Consolidating 5x Photos libraries from 3 computers over 20 years

[cowbellallen]

My wife has a ton of photos she's taken over the last 20 years, and we're in a weird predicament as a result.

Because there wasn't much storage space on her Macbooks she exported her Photos library (might have even been iPhone at the time) to an external drive, and just kept doing this multiple times as she ran out of space. Then she'd get a new Macbook and start a new fresh photos album.

On top of that, I'd grown worried about the hard drives failing, so I started creating backups of them onto other drives. So now we have the same drives copied multiple times over and no clue which photos are on which.

I'd love to consolidate everything, remove duplicates, while keeping the metadata intact so we know where and when a photo was taken. I'm just not entirely sure where to begin. It also sound like I might need one mega large disk to be the staging ground for all of this, right?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[m..]

You can merge libraries like this:
Import photos from another library in Photos on Mac
Hopefully there won't be too many duplicates (if photos recognises they are the same picture when importing)
but you can remove duplicates
Remove duplicate photos in Photos on Mac

You can add up the size of all libraries to find the most you will need but with duplicates I expect you will probably end up with a lot of space left over after they are removed(but room to grow I guess). Maybe start merging one library at a time on the disks you have.

But when you do get a new drive buy two the same size and keep one an exact duplicate of the other with an app like Carbon Copy Cloner (and preferably a third copy stored separately in case of fire or theft or something)

I'm currently helping someone store all their media files and that is even more complex because they seem to just be randomly scattered over external drives.

 

[skyhawkmatthew]

I undertook a project that sounds similar to yours a year or two ago. The tool you need is called PowerPhotos: https://fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

You'll need to choose one, or create a new, library to be the final home of everything. As you surmised it will need to be on a fairly large disk to ensure there will be enough space. You can then start merging the libraries one by one into the main library until everything's together, and clear out the duplicates as you go. I did it in batches of a few thousand photos just to be careful and it all went perfectly smoothly.

 

[MacGizmo]

Organizing files in the Photos and Music apps on macOS is a daunting task – much more difficult than it should be.

@skyhawkmatthew offers the best option for Photos here, in my opinion. The app costs a little, but it's so worth it!

 

[hirsthirst]

I have had good results over the years with tools from https://brattoo.com/photosfinder/

I'm about to consolidate three libraries from an old iMac onto one new Mac Mini - I have my own "Archive 2002-2012", a current library "2013 - to date", and a copy of my Mum's own library.

I'm planning to keep them all separate, and don't want the first two 'mixed-in with' my own current library, where it would sync to iPad and iPhone, so I'm working that out rn; perhaps by creating two further Users which each default to their own library. Don't know yet.