Time to upgrade my 2010 mac mini. Will have to pull my 500GB of photos from my 2010. Once this is done, will I be able to sync (upload) photos from my iphones and ipads seamlessly? I will leave the new mini on at all times if this will work. Coming from iphoto, have no idea how good photos is. I have no desire to use icloud. Appreciate any help on this.
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Photos ?
- Thread starter bearcatrp
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If you want automatic and truly seamless synchronization between your Mac, your iPhone, and your iPad you will need to start using iCloud. Period.
I totally agree with @mj_ . While I understand that many people either don't like paying a subscription for decent size iCloud storage, or perhaps are concerned about privacy issues with storing their photo's in the cloud. This is one of the strengths of the Apple ecosystem and allows you to store your data in the cloud and use any of your Apple devices to access it.
I have over 500GB of photo's stored in Photo's iCloud library. They are a combination of RAW Canon 5D images, as well as PSD files and iPhone Photo's. I have a Master (Full resolution) library stored on an SSD connected to my iMac, I can view lower resolution files on my iPad and iPhone. I often use my iPad to curate my library to delete images I don't want to keep. Any new photos taken will sync back to all my devices. It all works seamlessly.
With Apple One, it is a pretty cost effective service if you use other Apple subscriptions apart from iCloud already. Trying to sync your photo's without iCloud is going to require some sort of manual process, with the risk of losing your photos on your iPhone if it dies before you remember to transfer your photos, and certainly difficult to sync between all your devices.
As I take new photos I then airdrop my photos from iPhone to iPad and to two Macs and then copy them to an external for backup which can be a pain. I have my photos in folders by month and year - if I switched iCloud photos would the folder setup be retained?
Im sure years ago I tried it and just ended up with thousands of photos that ignored my curated system
Im sure years ago I tried it and just ended up with thousands of photos that ignored my curated system
If you have your photos by month and year, why not just use the Photo's App as this is how you can view your library?
If it is because you are concerned that your photos are hidden in some proprietary library, then this is not exactly true. You can easily can access to your original photos (unedited) by right clicking on your Photo's Library in finder and choose show package contents, from there navigate to your originals folder and then in the subfolders will be your original files.
A word of caution is don't move or edit your photos by digging directly in the Photo's library via the finder, but at least you know that if you ever needed to access the original files it is possible to copy them to another folder without the need to export them, in case the library becomes corrupted.
However to answer your specific question, in theory you could move your current photo folders into an iCloud folder, This would allow the folder to sync to any other device using the same iCloud account. However the Photo's App on iOS devices would not be able to see these files, and potentially you would be duplicating the storage of these files on your iOS device if that was the device on which where the photo was originally taken (it would be in the iOS photo''s library and in the iCloud library that was synced to your phone). For this reason I would not recommend it. In addition iCloud Photo's has specific functionality to manage the size of your photos library on iOS by only holding a small compressed file until you need to download the full resolution image for editing.
Hello. Thanks for your detailed reply. Its appreciated.
I do use the photos app on Mac, using the month and year system. I think Ill leave not as it is if the iPhone/iPad photos app wouldn't see the photos. Cheers
I do use the photos app on Mac, using the month and year system. I think Ill leave not as it is if the iPhone/iPad photos app wouldn't see the photos. Cheers
My biggest concern is keeping the meta data when transferring. Read multiple sites and seems using the export function to a empty drive, then importing to the new mac mini is the safest. Some sites state let the new photos import and should be good to go. My main concern is keeping the dates on each photo. Guess i will find out next week when it arrives. Sure cringed spending $1300 on a mini but its the only computer I trust doing banking stuff. Once done, need to figure out what to do with my 2010 mini. Still works but has its issues. Could remove the DVD drive and install a 2TB drive and use it as a movie server for my apple tv so my gaming PC is free of that.
The easiest way is to use migration assistant. Have your old 2020 still connected to the network, during the setup process of your new Mac it will ask if you want to transfer apps and data from your old Mac. You just point migration assistant to your old Mac and it will move everything across. It will convert your existing iPhoto library into the new Photo’s format and will preserve your existing meta data.
if you prefer to do a clean install, then once you have your new Mac setup, copy your iPhoto Libary onto your new Mini’s SSD ( i suggest you put it in the pictures folder). When you open the photo’s app for the first time, hold down the option key, this will allow you to point the library to your old iPhoto library. Again it will convert the library into the new Photos format and preserve your meta data.
have done the migration stuff in the past with mac pros. Not a good outcome. Bringing old data to a newer system. From what I have read so far, export photos to an external drive, then import to newer system. More time consuming but will work. Don't want to chance getting older programs that run slower than original software to run good with current OS.
Migration Assistant did used to have problems but it is rock solid now. You can opt to not migrate the apps and do that yourself while still migrating your files and settings.
Found out then 2010 mini could not handle exporting a 366 GB iPhoto database. Had to copy the file to the new mini, 4 hrs, then export to a external drive. Finally got my photos imported. Some errors. Have learned in the past iPhoto misses some photos so will do it again to insure all my photos get imported.