First Mac, hundreds of GB of photos on Win7. Import, migrate, or manually move photos?

[shinseiromeo]

For many years now, when I need to upload photos from my DSLR or iPhone, I have always manually managed my folders and drives. Currently I use a secondary internal data drive, which looks like this:

G:\pictures\vegas wedding 2017

I use that as an example as ALL of my photos are in this folder, and from there on are the names of my subfolders for each photoshoot I do. Pop in the SD card, move the files to a newly created folder, done.

Now I have shared my old PC on my network, and I can easily see them on my new iMac. Where I'm confused on is how it's best to migrate tens of thousands of photos over to my internal fusion drive, and then easily duplicate the photos as a backup to an external 4TB drive.

In my testing so far, migrating and keeping the folder names in the Photos app creates many subfolders in the Photos directory under the Masters folders. This seems to complicate things. Or am I overthinking this and there is a simpler way?

 

[bopajuice]

I have used macs for years and I’m still trying to find the best way to manage photos. Apple’s Photos App does not do a very good job in regards to storage and cross platform sharing. Like you said it creates folders and more folders. The originals are buried deep. Very confusing.

I’m currently using a program called Lyn to view and manage, and going to look into Adobe’s Lightroom.

 

[Apple fanboy]

For many years now, when I need to upload photos from my DSLR or iPhone, I have always manually managed my folders and drives. Currently I use a secondary internal data drive, which looks like this:

G:\pictures\vegas wedding 2017

I use that as an example as ALL of my photos are in this folder, and from there on are the names of my subfolders for each photoshoot I do. Pop in the SD card, move the files to a newly created folder, done.

Now I have shared my old PC on my network, and I can easily see them on my new iMac. Where I'm confused on is how it's best to migrate tens of thousands of photos over to my internal fusion drive, and then easily duplicate the photos as a backup to an external 4TB drive.

In my testing so far, migrating and keeping the folder names in the Photos app creates many subfolders in the Photos directory under the Masters folders. This seems to complicate things. Or am I overthinking this and there is a simpler way?

Using a DAM (digital asset manager) like LR is my recommendation.
Makes finding your images much easier. You do need to keep up with key wording etc, but it's a good habit to get into.

 

[tw1ll]

Get Lightroom. Manually curating photos is not the way to go. The migration is an ideal time to catalogue before moving.

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

Check out "Silent Sifter" in the OS X App Store, it's around about $30 and once you have it set up right, it works reliably. I have a mother-in-law that uses it and she's not tech savvy! It's also a fifth of the price of Photomechanic and does nearly all of the same things.

 

[shinseiromeo]

Thank you all. A friend of mine also recommended lightroom.

Regarding backups, currently since I manually create folders on a data drive, backing up is easy. I plug in my external, click and drag the folder over, I'm done.

How is this best done on a mac? I'd prefer not to use software like time machine, as in my experience total backups have an all or nothing data approach, like iOS.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Thank you all. A friend of mine also recommended lightroom.

Regarding backups, currently since I manually create folders on a data drive, backing up is easy. I plug in my external, click and drag the folder over, I'm done.

How is this best done on a mac? I'd prefer not to use software like time machine, as in my experience total backups have an all or nothing data approach, like iOS.

TM actually works very well. Set it and forget it.
But other backup options are Carbon Copy Cloan or Superduper.
Or just drag and drop if you prefer!