it would be simpler to copy (not move) your iCloud Photos Library to your external drive.

For this to work, you must not be using "Optimize Mac STorage" for your iCloud Photos Library, or the copy of your library will we incomplete.

The copy of the library on the external drive will no longer be syncing with iCloud, so you can import all photos you want to move to your archive directly from the copy of your iCloud Library into your archive library. You would not needing the long new sync with iCloud, when you enable iCloud Photos again for your iCloud Photos Library.

If you want routinely to move photos from your iCloud Photos Library to an archive, you may want to invest into PowerPhotos. You will need the full, paid version of PowerPhotos: See this link: https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

With the Help of PowerPhotos you can copy complete albums and folders between Photos Libraries and thus save the structure, not just the photos and videos. But you would have to invest into the full, paid version. The free trial does not suffuce for this. I am using it a lot to archive new photos on external volumes. Power Photos can import directly from a library that is syncing with iCloud Photos - a big advantage over Photos for Mac, where we can only import from Libraries that are not syncing with iCloud.

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Moving photos from system library to another library in Photos

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