Importing from Apple Photos

[GCockburn]

i am abandoning Apple Photos and considering Adobe Lightroom.   I have 100,000 sorted and keyworded photos.

Is the Photos to Lightrom process easy?  Will Lightroom import the keywords and keep the sorting  hierarchy?  And will it use the dates of the photos or create new dates for the import?   All insights welcome!

[Just Shoot Me]

What do you mean by Sorted?

There was a plugin or system to import the Aperture and iPhoto library but none that I know of for the Apple Photos app.

There is a manual way to get your images out of the Photos package folder and then import them into LR but you would be working with the original files which I don't think hold any of the keywords or any type of sorting into events or the like.

[GCockburn]

By sorted i only mean organized into folder and subfolders.   (i was trying to not use the Photos lexicon of 'albums' etc.)

The Aperture/Photos shift has been my big problem.   I put it off for as long as i could.   I imported my Aperture file into Photos 3 months ago and i am extremely unhappy with the architecture and lack of flexibility of Photos.   However if import my now older Aperture library i will have to redo the las 3 months of imports, keywords and sorting work i ahem done.   It is very frustrating.   

The volume of my library and potential loss of meta data makes the option doing it manually unappealing.

I see you have linked an article below.  I will have read.  

Thank yo for your help and quick repsonse.

[Just Shoot Me]

So you manually saved your images to folders YOU created on your drive and didn't let Photos place them into the Default Pacakage folder into the hidden Masters folder in that package folder.

If that is correct then you have a couple of options.

1. Just import all those folders into the LR catalog using the Add option at the top of the LR import dialog. But that will more than likely wipe out any keywords and edits you have applied to your images (Not sure as I never did this, I use a Win PC now and stopped using a Mac several years ago and when I did use a Mac I never used the Apple iPhoto, Photos or Aperture Apps).

2. Export all of them from the Photos app as TIFF files, if they were originally RAW files, or JPGs if they were originally JPG files. This will take up more space on your drive but will preserve the keywords and edits you have made.

Do you still have the Aperture Library file on your system? If you do you might be able to import that into LR. Again I'm not sure as I've never had to do this.

[Just Shoot Me · Accepted solution]

Read this thread for more details.

Getting photos out of Mac Photo into LR 6?