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TastyRoadKill

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 12, 2020
2
0
I was a mac user for many years and built up a reasonably large photo library over the years. When apature was retired I dicided to build my own PC and moved to lightroom on windows. The problem is that my whole family have iPhones and most of our photos are taken using them these days (my nikon d850 doesn't see much use any more). My photos are stored in adobe cloud and iPhone photos are uploaded to that but it just isn't as seamless as uploading iPhone photos is to apple photos. I also back up my iPhone photos to apple iclioud (don't really need to but never turned it off).

Anyway, all very messy and I'm thinking of getting a mac mini and go back to Apple photos (and not continue with PC and lightroom as I just don't use it's advanced editing features). So have a few questions.

1. Can I import my PC lightroom photo library to a mac mini apple photo library?
2. Given I also have about ¾ of this library already in my apple cloud account, will I get massive duplication? Or will copies be recognised and grouped? Or can thisbe managed with a third party app.
3. Could I also use the mac mini to run a pkex server and roon server ( happy to add some external drives to the mac mini).

Many thanks
 

HDFan

Contributor
Jun 30, 2007
6,666
2,906
3. Could I also use the mac mini to run a pkex server and roon server ( happy to add some external drives to the mac mini).

Yes

will I get massive duplication?

A Lightroom workflow usually involves renaming the files on import so that you don't have 500 IMG_0001.jpg files. Makes it difficult to find pictures. If you have renamed them it would likely be a problem.

Otherwise I'd just try some small directories to see if you get issues. That way you can easily delete them. If it seems to work, then move on to larger directories. Be sure to backup your library before each import so you can restore if there are problems.

Did a simple test and it seemed to work for files that were already in the library

Screen Shot 2020-09-12 at 8.13.37 PM.png

The message changes if you have multiple photos:

Screen Shot 2020-09-12 at 8.17.56 PM.png

with photo that haven't been imported listed below in a separate section.


Don't know how all of this would affect iCloud library. Hopefully someone who has tried this can comment.
 
Last edited:
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