Merging libraries
What to do if your pics aren’t all in the same place
Any image files that you have lying around in folders can be imported into Photos and added to its library, as discussed opposite. But what if you have more than one Photos Library? That’s likely when different members of the family have their own Macs. If you use iCloud Family Sharing, your shared Family album can host a common set of pics, but that doesn’t quite address the need to combine all your memories physically in one safe place. The good news is that it’s possible to add photos from one Photos Library to another. The bad news is the way it works isn’t totally seamless – there will still be some work on your part.
Apple doesn’t let you merge libraries as such. Instead, you export all your photos from one library, then import them into the other. The catch is that you have to decide whether to export the original versions or those with any edits you’ve made within Photos. You could export twice to get both, but when we tried this, Photos failed to detect the duplicates on import, creating a vastly
inflated library. Albums aren’t included either, so you’ll need to organise your pics again.
Master library
Start by ensuring all the libraries you want to combine are on drives connected to your main Mac. Decide which will be the master library to which you add photos from the others. Launch the Photos app while holding down the å key and choose one of the other libraries. You’ll see only the photos it contains. With Photos selected at the top left so that all the pics are visible, press ç+A to select all, then go to File > Export.
Choose either Export Items or Export Unmodified Original for Items. In the former case, to avoid any loss of quality, choose TIFF or PNG as the format, setting Size to Full Size and Color Profile to Original. When exporting originals (the only way to preserve any raw images you may have), you can opt to keep keywords you’ve added in Photos by ticking Exporting IPTC as XMP.
Once your export is complete, repeat for any other libraries (quitting Photos and launching again with å). Finally, launch Photos with your master library and use File > Import to add all the pics you exported.