Merge A Photo Library Onto My Mac

But it’s also a ground-up rewrite of our Mac photo experience, and some pieces are missing (some permanently), some moved, and some broken. IPhoto Library Manager can merge multiple. Mar 18, 2020  Here's how to open one of the multiple photo libraries that you might have on your Mac or on a connected external drive: Press and hold the Option key as you open the Photos app. Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library. Photos uses this library until you open a different one using the same steps. In addition to moving your multi-gigabyte iTunes library to an external drive, a significant amount of Mac storage space can be freed up by moving your photo libraries onto a separate drive. If you take a lot of pictures with a DSLR camera or your iOS devices and import them in Photos, you’ll fairly quickly run out of free space on most Macs.

Apple's photo management software for the Mac, Photos, has grown to be a fairly competent all-purpose storage locker. But as your photo and video library grows — and especially if you've taken advantage of iCloud Photo Library — you may find that your Photos library strains to fit on your Mac's hard drive.

While there are options to keep your Mac from running out of space, like optimizing your photo storage if you use iCloud Photo Library, it comes at a cost: Without a fully-stored Photos library, you won't be able to create secondary backups of your images and video. (And as good as iCloud has become, your photos and video are precious enough that they're worth keeping backed up in multiple places.)

There is an alternative: Moving your Photos library to an external drive (or creating an entirely separate library and syncing it with iCloud). Here's how to do it, and some reasons why you should — and shouldn't! — consider it for your needs.

Mar 18, 2020  In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users username Pictures, and it's named Photos Library. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. By default, syncing the second library with iCloud will also download all the content from the first library into the second library onto your Mac. However, if you enable the “Optimize Mac Storage” option in the iCloud preferences in Photos, that will only initially download smaller thumbnail versions of each photo, which can speed up this. We got a new iMac and would like to enable iPhone Photo Library on it so it can download photos onto it from our existing iCloud Photo Library. However, since this is a new computer, our Photo library on it is empty, so before I enable iCloud Photo Library, I wanted to make sure my iCloud Photos are safe.

Why you should (and shouldn't) use an external drive with Photos for Mac

There are a number of reasons why an external drive might make sense when you're working with Photos for Mac:

  • You have a giant Photos library (and, if you use iCloud Photo Library, you want to ensure you have a secondary backup of everything in that library)
  • You frequently swap computers and want to work on your images from any Mac
  • Your library isn't huge, but you'd prefer to save space on your Mac for other files
  • You share a computer with other users and you have limited drive space
  • If you're working with space constraints on your primary computer, it's one of the easiest ways to back up your full iCloud Photo Library

That said, there are some downsides, too. Here are some reasons you might not want to use an external drive:

  • You don't have a big enough library to warrant moving it off your Mac
  • You don't want to have to worry about always having your external drive connected to view and edit your images
  • You use a laptop frequently and can't afford an SSD, and you don't want to risk breaking your disc-based hard drive by constantly moving it
  • You don't want to accidentally create duplicate libraries that can't be connected to iCloud Photo Library (because your offsite library is connected)
  • Unless you purchase a speedy drive, working externally is almost always slower than working on your default hard drive
  • You don't want to spend the money on an external drive
  • If you use an automated backup service for your computer, you'll have to set up a second set of rules for backing up your hard drive

Best external drives for storing photos

Jan 22, 2018  The only automatic way to merge libraries in Photos is to upload both libraries to iCloud, one after the other, and they will merge in iCloud Photo Library. Then the merged library will download to the library you have currently open as your iCloud Photo Library.

Okay, so you've decided to move your Photos library over to an external drive. What next? If you already have an external drive, you can always use it for storing your Photos library (and save on cash). But if you're considering getting a new drive for this endeavor, here's what I suggest:

  • Get a drive that's at least 1-2TB in space, preferably 4TB. With the iPhone able to save 4K video, our space needs aren't shrinking anytime soon: The bigger hard drive you can afford, the better.
  • If you're buying a stationary hard drive, buying a disc-based hard drive is great, but buy good brands — don't try and save $50 on an off-brand hard drive. It's rarely worth the HDD failure.
  • If you're buying a portable hard drive, consider SSD: It's very pricey in comparison to a disc-based drive, but if you know you'll be frequently moving around — especially if you plan to move around with the drive connected — you want a drive that can take a little rumble and tumble without skipping or failing.
  • Hard drive speeds are important, too: The faster a drive's write speed, the quicker your images will copy; the faster a drive's read speed, the easier it will be for you to view images or video and edit them, too.

Want some recommendations for specific external hard drives? We've got those, too.

How to move your current Photos library to an external drive and use it as your primary library

As with creating a new library, moving your library to your external drive is a multi-step process. Here's how to go about it.

Step 1: Copy over your Photos library

  1. Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.
  2. Open a new Finder window.
  3. Open your external drive in that window.

  4. Open a new Finder window. Don't close your previous window (open to your external drive), as you'll need it shortly.

  5. Click the Go menu and navigate to your Home folder.
  6. Select the Pictures folder.
  7. Select your old library.

  8. Drag it to your external drive in the other Finder window.

Your library will begin to copy over to your external drive. Depending on the size of your library and speed of your drive, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, so be patient. Don't unplug your drive or turn off your computer during this process.

Step 2 (if you use iCloud): Turn off iCloud sync on your old library

Before you open your copied Photos library on the external drive, you have to disassociate the library on your Mac from iCloud. (If you don't use iCloud Photo Library, you can skip these steps.)

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Go to the Photos menu.
  3. Select Preferences.
  4. Click on the iCloud tab.

  5. Uncheck iCloud Photo Library.

  6. Press Remove from Mac to remove any undownloaded low-resolution items from this library.

  7. Quit Photos.

Step 3: Make your new library your system default

Now, it's time to make your newly-copied Photos library your system default.

Jan 17, 2020  Adobe Lightroom Classic version 5.7 and later includes a built-in tool for migrating Aperture libraries to Lightroom catalogs. If you’ve upgraded to macOS Catalina, learn about compatibility with Lightroom Classic. When an Aperture library is migrated to Lightroom, your library's organization, metadata, and image adjustments are preserved, with some exceptions. To migrate from iPhoto: In Lightroom, go to File Plug-in Extras Import from iPhoto Library. Select the location of your iPhoto library and choose a new location for your images. Click the Options button if you want to change any settings prior to migration. Click the Import button to start the migration. Dec 27, 2019  Select the images you want move and select File - Export in Photos. Select a new destination folder and when the export is complete you can point Lightroom to that folder and Import. The export from Photos does make duplicate copies of all the exported images. So be sure that you have enough free disk space in the target. May 30, 2019  How to use Automator to export Lightroom photos to Photos for Mac. Click on File in the Automator App menu in the Menu bar. Click on Save in the drop-down menu. You could also hit the Command + S keyboard shortcut to save the rule. Select a folder to. To set your library as the Systems Photos Library, follow these steps: Open Apple Photos and select Preferences in the menu bar. Click the General tab and select Use as System Photo Library under Library Location. Select Use as System Photo Library. If it is grayed out. If Use as System Photo. Lightroom import mac photos library.

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Go to the Photos menu.
  3. Select Preferences.

  4. Click Use as System Photo Library.

Step 4 (if you use iCloud): Connect your new library to iCloud

Your external library is now set up to be your system default, but it's not currently connected to iCloud. If you use iCloud Photo Library and want to keep that connection active so that you can continually download items you've stored, read on. (Otherwise, you can skip this step.)

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Go to the Photos menu.
  3. Select Preferences.

  4. Click on the iCloud tab.

  5. Check iCloud Photo Library.
  6. Click Download Originals to this Mac.
  7. Wait for your Mac to download your images from iCloud. (Depending on the size of your iCloud library and your internet connection, this may take up to 24 hours; don't disconnect your external drive or turn off your Mac during this time.)

Once your library has fully synced and downloaded images, you can disconnect your drive; whenever you want to use your Photos library, you now need to connect your drive to your Mac.

Step 5: Get rid of your old library

A personal plea: Please, please, please make sure your library is fully copied and working on your external drive before you follow the steps below — once you've thrown away your original library, it's gone!

  1. Open a new Finder window.
  2. Click the Go menu and navigate to your Home folder.
  3. Select the Pictures folder.

  4. Select your old library.

  5. Drag it to the Trash (or press Command-Delete on your keyboard).
  6. Empty the Trash.
  7. Open a new Finder window. Don't close your previous window (open to the Pictures folder), as you'll need it later.
  8. Select your external drive.
  9. Right-click (or control-click) on your copied Photos library on your external drive.
  10. Select Make Alias.
  11. Drag the alias to the Pictures folder.

  12. Rename the alias to remove the 'alias' part of its name.

Now you have a direct link to your copied Photos library from the Pictures folder: This prevents your computer from accidentally creating multiple Photos libraries in case you forget to launch Photos with your external drive connected.

Note: If you're worried about accidentally creating libraries, you can always launch Photos by option-clicking on its icon in the Dock or Applications folder; this will give you the option of picking which library you'd like to launch.

How to create a new Photos library on your external drive and use it as your primary library

Creating a new library on your external drive is a multi-step process. Here's how to go about it.

Step 1 (if you use iCloud): Turn off iCloud sync on your old library

Before you create a new Photos library, you have to disassociate your current library as your system default. (If you don't use iCloud Photo Library, you can skip these steps.)

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Go to the Photos menu.
  3. Select Preferences.

  4. Click on the iCloud tab.

  5. Uncheck iCloud Photo Library.
  6. Press Remove from Mac to remove all low-resolution items from this library.
  7. Press Remove from Mac once more to confirm.

  8. Quit Photos.

Step 2: Create your new Photos library

Once you've done this, it's time to create a new library.

  1. Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.
  2. Option-click (and continue holding down option) when launching the Photos app on your Mac.
  3. When it asks you to choose a library, click on Create New….

  4. Name your library.

  5. Press the Down arrow to expand the File picker and choose your external drive as the new location.
  6. Press OK to save it to your external drive.

Step 3: Make your new library your system default

You'll now have an empty library on your external drive. Next up: Making it your system library.

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Go to the Photos menu.
  3. Select Preferences.

  4. Click Use as System Photo Library.

Step 4 (if you use iCloud): Connect your new library to iCloud

Your external library has now been set up from scratch. If you use iCloud Photo Library and want to download all the items you've stored there to have an external backup, read on. (Otherwise, you can skip this step.)

  1. Open Photos on your Mac.
  2. Go to the Photos menu.
  3. Select Preferences.

  4. Click on the iCloud tab.

  5. Check iCloud Photo Library.
  6. Click Download Originals to this Mac.
  7. Wait for your Mac to download your images from iCloud. (Depending on the size of your library and your internet connection, this may take up to 24 hours; don't disconnect your external drive or turn off your Mac during this time.)

Once your library has fully synced and downloaded images, you can disconnect your drive; whenever you want to use your Photos library, you now need to connect your drive to your Mac.

Step 5: Get rid of your old library

A personal plea: Please, please, please make sure your new library is live and working on your external drive before you follow the steps below — once you've thrown away your original library, it's gone!

  1. Open a new Finder window.
  2. Click the Go menu and navigate to your Home folder.
  3. Select the Pictures folder.

  4. Select your old library.

  5. Drag it to the Trash (or press Command-Delete on your keyboard).
  6. Empty the Trash.
  7. Open a new Finder window. Don't close your previous window (open to the Pictures folder), as you'll need it later.
  8. Select your external drive.
  9. Right-click (or control-click) on your new Photos library.

  10. Select Make Alias.

  11. Drag the alias to the Pictures folder.
  12. Rename the alias to remove the 'alias' part of its name.

Now you have a direct link to your Photos library from the Pictures folder: This prevents your computer from accidentally creating multiple Photos libraries in case you forget to launch Photos with your external drive connected.

Note: If you're worried about accidentally creating libraries, you can always launch Photos by option-clicking on its icon in the Dock or Applications folder; this will give you the option of picking which library you'd like to launch.

Questions?

Let us know in the comments.

Updated March 2019: Updated for macOS Mojave.

Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this post.

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Merging Photos libraries

Merge Two Photo Libraries Mac

Update (11/3/2015): PowerPhotos 1.1 now supports library merging!

Merge 4 photo libraries mac. While iPhoto Library Manager for Mac does not advertise itself as a photo editor, some basic editing features would have been a welcome addition to the program, rather than simply directing the user to iPhoto.While limited in its functions, iPhoto Library Manager for Mac works well as a basic photo file manager.Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of iPhoto Library Manager for Mac 4.0.6. IPhoto Library Manager allows you to organize your photos among multiple iPhoto libraries, rather than having to store all of your photos in one giant library.

Unlike iPhoto Library Manager, PowerPhotos does not yet have the capability to merge libraries together. This is something I’d like to add to PowerPhotos, though I can’t make any concrete promises, since doing so partially depends on whether Photos itself adds a few necessary enhancements. In the meantime, since I get asked about this a lot, I thought I’d put up a quick summary of the existing methods to get your content all together into a single Photos library.

Merge your iPhoto libraries beforehand

Move Photo Library Mac

At this point, most people looking to merge libraries together have existing iPhoto or Aperture libraries that they’re either planning to migrate to Photos, or have already done so. Since merging options with Photos itself are very limited, if you do want to merge your libraries, it will be much easier to first merge everything together as iPhoto libraries, then take the resulting merged iPhoto library and migrate *that* to Photos afterward.

Find Photo Library On Mac

If you haven’t migrated any of your existing libraries yet, then simply use iPhoto Library Manager to merge the libraries together first, then open the merged library in Photos to let it perform the migration (Aperture can also be used to merge iPhoto libraries, though it doesn’t perform duplicate detection like iPLM does). If you have already migrated some/all of your iPhoto libraries though, you may still be able to follow this route. Photos leaves the original iPhoto library intact after performing the migration, so as long as you haven’t deleted the iPhoto library yourself, you should be able to go back and perform the merge, then migrate the merged library to Photos.

To migrate an iPhoto library a second time, the easiest way is to use the File > Migrate iPhoto Libraries command in PowerPhotos. Just check the box next to the iPhoto library and click Migrate, and PowerPhotos will take care of the details. To do it without PowerPhotos, you’ll need to open the library in iPhoto first, and it should give you a brief messing saying that the library has been migrated to Photos already. Click the “Open in iPhoto” button, then close the library back up. Then, take the iPhoto library and drop it on the Photos icon in the dock, and it will perform the migration a second time.

Merge A Photo Library Onto My Mac Account

If you have imported any newer photos into Photos since you performed your first migration, those photos will not have been imported into iPhoto, and thus will be missing from the merged library. If this is the case, you’ll just need to either export those photos from the first Photos library that you migrated, then import them into the second library, or just reimport/redownload them from your iPhone or wherever they may have come from.

Use iCloud to merge your content

The other technique that can be used here is to merge everything together by uploading it into your iCloud Photo Library. This will work with any Photos library, whether it was migrated from iPhoto originally or not, and can be used to merge libraries on different Macs (though they must be using the same iCloud account). The basic workflow for this is:

  1. First, you’ll want to choose which one of your libraries you want to ultimately be the merged library, that will ultimately hold all the content.
  2. Open that library in Photos, open the preferences window, and click the “Use as System Photo Library” button. Then, in the iCloud section of the preferences, enable iCloud Photo Library. Make sure that the “Download Original to this Mac” option is enabled.
  3. Photos will start syncing your library with iCloud, uploading all of the full size photos from your Photos library.
  4. If you already have other devices with iCloud Photo Library enabled (e.g. your iPhone or iPad), in addition to uploading all the photos in your Photos library, it will also download any photos that have already been synced with those devices.
  5. Once that library has been fully synced (this may take quite some time if the library is large, even multiple days), open a different library in Photos, and repeat the same steps. The content from the second library will be added to what’s already in iCloud Photo Library.
  6. By default, syncing the second library with iCloud will also download all the content from the first library into the second library onto your Mac. However, if you enable the “Optimize Mac Storage” option in the iCloud preferences in Photos, that will only initially download smaller thumbnail versions of each photo, which can speed up this part of the process and use less disk space and bandwidth.
  7. If you have more than two libraries, repeat the same steps for each library you want to merge.
  8. Once you’ve processed the rest of the libraries, open the first one up again, enable iCloud Photo Library on it, and let it redownload all the full sized photos that were uploaded from the other libraries.

Merge Photos Library Mac

While this is an effective way to get your libraries merged together, there are a few significant downsides:

  1. If you have a significant amount of photos that you need to merge together, it’s going to take a lot of time, bandwidth, and disk space to perform all of this uploading and downloading from iCloud. For really large collections, you may be looking at a project spanning multiple days or even weeks.
  2. iCloud only provides 5 GB of storage for free, so if your collection exceeds that (which is not difficult), you’ll need to purchase one of Apple’s larger storage plans, at least while you’re doing all the syncing. If you’re not interested in using iCloud Photo Library in the long run, it is possible to bump up your storage for a short time, remove the photos from iCloud once you’ve gotten everything downloaded back to your Mac, then move your account back down to the basic storage plan.
  3. If you have an iOS device also synced with iCloud, it will start to download all the content that you’re uploading, which can sometimes eat up bandwidth and battery life. You may want to enable the “optimize storage” option in the Photos section of the Settings app on your iOS device before starting, or just turn off iCloud Photo Library altogether if you want to prevent that.
  4. There are a few limitations to what will sync through iCloud, which you can read about here

Merge A Photo Library Onto My Mac Free

Those are the main two techniques that can be used to merge your photos together into a single Photos library. Each of them has its downsides, but hopefully if you want to get all your photos in one place, one of this options will work for you.