How many photos are too many to import at once?

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Level 1

8 points

How many photos are too many to import at once?

Hello, I really need some help with my too large collection of photos and videos. Everything is a mess right now.

Our goal is to get all the family photos into one library synced in iCloud.

We have scanned all disks and different libraries (iPhoto, Aperture and Photos) for photos to import to the new library stored on a large disk. Approximately 2TB of files are collected. I have extracted the folders with images from older photos and aperture libraries to reduce the work load on my computers.

I've tried to import the files in one operation. But my computers has crashed in the attempt. I'm currently running on a Mac mini late 2012 i7, Catalina, with 8GB of RAM. I've also tried it on my newer MacBook Pro with i5, Ventura, and 8GB RAM. The MacBook Pro crashed and rebooted and the Photos app on the Mac mini just froze.

Is there a better way for me to create this large library?

Is photos capable of handling such huge amount of pictures?

Would you guys recommend me to upload everything to iCloud or is there a better way?

Thanks for all help and suggestions !!

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 23, 2022 4:44 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,918 points

Oct 23, 2022 4:46 AM in response to LandedGeir

The hardware is going to be the problem. Personally, I would try importing in batches of approx 2k or so items at time.

How many items are you talking about in total?

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Answer 2

LandedGeir Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 23, 2022 4:50 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks,

I think there's more than 140,000 items in total. Many of them are duplicates, so we hope to get down to less than 100,000 items.

By the way, is there a way to preserve old photo books and albums?

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,531 points

Oct 23, 2022 5:27 AM in response to LandedGeir

By the way, is there a way to preserve old photo books and albums?

It is too late to save your photo books, if your Macs are running Catalina and Ventura. You should have saved the books as PDF files, while you still had a Mac with an older system version, where you could run iPhoto or Aperture and export the books as PDF files. The support for Apple Books and other print objects has been removed from Photos completely when macOs 10.14 Mojave came out.

The albums and smart albums you created in iPhoto or aperture will be migrated to albums in Photos.

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How many photos are too many to import at once?

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