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High Sierra to El Capitan Photo transfer

H

Hoosmac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 19, 2018
18
0
We just bought another 2012 MBP. It is running El Capitan which I would like to keep. Our other previously owned 2012 MBP is running High Sierra. When I attempt to transfer photos from the high sierra one to the el capitan one I get an error message.
Is there some way to do such a transfer?
thanks
 
When you say "transfer"... how re you doing this? If you are trying to use Migration Assistant, it won't work from older to newer macOS versions.

You should be able to just copy the contents of the ~/Pictures folder from to a USB key then move it over that way if Photos is all you want.
 
I have them connected by cable and when attempting to copy by using finder get a message: Unsupported Library The library "photos library" is from a newer version of Photos. Please upgrade photos to open this library.
I am assuming such an upgrade is not available for El Capitan
 
Hoosmac said:
I am assuming such an upgrade is not available for El Capitan
Click to expand...
Nope... it would not be.

How about start the High Sierra Mac then open Photos app and export all the images, then move them over and import them into a new Photos Library on the El Capitan Mac. That should work, but you will lose any albums you had setup.
 
You can't take a Photo's Library from any newer version of macOS back into a older version for reasons only known to Apple. It's one of those annoyingly frustrating things they do. Your HS version wouldn't be able to be opened in Sierra or El Cap. As @Weaselboy said, you have to get them out of the Photos.library file and import them. If you right-click the .library file, you'll see a folder called "Masters" with a bunch of numbered subfolders (they are date codes). Your originals are in those.
 
SketchyClown said:
You can't take a Photo's Library from any newer version of macOS back into a older version for reasons only known to Apple. It's one of those annoyingly frustrating things they do. Your HS version wouldn't be able to be opened in Sierra or El Cap. As @Weaselboy said, you have to get them out of the Photos.library file and import them. If you right-click the .library file, you'll see a folder called "Masters" with a bunch of numbered subfolders (they are date codes). Your originals are in those.
Click to expand...
OK Found the Masters folder. Copied it to the el capitan MB. While the photos show up in finder they do not show in photo app.
 
Last edited:
SketchyClown said:
Open Photos, select File > Import and point it to where your Masters are. It will import everything into Photos, and then you can arrange the photos however you like.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the help. I finally exported files from old mb to an external drive and then imported those to new MB. Then recreated albums.It worked
 
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