Moving from Mac back to Windows (apple photos)

Tech Talk Windows
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So, I bought a new laptop a Lenovo Idea Pad 5 pro 14", on sale from Costco last month. It met all my strict requirements (user replaceable SSD, full size SD card reader, USB A and C ports). The laptop it’s replacing is a 7-year-old MacBook Pro 13 retina. I can move most of the data without a problem but moving my photos from Apple Photos (with albums intact if possible) is the only thing I’m having trouble figuring out. Has anyone done this or has advice on how to do that?

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I don’t know if there is going to be much to help you, because the Mac app is very closed. This older article has some very general advice though:

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It is the same for moving from pretty much any photo management system to another, you always lose the albums and edits, and with Apple Photo, names etc.

I went from Lightroom to CaptureOne to Darkroom to Apple Photos, each time I had to recreate the albums and re-do edits.

4

This is the reason I don’t use any photo management features in any app. I maintain a directory structure of my originals and completed pics. Then sync them to things like Google Photos/OneDrive/Amazon etc. for easy access.

Do you know yet what you are going to use on the Lenovo? Some apps like Lightroom have migration tools from Apple Photos that converts albums to folders.

There are also some AppleScripts that say they will export a library and retain the albums as folders.

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That is essentially what I have always done. It made recreating the albums in the management software much easier.

I still save a copy to the drive first, then import into the management software, or import into the management software and still define a folder on the drive for the album, when importing

6

I’m leaning towards Luminar as I own both Luminar 3 and 4 haven’t tried Neo yet but once I transfer into luminar moving between versions will be trivial.

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Good choice :ukraine: I have 4, AI and Neo.

I wouldn’t attempt to import a complete Photos library into Luminar TBH if it’s large. The Luminar catalog can get a bit buggy IME if I have too many pics in it. I just have everything on the hard drive in folders, and then add the folder to Luminar that I’m working on. Every quarter or so I create a new folder.