Extremely Slow Transfer of Photos from one Library to Another

TidBITS Talk
1

Two Part Question:

Way back in the Intel era, I used to be able to transfer photos from my lovely bride’s iPhotos library on her MacBook Pro to the master Photos Library on my Mac Pro. That function became unavailable several years ago. Her laptop is running 12.x and my Studio is running 14.X. If anyone knows how to connect directly, I’ld love to know!

We got around that by creating a “shared” folder in iPhoto and Photos, dragging photos in her library to that folder which transferred them up to iCloud, then a minute later they would appear in the shared folder on my Mac where I could select them and transfer them to my Library. The downside is the upload and download times which with a cable modem, wasn’t really a problem.

As of a few days ago, her upload to iCloud continues to go quickly, but they don’t appear in my shared folder for at least 30 minutes.

I have tested our Internet connection and it is quite speedy as normal. I have restarted both computers, the cable modem and the wireless router. Her laptop is connected wireless (and transfers fast); my Studio is hard wired to the router and the download of photos is quite slow. All browsers report fast upload and download so it would appear to have something to do with iCloud. Both computers have signed out of iCloud and back in again with no difference.

Any clues as to what might be going on or tips as to what to try would be most appreciated.

2

The Powerphotos app can transfer photos and, importantly, albums between photo libraries. I used to use it between Macs, as you want to do. However I have found this does not work for an iMac still running Mojave and a Silicon Macbook running Sonoma - apparently due to library incompatibility.

3

Thank you for that tip. As her photo library is quite a bit older than mine, I suspect I will run into the same problem as you describe. But I will check out PowerPhotos.

4

Downloaded PowerPhotos and gave it a try. I am able to navigate from my Studio to the laptop photo library, but when attempting to add that library, I get a “you do not permission to access this folder” error. I have done a “get info” on the library and changed permission for “all” to “read and write” with no change. Same for the enclosing “Pictures” folder with no change.

Perhaps this is similar to your finding that the current PowerPhotos doesn’t work properly attempting to access a much older photos album.