How to transfer my PC's photos to my Mac?

Greenone · Mar 13, 2006

Hi -

I have the 1.67 GHz, 1.5 GB Powerbook G4 (the last one that came out before the new Intel chip one).

We have a lot of photos on my husband's PC, using the JASC photo software. I'm not sure if the software can only be used with a PC or not (anyone here know if you can simply put in the software disc and click on a "Mac" or "Pc" option? I'm pretty ignorant about computer stuff in general, as you can see.

What happens if the mac laptop will accept a disc of transferred photos but each photo has some file name permanently attached to it? Might that happen? Will the laptop recognize it? Can I transfer such photos into the photo software that the mac came with?

Finally, once we've figured out how to transfer the photos (or my favorites anyway) from the PC to the mac, how simple will it be to just transfer the future photos straight from my camera? It's a Canon A70 Powershot, in case that means anything to anyone.

Thanks very much!

calebjohnston · Mar 13, 2006

I can help you on some of this.

To move your pictures from your PC to your mac, there are a few options. If you have an external harddrive, you can put the pictures on there and then plug it into your mac and drag them into your pictures folder. If not, you can burn them to a CD - don't worry, your mac will read the CD just fine. Simply drag them off the CD to your pictures folder.

As far as taking pictures off your camera and putting them onto your mac...

The first time you plug the camera in, iPhoto should open, and it will ask you if you want to use it to import your camera photos as default. Select yes and from then on, all you have to do is plug it in, and click import - extremely easy.

By the way, once all your pictures are on your mac, open iPhoto and go to File, and then add to library, and then import all your pictures. It's quite a good program for organizing them considering it's free.

Greenone · Mar 13, 2006

Thank you so much Caleb - that was very helpful! I'll let you know how it goes, whenever we finally attempt to get it done.

calebjohnston · Mar 13, 2006

No problem. Feel free to post back in here if you have any problems - I'm constantly checking in all over here.

laidbackliam · Mar 13, 2006

question, don't mean to hijack the thread, but on a related note, with no external hard drive, and my network not wanting to cooperate, how in the world do i get my music over to my new macbook?

puckhead193 · Mar 13, 2006

when i switched back to macs i used my ipod to get pictures, music etc to my PB. If u plug in your ipod to your PC it should be in the my computer area, i just dragged the photos music etc to the ipod plugged it in on my Mac it showed up on my desktop and i just dragged everything where i wanted it.

mad jew · Mar 13, 2006

I concur, use your iPod, laidbackliam.

iPhil · Mar 13, 2006

mad jew said:
I concur, use your iPod, laidbackliam.

Or FW way if the PC has FW

ethernet PC to MBP too

Greenone · Mar 13, 2006

Damn...too bed I don't have an ipod (or an external hard drive)!

Phil, what's FW?

Rocky3478 · Mar 13, 2006

Greenone said:
Damn...too bed I don't have an ipod (or an external hard drive)!

Phil, what's FW?

FireWire.

iPhil · Mar 14, 2006

Thanks Rocky for answering .. i was half - asleep @11 pm pst last night

Applespider · Mar 14, 2006

Greenone, I'll try to answer the questions that haven't been yet.

I'm assuming your husband's JASC software is Paint Shop Pro and there's no Mac version of that so no, the disc wouldn't work and offer you the option (very few do - most applications come on separate discs/packaging if they offer both versions)

The file names that you use on the PC will carry over onto the Mac - so Birthday.jpg or DSC345.jpg will stay the same. The easiest way of transferring (whether you do it by connecting the computers together, using a wireless network or putting them on CDs/DVDs) is to burn each folder of pictures from the PC (or just the ones you want) in whatever filing system you use there. So perhaps 'Vacation 2005', 'Christmas 2005', 'Baby's 1st Birthday' - then drag each folder individually (on the Mac) onto your iPhoto icon. It will create a film roll with the folder's name on it in iPhoto with each picture in it.

laidbackliam · Mar 14, 2006

iphil said:
Or FW way if the PC has FW

ethernet PC to MBP too

you can connect a pc and a mac together through firewire?

really?

i'd use my ipod, but i had to send it into best buy as it broke (their fault this time, when they sent it back after replacing the hard drive, the fedex guy left it outside the door, but it was below freezing, so it wouldn't even start 4 days later after i charged it, thawed it etc....... one more breakdown and i get a 30gig video or a 300 dollar gift card (new car stereo and a nano!)

edit:
heh, forgot to say that i'm currently using "ourtunes", but i don't like using it as it seems to have a limit as to how much you can transfer at once

iPhil · Mar 14, 2006

laidbackliam said:
you can connect a pc and a mac together through firewire?

If the pc is formatted in fat32 format then yes ..

fat 32 is compatible with PC/Mac .. NTFS is PC read/write format but Macs can only read the format but if the file is like pics or word files Macs will surely read it on the mac

long edit: for the iTunes PC >> Mac issue then Open iTunes on PC and look @ the size of the library . it's @ the bottom .. then write the amount down, then look in My docs>My music>iTunes folder and right click on it and see the info on the folder. if the folder size is the same as iTunes amount then you found the right folder ..

Drag the folder to Mac> homefolder>music .. double the file size on the mac and compare it to the file size was on the pc

Rocky3478 · Mar 14, 2006

iphil said:
Thanks Rocky for answering .. i was half - asleep @11 pm pst last night

Sure thing.

laidbackliam · Mar 14, 2006

iphil said:
If the pc is formatted in fat32 format then yes ..

fat 32 is compatible with PC/Mac .. NTFS is PC read/write format but Macs can only read the format but if the file is like pics or word files Macs will surely read it on the mac

long edit: for the iTunes PC >> Mac issue then Open iTunes on PC and look @ the size of the library . it's @ the bottom .. then write the amount down, then look in My docs>My music>iTunes folder and right click on it and see the info on the folder. if the folder size is the same as iTunes amount then you found the right folder ..

Drag the folder to Mac> homefolder>music .. double the file size on the mac and compare it to the file size was on the pc

i tried the ethernet cable one, and got nada. i always have had a problem of getting onto a network, although with iTunes open on that computer i can access everything through front row and iTunes. ourtunes works, but only in spurts, and i wish i had my ipod already so i could just transfer. my budget doesn't allow for an external hard drive just yet, so i can't do that either.

also, if i get an external hard drive, do i have to format it a certain way? i'm looking at a western digital "my book" 320 gig drive, but i'd like to plug it into the pc and take all the stuff, then plug it into the mac. would i have to reformat the drive when i put it in the mac?

iPhil · Mar 14, 2006

laidbackliam said:
i tried the ethernet cable one, and got nada. i always have had a problem of getting onto a network, although with iTunes open on that computer i can access everything through front row and iTunes. ourtunes works, but only in spurts, and i wish i had my ipod already so i could just transfer. my budget doesn't allow for an external hard drive just yet, so i can't do that either.

also, if i get an external hard drive, do i have to format it a certain way? i'm looking at a western digital "my book" 320 gig drive, but i'd like to plug it into the pc and take all the stuff, then plug it into the mac. would i have to reformat the drive when i put it in the mac?

Format the drive in Fat 32 format then Both OSes can read/write to the drive .. Only format the drive if you want a Firewire bootable then it needs to be HFS+

zerolight · Mar 16, 2006

I migrated over to Mac at the weekend (I got my Power PC on Wed last week). The only thing I had trouble with was email, but I got that sorted in the end.

I don't know what setup you have, but at home I have a router. I had my PC connected to this already. I connected my Mac to this too, obviously. On my PC, which is running XP, I went to the folders I wanted to migrate, (eg. My Documents), and right clicked on it, chose properties, then sharing, then elected to share the folder to everyone (on my network).

Once done I went to Finder on the Mac. Network. And browsed for my PC, chose connect, and entered the login details I usually use on the PC. This brought up a list of folders I'd set to shared on the PC.

I picked the folder that contained my photographs and a network connection was setup on the mac. The folder on the PC was available in Finder as if it was on the Mac. I went into iPhoto and selected import and browsed to that folder. Off it went, import photos and ignoring the rest.

For iTunes I followed a similar process to connect, then simply dragged the iTunes Library from my PC over the top of the iTunes library on the Mac. This imported all my tunes, playlists, favourites, play counts, and so on.

Finally, following a similar set of steps again, I dragged and dropped all my documents from my PC into my Mac. Job done.

With a lot of photos or MP3s it can take several hrs to copy across. Especially if you do it by WiFi instead of hard cable. Macs and PCs (at least on XP anyway) network together very easily.

tweimer · Aug 25, 2010

Maintain PC file names?

Is there a way to maintain the PC file names of our photos when transferring them to my new Mac mini? My wife has spent a million hours naming, dating and organizing our photos and when I transferred them using a Seagate external drive I lost all of that info. Please help.
Thanks.

Tumbleweed666 · Aug 25, 2010

tweimer said:
Is there a way to maintain the PC file names of our photos when transferring them to my new Mac mini? My wife has spent a million hours naming, dating and organizing our photos and when I transferred them using a Seagate external drive I lost all of that info. Please help.
Thanks.

I dont understand what you mean when you say when you transferred to a external drive "you lost all that". The names would have / will remain the same unless you did something very very strange.

The dates of the photo files may well have changed to the date you created the new files on the external. There are ways round that, if that's your problem.

Re organizing, it depends how you organised them. Can you explain more? Were they in folders? Something like (say pictures>holidays>florida 1989 and pictures>holidays>bermuda 2002) and so on?
If you just copied at the very top most level, eg 'pictures' then all the folder structures underneath should come across unchanged to an external disk or a mac, unless you tried very very hard not to do that.

Or perhaps, were they organized in an application like Picasa which when you copied them all elsewhere, you broke the association between where Picasa thought they were, and where you put them? That's a different issue entirely.

You need to give explicit detail about what you did to be helped.

LaRae Ludwig · Dec 23, 2011

Saving photos on cd to Mac

How do I save photos on a cd to my new mac?

MichaelBez · Aug 4, 2012

calebjohnston said:
I can help you on some of this.

To move your pictures from your PC to your mac, there are a few options. If you have an external harddrive, you can put the pictures on there and then plug it into your mac and drag them into your pictures folder. If not, you can burn them to a CD - don't worry, your mac will read the CD just fine. Simply drag them off the CD to your pictures folder.

I tried this and several other options, including dragging, Migration Assistant, did not work. I got a CD from my friend with whom we just came from a trip to Iceland. We both took pictures, I shot landscapes and other vistas, he took pics of me. I tried to transfer his pics from CD to my iMac. All I got were thumbnails with all the info on each picture including its size (5 GB average, it is not tiny 30 KB). All my attempts to open a picture, whether in Edit mode or in Full Screen, gave me black screen. Anything else I can do?

BTW, those pics transferred OK to Aperture. I prefer iPhoto. Could not transfer from Aperture to iPhoto, same black screen.

----------

MichaelBez said:

calebjohnston said:

I can help you on some of this.

To move your pictures from your PC to your mac, there are a few options. If you have an external harddrive, you can put the pictures on there and then plug it into your mac and drag them into your pictures folder. If not, you can burn them to a CD - don't worry, your mac will read the CD just fine. Simply drag them off the CD to your pictures folder.

I tried this and several other options, including dragging, Migration Assistant, did not work. I got a CD from my friend with whom we just came from a trip to Iceland. We both took pictures, I shot landscapes and other vistas, he took pics of me. I tried to transfer his pics from CD to my iMac. All I got were thumbnails with all the info on each picture including its size (5 GB average, it is not tiny 30 KB). All my attempts to open a picture, whether in Edit mode or in Full Screen, gave me black screen. Anything else I can do?

BTW, those pics transferred OK to Aperture. I prefer iPhoto. Could not transfer from Aperture to iPhoto, same black screen.

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