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Hello my husband has photos on his iCloud account as do I. Both are very large. Mine is also stored on an external drive. Is there any way to merge the photos from these two iCloud accounts so it’s all together? And going forward how can I get photos from his account into my library the easiest way?
Which system versions are you and your husband using?
When you want to share your iCloud Photos, you may want to set up the Shared iCloud Photos Library. This way, the shared photos will only be stored in iCloud once, in the shared iCloud Photos Library, but you can work with them from both your Photos Libraries. The Shared iCloud Photos Library can be used on devices with macOS 13 or later, iOS 16 or later, iPadOS 16 or later. If all your devices are able to run the most recent system versions you can move the photos you want accessible to both of you to the shared iCloud Photos Library. See: What is iCloud Shared Photo Library in Photos on Mac? - Apple Support
It is not supported to share an iCloud Photos Library in any other way. Your iCloud Photos Library is tied to your AppleID, you would have to share the AppleID, which is not recommended, because then your email and all other items tied to the APpleID would also be shared. You cannot share the local copy of the iCloud Photos Library on your Mac either, unless you move it to an external drive, locally mounted with a wired connection (not a NAS!) and with the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag enabled.
And the external drive would need to be mounted and plugged in whenever you are signed into your user account, even when you are not using Photos, but the System Photos Library needs to be available at all times for the background processes. This is not feasible, of you are sharing a library between two users.
Which system versions are you and your husband using?
When you want to share your iCloud Photos, you may want to set up the Shared iCloud Photos Library. This way, the shared photos will only be stored in iCloud once, in the shared iCloud Photos Library, but you can work with them from both your Photos Libraries. The Shared iCloud Photos Library can be used on devices with macOS 13 or later, iOS 16 or later, iPadOS 16 or later. If all your devices are able to run the most recent system versions you can move the photos you want accessible to both of you to the shared iCloud Photos Library. See: What is iCloud Shared Photo Library in Photos on Mac? - Apple Support
It is not supported to share an iCloud Photos Library in any other way. Your iCloud Photos Library is tied to your AppleID, you would have to share the AppleID, which is not recommended, because then your email and all other items tied to the APpleID would also be shared. You cannot share the local copy of the iCloud Photos Library on your Mac either, unless you move it to an external drive, locally mounted with a wired connection (not a NAS!) and with the "Ignore ownership on this volume" flag enabled.
And the external drive would need to be mounted and plugged in whenever you are signed into your user account, even when you are not using Photos, but the System Photos Library needs to be available at all times for the background processes. This is not feasible, of you are sharing a library between two users.
On a Mac with macOS 12 Monterey or later you can merge two libraries by importing the photos directly from one Photos library to another library. This is described here: Import photos from another library in Photos on Mac – Apple Support (UK)
But as the two libraries you want to join are iCloud Photos Libraries, owned by different users, you have to ensure that the library you want to import from is not using the "Optimize Storage" option. You need a complete copy of the local library with all originals downloaded from iCloud. And this copy should be stored on a separate external drivewith the "ignore ownership on this volume" flag enabled, as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support. Without this flag you may encounter permission problems with the file ownership, also, if you are using a Time Machine volume.
We both are using the latest version of iOS.
j will set up iCloud shared obit library going forward.
But for existing photos, I just want to merge the two libraries in one place so that I can have them all in one place. Should I merge all the photos on my MacBook Air? Merge the two iCloud Photos libraries In iCloud?
Neither of the the iCloud libraries have been downloaded into the external hard drive libraries for a while. When they were neither was set to maximize storage.
should I first allow both to fully download into their respective photo libraries on the external hard drive they are stored on and then merge the two libraries by importing the photos directly from one Photos library to another library?
there is no way to avoid having to download all the pictures locally first into the libraries and then merge? I can’t just merge in iCloud somehow?
All methods of merging the libraries by importing photos directly from one library into the other require that the photos have been downloaded from iCloud and the originals are stored locally.
If you do not want to download the photos locally, you have to do it the hard way - Export all photos from one Photos Library, then import them into the other library. The draw-back would be, that you will have to export the edited versions and the originals separately - export once with "File > Export > Export unmodified original" and once the edited versions with "File > Export > Export ...photos", and when you import them to the merged library, you will be seeing two photos instead of one.
The direct import from another library will be much better. The original image files and edited version will be imported stacked as one photo, and you will be able to revert the adjustments individually and change them. But even by importing directly from one library you will lose the keywords on import. So import the smaller library into the larger library.
Merging photos two icloud accounts
