Two mac devices uploading to iCloud photo library

Now I don't know how yo sign into iCloud. All the advice I see steers me to the settings to make sure iCloud is in. Please help

Photos will recognize duplicates, if you try to import the same photo twice into the same library using File > Import, but if you are uploading files from two different macs to iCloud Photo Library, you will create duplicates in iCloud. It is nowhere documented, how iCloud Photo Library handles duplicates, but when I added the same photos from two Macs, this resulted in duplicates on two macs. It might be more economic to weed out the duplicates from the second library before you upload to icloud. If you export the originals from second library and and import them to the first, Photos might be able to detect the duplicates.

2.) It takes literally days to upload photos, is this common? This is why I am hesitating with the macbook pro upload. It has taken about 8 hours to load 100 photos.

It will depend on the speed of your internet. The recent upload of my 200GB Aperture library took less than a day, using a wired ethernet connection. The slow upload may also have been caused by maintenance work at Apple's iCloud servers: Apple restores iCloud after global disruption hinders services

I asked this same question here and on the Photos board a couple of times and never got a clear answer.

I prepared by merging the Aperture libraries from both my iMac and Macbook Air in Aperture using Aperture into one library on an HDD. Then ran some Duplicate finding software on it and tried to cull the results before continuing. But the software added a bunch of keywords. The software added a bunch of keywords to certain pictures which were meant to help create Smart Albums, but it wasn't a very intuitive solution or workflow.

So I finally just gave up and pulled the trigger on using Photos. I renamed the resulting merged file Photo.library on the HDD and copied it over to both the iMac and the Macbook Air. I did the iMac upload first (Download Originals to this Mac-checked). It took more than a week to "process the library and complete the up/download of about 20,000 photos and video to the iMac. The resulting System file which the Photos app requires to be set was Photo.photolibrary on my iMac.

After all had been uploaded it seemed to be working OK, my Aperture Projects had migrated to Photos as iPhoto Events in the sidebar ....and are now considered Albums in Photos.

(@apple please choose a nomenclature and stick with it!)

But once I had waited around seemingly forever and everything had up loaded, it seemed to be working smoothly (i.e. photos i took on my iPhone would appear quickly in my Moments and I learned quickly to drag the photos to the "Albums" in the "iPhoto Events" sidebar to sort them.)

Then I turned on the Macbook Air Photos app, this time with the "Optimise Mac Storage" checked. BTW anticipating this move, I had already upgraded my iCloud storage to 200 GB which I'm sure Apple is targeting with this "innovation".

Once the MBA Photo app was turned on, t took another week or more of processing and uploading to get that photo library up to the iCloud.

But I had learned patience from reading the many ******* here at this very site.

finally, it showed me that everything had been updated. the problem was that the file/photo count on each machine didn't match my Photos on iMac reports19,636 items while the MBA version reports 19,565 items.

The previous advice of others here about using the File>Import command is good. the app seems to be able to detect if the photo is already in the library.. I haven't found many duplicates in the stuff I migrated directly, but I haven't looked closely, and I'm tired of mucking around with this crap. However, I did find a bunch of photos had been deleted... File>Show Recently Deleted and I know I hadn't deleted them myself. On both machines under this option. Checking out some of them, There was quite a large number, they seemed to be duplicates which leads me to believe that the apple servers are doing some kind of dupe checking. it'd be nice to hear from Apple on this.

Anyway FWIW, logging on to the iCloud website just now and waiting for it to update, it shows I have 19,564 photos and videos. Close to my MBA but still 100+ off from my IMac. My iPhone and iPad I run from the MBA so those match up.

Also, a word of warning...after completing that whole process of processing and up/downloading, and everything seemed to be working fine, i decided to Delve into the issue of Keywords and opened the Keyword Manager (Ctrl-K).

There I found that in the Migration from Aperture to Photo, many keywords that had been added by some Duplication software I tried before migrating carried over to the metadata of some photos. Opening the Keyword Manager i could see those keywords and also have the option to edit those keywords. i.e. delete them. So I did. It took awhile as the program went through the photos searching and deleting key words like "Duplicate" but in the end it worked....Then I thought it would be a good idea to lock in those changes and rebuild the database.

So I did that.

Resist that urge/advice. It's not the hour or so it took for the database to rebuild...It's that it re-started the whole phucking thing of re-processing and re-up/downloading the entire Photo.photolibrary again starting at around 20,000 items. It went quicker this time, but still 4 or 5 days of lost productivity. Be wary of advice that tells you to rebuild/repair your Photo Library.