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Mostly Adequate

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2020
13
16
UK
I have an old 2011 iMac which I need to pass on, but there’s an issue with iPhoto/Photos. The iPhoto library on that old Mac goes back to my original G4 Mac, being transferred to subsequent Macs as I upgraded. However, there was a spanner in the works when Apple replaced iPhoto with Photos.

I have long since upgraded to an 2019 iMac; the Photos library on the 2019 iMac is the same my iPhone’s Photos feed, for some reason, while the Photos library on my 2011 iMac hasn’t been updated since December 2016, coincidentally when I got an iPhone (6).

Basically, before I wipe the old 2011 iMac, is there a way of transferring the Photos or iPhoto library to my current iMac, without in process overwriting the current 2019 iMac’s Photos library?

Also, is there a way of extracting the image files from my old iMac’s Photos library? All of my digital photos from 2012 onwards I have stored as raw JPEG image files as well as putting them into iPhoto/Photos, but unfortunately few images from before then I have as JPEGs separate from iPhoto or Photos. And I’d rather keep my 2004-2012 digital photographs.
 
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