Compare 2 Photo Libraries Mac
The iPhoto is a great application that holds all your images clicked with your Apple device. With an amazing imaging device, these devices give rise to a huge collection of photos on your iPhoto. Due to this, a user may find difficulty in recalling images or accessing them. There are many other instances of loss of photos while transferring or merging the library. Although, deleted iPhoto library by mistake can be recovered easily. Everyone who uses this function must know how to merge iPhoto and Photos library on Mac to perfectly execute the merging.
This also allows users to save plenty of space on your Mac computer. There are a number of ways to do this on your device. There are some third party applications that allow users to merge, import and manipulate the iPhoto library. These may not be good for your system or your photos.
You can export your library to the system entirely to merge the photos. However, this may not be recommended as there is a threat of losing photos. There may also be a loss of other photos related information like metadata and titles of files.
- You can safely delete either photo library – only if you delete both of them will you lose access to your photos; How to delete iPhoto library on your Mac. Now that you understand why you might want to delete an old iPhoto library, and why you don’t necessarily have to, let’s talk about how to actually do it.
- PowerPhotos works with the built-in Photos app on your Mac, providing an array of tools to help you get your photo collection in order. Create and manage multiple libraries Instead of being limited to putting all your photos in a single library, PowerPhotos can work with multiple Photos libraries, giving you many more options for how to organize your ever growing photo collection.
2) Select the main library from the list of available image libraries. 3) In Preferences, select the General tab. Make sure the library is the System Photo Library. 4) In Preferences, select the iCloud tab. Place a checkmark in the iCloud Photo Library box. Sep 28, 2017 Hello. I have noticed that some of my albums in Photos library are empty. I do have a old backup of Photos and I was wondering is their an automatic way of comparing albums in both library? Or even a way of having both open at the same time so I can quickly compare to two? How to Use Side-by-Side Editing in iPhoto. Open iPhoto on your Mac and navigate to the photos you wish to compare and edit. While you’ll most often want to compare just two photos side. Mar 24, 2018 I have a large number of duplicate photos in the Apple Photos library after regrettable selecting 'consolidate photos' from the menu. It appears to have made 2 copies over every photo I had when I did that, so I have 3 of every photo in my library My research has turned up good reviews for. 2) Select the main library from the list of available image libraries. 3) In Preferences, select the General tab. Make sure the library is the System Photo Library. 4) In Preferences, select the iCloud tab. Place a checkmark in the iCloud Photo Library box.
Here is how you should merge your iPhoto to the Photo library
Steps to Merge iPhoto Library to Photo
You can upgrade the iPhoto library to Photos and export all the photos in the library. Export the library as a file to the next system.
Go to Edit > Select all
Click File > Export
If you have made changes in the photos on your iPhoto library, click Export Photos
If not, click Export Unmodified Original
Import all your photos to the master photo library and remove the duplicate images.
Once you have done this, you have to export the images in iPhoto using the iPhoto export option. In order to do this, use the iPhoto option
Click File > Export
Click Original or any format – You will have a list in the pop-up menu
Export all the images in the previous used Photos library.
Now you can remove all the duplicate images from the library.
You can also do this in a different way, here is how:
Upgrade the iPhoto library to Photos on your system and then make it your primary library for all the photos. Once upgraded, you can make the library master for the iCloud library.
You should keep the previous library separate and make use of Power Photos to switch between them.
The merging needs some time and you have to give it time. Once it is done all your collection will be well organized. If you choose to do it in a third way, try to get a backup of all the images in the library.
Merging the iPhoto to the photo library on your Mac is easy. You have to make use of tools like Power Photos to remove the duplicate files. you can also do it manually, by organizing all the images, but it may not be efficient enough. So make use of any one of the suggestions made here and save a lot of space to your computer. It also relieves you from the unorganized photo library.
This user tip has been moved to: Notes on Merging Photos Libraries, 2019 Version
The older version can no longer be edited without destroying the formatting.
Getty Images
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When merging two photo libraries we usually want a lossless merge:The original photos and the edited versions should be merged into the merged library as master-version pairs, so it will be possible to revert edited photos to the original.The library structure with albums, smart albums should be preserved in the merged library.All metadata, including the faces labels should be migrated.The products (books, cards, calendars, slideshows) should be migrated.
Written for Photos 2.0 on macOS 10.12.4 or older:There is currently no completely lossless way to merge Photos Libraries, because Photos does not support importing one Photos Library into another library. All work-around methods are compromises. There is no lossless merging of Photos Libraries other than iCloud Photo Library, and even the merging in iCloud will not include the faces albums and the print products.
If you are planning to migrate your photo libraries from Aperture or iPhoto to Photos and own Aperture 3.6, merge your libraries in Aperture before the migration while you still can use Aperture as described here: Aperture 3.3: How to use Aperture to merge iPhoto libraries - Apple SupportMake backup copies of the libraries before you try that.
- The options in Photos are:Merge the libraries in iCloud by uploading them to the same iCloud Photo Library: Merging in iCloud is the only way to preserve the master-version pairs, so you can revert edited photos to the original versions. Your albums and folders will migrate, keywords, titles, and other metadata. All edited images will be paired with their originals, so you can undo the edits and revert to the original. The searchable faces names will upload (only on Photos 1.5 or older, not on Photos 2.0), but not the faces thumbnails and albums. Photos will scan for duplicates while merging. It is the best way to migrate libraries you invested much work into, but uploading large libraries to iCloud requires a paid subscription for more storage than the free 5GB - for at least a month, and it is slow. My library with 40000 photos took a full week to upload. To merge in iCloud enable the smaller of the two libraries as your iCloud Photo Library.Wait for all photos to upload; that can take a very long time, a week ore more, depending on the size of the library. Photos will merge the the library into the library that is already in iCloud.Now enable the larger library as your iCloud Photo Library. This library will be merged into the library in iCloud too, creating a merged library in iCloud. The merged library will sync back to your larger Photos Library. The merge will not include the Faces albums and projects from the first library you uploaded. That is why I recommend to start with the smaller library. The download will be like to a different Mac, see: Use Photos and iCloud Photo Library on multiple Mac computers - Apple SupportTo sync the faces names with iCloud Photo Library, I apply keywords with the names of the persons to all photos in a people album.Merge the libraries by exporting the photos (edited versions and originals) from one library and reimporting them into the other library. This is the most tedious way and only feasible for very small libraries. You would have to export the edited versions and the originals separately and they would no longer be paired. On Yosemite or El Capitan - even if you export the originals with XMP sidecar files to preserve the IPTC metadata, the metadata from the sidecar file will not be applied to the originals when reimporting. Your metadata will be gone, unless you export the edited versions as JPEGS. So there is no help for it but to export both, the originals and the edited versions, and to deal with the duplicates. Photos 2.0 on Sierra can read the sidecar files on import - so exporting with XMP files will transfer the metadata to the new library.
Online Photo Libraries
You will have to recreate the albums as well.Merge the libraries with PowerPhotos: PowerPhotos is a tool to manage Photos Libraries. You can easily browse libraries in turn and move photos between libraries. Merging with PowerPhotos is fast (https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/. It will migrate the metadata and the albums, but you have to decide, if you want to use the originals or the edited versions. So you will either lose the editing work or the high quality originals or create redundancy by merging twice in two passes, once to transfer the originals, and then the edited versions. You will have to add a pass to remove duplicates afterward. See chapter six in the PowerPhotos manual: : https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/Help/merging%20libraries.htmlAnother option would by to keep both libraries separate and use PowerPhotos to browse the libraries and to transfer selected albums as you go.iCloud Photo Library would be the best option. Merging with PowerPhotos the second best.Update for Photos 3.0 on macOS 10.13:Photos 3.0 will also sync the recognized faces when you merge two Photos 3.0 libraries in iCloud. projects do still not sync to iCloud.