How do you export folders from Photos?

Question

Level 1

8 points

How do you export folders from Photos?

When I updated to Yosemite I didn't realize I would lose the ability to open Aperture. So my entire Aperture library was converted to Photos, and all of my events are now in Photos as "iPhoto Events". Seen here http://cl.ly/image/0R1K383M3q47

How can I export these? When I choose the albums to export, and choose "name folders by moment" It exports everything with random date stamps. None of them have the folder names. I have tens of thousands of photos. I can't go re-categorizing everything all over again.

Does anyone know a way to export these "folders" to keep their structure?

Thanks!

macbook pro, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Jun 12, 2015 5:33 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Rysz

Level 8

44,455 points

Jun 12, 2015 6:34 PM in response to optikalefx

Yyou didn't loose Aperture. It's still in your Applications folder and you can continue to use it.

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Answer 2

optikalefx Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 12, 2015 7:31 PM in response to Rysz

Yes the app is there but it can't open. Aperture says it's not supported on Yosemite. Therefore I had to convert my library to Photos. thats a done deal at this point.

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Answer 3

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jun 12, 2015 9:27 PM in response to optikalefx

Aperture 3.6 runs just fine on Yosemite OS X 10.10.3 -- What version do you have? What happens when you launch it?

LN

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Answer 4

Rysz

Level 8

44,455 points

Jun 12, 2015 9:46 PM in response to optikalefx

Drag the current version of Aperture to the Trash. Don't empty it. Log into your account on Mac App Store, navigate to Purchases, find Aperture and click on Download.

BTW, your Aperture photo library is also still on your computer. The new Photos app "migrated" the contents, it did not erase or modify them.

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Answer 5

R C-R

Level 6

17,794 points

Jun 13, 2015 1:43 AM in response to optikalefx

optikalefx wrote:

How can I export these? When I choose the albums to export, and choose "name folders by moment" It exports everything with random date stamps. None of them have the folder names. I have tens of thousands of photos. I can't go re-categorizing everything all over again.

May I ask why you want to export them? There usually isn't any reason to do that other than to use the files with some other app that doesn't support opening them with the media browser, & in that situation it is rarely necessary to export all the files.

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Answer 6

optikalefx Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2015 5:42 AM in response to LarryHN

When I launched Aperture before it said This version of Aperture does not work with Yosemite.

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Answer 7

optikalefx Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2015 5:43 AM in response to Rysz

It is too late to recover my aperture library. It was 900GB. I couldn't have both AP and Photos. After it converted my library I had to get rid of the AP library.

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Answer 8

optikalefx Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2015 5:45 AM in response to R C-R

I want to export them because I switched to Lightroom when Apple announced they were moving everything to Photos. So I have all my new albums in Lightroom and then all these old albums in Photos.

At this point I can't go back to aperture, it's gone. I made a stupid mistake by deleting it b/c I didn't have a spare 900GB of space to keep it on. I have a new HDD now, and I just need to export those albums so I can import them into LR.

The only export option from Photos doesn't retain the album structure, it puts everything in by "date" which Apple calls "moments". I can't figure out a way to keep those folder names you see in the screen shot in the OP.

Thanks!

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Answer 9

optikalefx Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2015 5:52 AM in response to Rysz

So I was able to download 3.6 and open it from the app store. But now I'm faced with the fact that I converted my main library to Photos. So my old AP library doesn't exist. Is there a way to convert this back to AP?

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Answer 10

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jun 13, 2015 7:17 AM in response to optikalefx

No - restore your Aperture library from the backup you made before upgrading

and note that you should not have trashed you Aperture library as it was not using must space at all - see Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries - Apple Support

However this will not be true of the restored library since the hard links refer to a different library - the restored one will use all the reported space

LN

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Answer 11

optikalefx Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2015 8:24 AM in response to LarryHN

I didn't have room to have both libraries, they both said 800GB and I had 20MB left on the drive. The one that couldn't open had to go. Otherwise I couldn't continue even using my computer.

I ended up solving the issue in a different way. I exported each album 1 by 1 using keyboard shortcuts, and choosing NO subfolder with the option to "name" each file by "album name" Which named them all in 1 giant folder "<album name> 1 of x".

With that, I wrote a script that took all those names and sorted them back into proper folders. Now I can import into LR.

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Answer 12

Rysz

Level 8

44,455 points

Jun 13, 2015 9:01 AM in response to optikalefx

The two libraries are NOT duplicates of each other. They both point to the same image files on your drive using hard links.

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Answer 13

optikalefx Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2015 10:44 AM in response to Rysz

That was not the case for me. After the conversion I got space errors from a few Apps. My hard drive had only a few MB left. Once I deleted the old AP library I had a free 800GB again. So for me they were duplicates.

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