My lovely bride takes a lot of photos and they are downloaded to her Mac laptop. I keep the “master” library on my Mac, where keywords are added and files backed up.
In the old iPhoto days, I could directly connect my iPhotos to her iPhotos via sharing and transfer her pictures/movies across the LAN to my library, retaining all the associated information along with each picture.
I have been unable to duplicate this process since we both updated to Photos while running Sequoia. Sharing our libraries now appears to require having to upload the photos to the cloud and download them from the cloud, rather then the previous method of transferring across the LAN.
I could export all of her photos to a thumb drive for transfer, but then they all have the same creation date.
Is there any way to connect both photos libraries so as to transfer photos across the LAN?
Thanks for the tip, but it didn’t work. I think we’re on the right track, just some permissions or something need to be set correctly.
From my Mac, I mounted my wife’s Mac onto my desktop via “Finder/Go/Connect to server”. Holding the Option key while opening my Photos, I selected “other libraries”, navigated to her Photos library and selected “open”. I received an error message saying that “the library could not be opened”. This happened with her Photos running or not.
Both Macs are running Sequoia 15.7.5. “iCloud Photos” is turned off on both Photos libraries. Both Macs have File Sharing, Media Sharing and Screen Sharing turned on.
Good to know, but really hoping to not need it. I’m more interested in not having to upload 1,000 photos to the cloud just to have to download them again to the second Mac.
Did you connect to wife’s laptop using her username/password?
I did. Finder/Go/Connect to Server/Browse/Select her laptop/Connect As/Registered User/sign in with her name and password. That mounts her SSD on my Desktop.
I’m wondering if that might be the source of the incompatibility as her Photos is under her name and my Photos is under my name.
I figured that was the case, but I thought I’d ask. One thing you could try, though, is to copy the entire Photo library (bundle) to your hard drive, and then try from there.
Ladd wrote: “I did. Finder/Go/Connect to Server/Browse/Select her laptop/Connect As/Registered User/sign in with her name and password. That mounts her SSD on my Desktop.”
With the SSD mounted on the desktop, what happens if
you click one time on the drive icon to select it
invoke the “get info” box for the drive (command-i)
scroll to the bottom and click the lock (try your wife’s password)
if there is a box “ignore ownership on this volume”, put a checkmark into it
With her SSD icon on my desktop, doing a “get info” opens up a window showing that *I* have read/write access and Everyone has No Access. Attempting to temporarily change “Everyone” to “read/write” was met with the error message “you don’t have the priviledges necessary to change these permissions.
I’ll try temporarily changing those permissions on her computer tomorrow morning.
PowerPhotos is the top app for moving photos between libraries. So long as the two Macs are same (or similar?) versions of macOS, PowerPhotos can open both a) your local library and b) the library on the other Mac using file sharing. You can then move photos from one to the other or migrate the remote library into the local library. (You could also copy the remote library to the local Mac and open both locally.)
Using PowerPhotos will keep the photo library metadata intact (as well as EXIF metadata stored in each photo). Other methods either explicitly or implicitly do two steps - export photos from one library and import into the other. The export loses the library metadata (keywords, folders, etc.).
I suggest you make sure you have a backup of both libraries before you start making changes and that you make a few trials to get a feel for what you can do with PowerPhotos.
Apple’s method: Import photos from another library in Photos on Mac just uses Photos. Read it carefully, but essentially you copy the remote library to your the local Mac, open both libraries using Photos app, and transfer photos. You will lose some metadata (e.g. keywords), but doesn’t require third party software.
Ladd. You might have her check permissions on her Library with Get Info and then open it up to you; add you in the list. Then as someone stated, unlock the Folder and Ignore Permissions on this Folder. She will have to work with permissions and open them up to you by signing in. Hope this helps. And, I really like Powerphhotos, too. Patrick
I just checked her Photos Library File and everyone (her, staff, everyone) has read/write access. I don’t see “ignore permissions” anywhere.
I have downloaded PowerPhotos and attempted to open her Photos library across the network. I get the error message “The Library could not be opened. It appears to have been restored from a Time Machine backup. Open the Library in Photos to complete the restoration.”
This is confusing as her Photos Library has never been restored from a Time Machine backup and it has been opened multiple time in her Photos App, so what restoration needs to be done?
And her Photos library is 90Gb in size so, copying it across the network to my Mac is going to be awkward at best.
The Powerphotos error might be due to the photo libraries being created/upgraded with different versions of macOS. Although I see from the first post this is unlikely (you both used Sequoia).
There doesn’t seem to be an easy fix for this as I suspect recent security “improvements” to macOS have introduced errors opening remote photo libraries. Hopefully the Powerphotos people are working on it.
Update: Just read these tips for Powerphotos - see the bit about the “system library” as it may be relevant:
Ladd. One can also right click on photo librarry and have it show contents then search in original files and when you find her pics that you want, you should be able to drag those to a new Folder on desktop, check it’s permissions, then load to your flash drive or whateveer. There might be loss of metadata and such but last resort is last resort. Patrick
This is why I never use a database to store photos. I put them in folders by year, then subfolders by YEAR-MN-DY Description. You can add the photos to you Photos but still have them in a logical and easy to transfer and backup spot.
I just attempted to use PowerPhotos to connect to library on another Mac and was defeated by the last two paragraphs in Accessing a Photos library on another Mac . In my case different versions of macOS, but even if macOS versions had been same one was the system library. Not as easy as I imagined!
