How to Upload Photos Into My Mac Photos
The Photos library used in macOS acts like a file when information technology'southward actually a package, a special macOS container for holding many objects together. This prevents usa from accidentally moving items out of it, renaming files that need to accept fixed names, or modifying documents that shouldn't be touched. It also makes the Photos library and like libraries and app-associated file packages easier to motion.
If y'all're migrating from i Mac to another—or just want to movement your Photos library from 1 to another—you can simply re-create the file. On the new Mac, hold downward the Choice key while launching Photos and you lot can select the library you copied over. That's the entire process.
It tin can be a piddling easier or a niggling more complicated if yous utilize iCloud Photos. iCloud Photos lets you sync images and videos between your Mac and iCloud and from iCloud among your other devices. While iCloud always keeps the original resolution version of any media on its cloud servers, you tin can opt on each of your devices whether to store "optimized" media or total-resolution versions.
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With the optimized option, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS stores thumbnail previews. If you try to admission the image or video to view it at full size or resolution, your device downloads the corresponding media from iCloud. Photos retains the cached full-resolution version indefinitely, deleting it just when it needs to free up space every bit storage gets tight. Those deletions happen automatically, leaving the thumbnail in identify.
When you want to copy or motion your Photos library from ane Mac to another with iCloud Photos enabled, that presents you with two choices:
- If you accept optimized media enabled on your current Mac, you tin simply employ the aforementioned iCloud business relationship on your new Mac and set up Photos up for either optimized or full-resolution style. Photos automatically performs all the downloads necessary. This tin take a while and eat a lot of Internet bandwidth.
- If you lot set Photos to keep total-resolution downloads of all images on your current Mac, you tin can likewise enable Photos for iCloud syncing as in the previous signal. Just you tin choose instead to re-create your Photos library as if you weren't using iCloud Photos at all.
That second option plus copying works because yous have a full copy of all images present in your iCloud storage. It can be a better choice if yous have a Photos library with tens of gigabytes of images or more paired with depression-speed broadband (in the tens of megabits per second) or a monthly usage cap across which you pay overage fees or have your service throttled to a lower speed.
If you copy the Photos library in that scenario and then enable iCloud Photos on the new Mac, Photos will notwithstanding appear to perform a synchronization performance. However, my analysis while testing is that merely a comparison is performed instead of a full download or upload of images. Since the images will be identical in iCloud and in the Photos library, they should all lucifer instead of requiring massive throughput consumption and bandwidth use.
I complicating factor for both kinds of copying has to practice with referenced media: these are included in Photos as links to images or videos stored elsewhere on the Mac using Photos. These are not synced via iCloud Photos and won't be copied with a not-synced Photos library, either. Read this commodity on working with referenced media.
This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Jack.
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Source: https://www.macworld.com/article/353744/copy-photos-library.html