Uploading many photos to Photo app troubles

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Level 1

4 points

Uploading many photos to Photo app troubles

I am moving from a PC to a Mac. I have ~40,000 photos in dozens of folders, most with up to 3 levels of subfolders. I started by copying folders to the Photos app and found that I had to do it twice to get all of the folders to copy over. Once done, I ended up with MANY duplicate folders. I simply deleted the duplicates.

NOW, I note that many of the photos are no longer connected to the originals. It is hit or miss.

I imported a major photo over to the app, but have no idea how to connect to the photos in the library. Importing the folder lost all of the subfolder structure.

Short of wiping the entire project and going through a folder by folder, and subfolder by subfolder import scheme, is there anyway to save what I've done by correcting my mistakes?

Or should I just leave my photos on an external disk with a FAT structure?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.1

Posted on Dec 20, 2024 8:41 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 21, 2024 7:49 AM in response to uptownlarry

There's not enough detail here to know just what you're doing. Where is your Photos Library located? Is it in the Pictures folder on your internal drive? Is it on an external drive? If external, is it formatted APFS, or what? I ask because, if the library is on an improperly formatted drive, then it will likely become corrupted.

You say, "copying folders to the Photos app," but I don't know what that means. The normal method of importing pictures to Photos is to use File>Import. In the normal import process, you can choose to keep the folder organization:

It may also be true that you are attempting to use Photos as a Referenced Library. That is something that we strongly urge people to avoid. In our experience, using Photos as a Referenced Library leads to disaster. I use it for testing some things-- that's all.

Photos is best as a Managed Library, where all picture files are kept inside the Photos Library package. In Photos' Settings>General

"Copy Items to the Photos Library" should be checked. This will mean that you have 2 copies of all the imported pictures: one in the Photos Library, and one that you archive as the original source.

FAT is a very old format, and it's not used much. ExFAT is more common, but it's still too limited for efficient use in the Mac world. Pretty much the only time we use ExFAT is when we need to communicate with Windows, etc.

APFS is optimized for Solid State drives, and it works well with Mechanical Drives. MacOS Extended works better for Mechanical Drives than for SSDs.

I hope this helps-- let us know if clarification is needed…

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Answer 2

uptownlarry Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 21, 2024 8:04 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Richard,

Thanks for your help.

1) My photos library is Pictures>Photos Library. It’s on my internal drive.

2) I loaded picture folders from a PC onto thumb drives and simply drug the folders to Photos after putting them in Downloads or directly from the thumb drives. (My wife’s been on a Mac for about a year and this is how she’s brought over files, but she hasn’t used Photos).

3) Yes, only later did I see Photos>File>import

4) Yes, I’m using Photos as a managed library

5) I referenced the idea of keeping them on a PC formatted external drive as I found someone in HELP that suggested that solution.

I am wondering if I’ve messed this up so bad that I should just start over - rather tedious.

Thanks again, Larry

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Answer 3

Dec 21, 2024 8:48 AM in response to uptownlarry

uptownlarry wrote: … I am wondering if I’ve messed this up so bad that I should just start over - rather tedious.

Well, you can try a few folders and see what you think. You do somehow acquire an extra layer of folders doin that. but it's easier than searching through a bunch of loose pictures.

A file management system like Explorer or Finder is great for files, but Photos lets you do way more to keep track of the specific type of information in pictures. And in Photos, you can put pictures in multiple albums, to let you find pictures that might fit in more than one category. No one should be wanting to use a File Management system to manage pictures.

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Answer 4

uptownlarry Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 21, 2024 4:18 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Fixed!

Thanks again. Things are working now. I need to just import folders that have problems, maybe 20% of what I’ve seen so far. I’ll just replace the “old” folders with “new” versions.

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Uploading many photos to Photo app troubles

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