Migrating from Apple Photos; need help!

[steve159]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom version: 3.2.1 [ 20200403-1047-0e59df2 ] (Apr 3 2020)

Operating System

1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra

I'd like to migrate my 85,000+ Apple Photos library to Lightroom cloud version. I did a test library of 2000 photos that worked fine with one huge snag: edited photos did not migrate. What gives?! I don't expect the edits to be editable, but I do expect to see the edited version paired with the original.

Q1: are edits (to jpeg originals) supposed to migrate? If yes, what did I perhaps do wrong for them to get skipped? I even created a new Photos library with just 3 new images that I edited and migrated that, producing just the originals, not the edits in Lr.

Q2: is there a recommended solution to somehow import the edits after migration and then also somehow pair them or stack them with their originals? Even if half of my photos are unedited, I don't want to see 40,000 photo pairs in Lr. Maybe there's a script to stack the edits with the originals, if not pair them, which is preferred?

Q3: If both of those answers are no, then what did you all do to overcome this? Do you simply say good-bye to all those thousands of edited images and start from scratch? I really don't want to be maintaining 2 different apps and libraries.

I really want to commit to Lightroom but my gut is telling me that this is a deal-breaker and I should just cancel my trial and subscribe to Apple's 2TB storage plan (same as 1TB with Lr) and get the same cloud service with lesser image editing functionality, but with my library intact.

Q4: I've mostly been trying to figure this out on my own, so I have limited screen time with the Lr tools, but a final question: on the iPad app it seems to very cumbersome to delete photos, taking like 3 or so taps to do so. Is that normal or is there a swipe or shortcut that I haven't found? Or am I really supposed to use the reject flag and then delete all the rejects at some time? Being new to Lr I just don't know the workflow for culling duds.

Thanks for humoring my newbie question. I really DO want this to work so I can proceed with Lightroom like the rest of you.

- Steve -

As an aside, I'm shocked at how little information exists online about this migrate feature and what to expect. Nowhere on Adobe's site does it say jpeg edits do not migrate. In fact it implies they DO migrate by saying that raw edits, specifically, do not migrate.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Steve, welcome to the forum!

Q1: are edits (to jpeg originals) supposed to migrate? If yes, what did I perhaps do wrong for them to get skipped? I even created a new Photos library with just 3 new images that I edited and migrated that, producing just the originals, not the edits in Lr.

Apple Photos stores its edits non-destructively for all file types, so there's no way that Lightroom can import the edited versions, only the originals. I'll flag up the Adobe documentation for updating. It is documented in my Edit Like a Pro book, if that helps!

Q2: is there a recommended solution to somehow import the edits after migration and then also somehow pair them or stack them with their originals? Even if half of my photos are unedited, I don't want to see 40,000 photo pairs in Lr. Maybe there's a script to stack the edits with the originals, if not pair them, which is preferred?

You can export the edited photos from Photos and them import them into Lightroom, but there's not an automated way to stack them yet.

Q3: If both of those answers are no, then what did you all do to overcome this? Do you simply say good-bye to all those thousands of edited images and start from scratch? I really don't want to be maintaining 2 different apps and libraries.

Most people migrating from Photos haven't done much, if any editing, so I have to admit it's the first time I've been asked. I think most people use the opportunity to practice their editing in Lightroom.

Q4: I've mostly been trying to figure this out on my own, so I have limited screen time with the Lr tools, but a final question: on the iPad app it seems to very cumbersome to delete photos, taking like 3 or so taps to do so. Is that normal or is there a swipe or shortcut that I haven't found? Or am I really supposed to use the reject flag and then delete all the rejects at some time? Being new to Lr I just don't know the workflow for culling duds.

Yep, reject and then delete in one go would be the usual workflow. Less chance of accidentally deleting a good photo that way!

 

[steve159]

Thanks for the responses.

2 followup questions:
F1: Is there a way to select only the edited photos in Apple Photos in order to export them as jpegs to then import into Lr? I'd be willing to pay for a script or utility that would make this easier.
F2: Regarding using the reject flag, let's say I have 3 similar photos in a sequence and quickly realize #2 is the worst. So I reject it, but how do I quickly go back and forth between #1 and #3 without seeing #2 in between? It's still there until I delete all the rejects in a batch. I'm just trying to figure out the workflow for culling.

And a new question: I can't find a list of keywords that I have used, besides doing a search. And I don't see a way to assign shortcuts to frequently used keywords. Is keywording half-baked or am I missing something?

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I haven't spent much time in Apple Photos, but it seems you might be able to create a smart album set to Photo is Edited.

For the flagging, I'd set the filters to hide rejected photos (show just flagged/unflagged) so they disappear from view when you mark as rejected, but you can turn off the filter to see them again if you make a mistake.

Keywords... no, you haven't missed anything there. The cloudy apps do a lot of hidden automated tagging, so you may not need keywords as much as you did previously.

 

[steve159]

Thanks a lot. Very helpful. YOU ROCK!!!