Photos Library from High Sierra to Big Sur - No Albums?

[MitzEclipse]

Hi all

I am moving data from 2011 MacBook Air High Sierra to a 2016 MacBook Pro with a fresh install of Big Sur 11.2.1.

I am not using the migration tool, rather, manually moving my data/files to ensure a clean start on the 2016 MacBook Pro.

My question is regarding the Photos Library. On the 2011 MacBook Air, I started using iPhoto then a few years ago moved to Apple Photos. So master Photos Library is in Apple Photos.

I manually copied the Photos Library.photoslibrary (100gb file) to the 2016 MacBook Pro's User/Pictures Folder. I then opened up Apple Photos and all the photos are there, however, NO albums! How do I retrieve these album/tags please? I do not see a way to export from the 2011 MacBook Air Apple Photos?

Thank you in advance

 

[appltech]

Did you create those albums manually on the previous MacBook Air? Or were those Smart Albums?

In any case, try this workaround: link

 

[MitzEclipse]

Yes, these were albums created manually - right click on left hand side column -> New Album. There are hundreds of new albums and recreating these manually is simply not feasible.

I looked at the workaround link provided, but this is more for the photos themselves. I am not missing any photos; just the albums.

The odd thing is, I did this exact same process moving a different Apple Photos Library from the 2016 MacBook Pro to a 2020 MacBook Air M1. After the 250gb Photos Library.photoslibrary transfered, I just opened up Apple Photos and everything was there: photos, albums, faces, locations, everything.

Not sure why this is not working coming from the 2011 MacBook Air. Does this have anything to do with the library being migrated from iPhotos? Any other suggestions? I can't seem to export the albums from Apple Photos on the 2011 MacBook Air.

Thanks in advance

 

[Brian33]

By my understanding, your procedure should have worked fine.

I manually copied the Photos Library.photoslibrary

I'm curious to know how you copied the Photos Library over -- did you use Finder (drag/drop or copy/paste) or Terminal commands or some other tool? I'd recommend Finder as the least (user-)error prone. Any of those should be OK, though.

I looked in my Photos Library (in Finder, you can right-click and pick "Show Package Contents") but I couldn't see any obvious place for the Album info to be stored. Perhaps it's in the 'database' directory, but I'm not really savvy enough to peek into the 'photos.db' or 'RKAlbum_name.skindex' files.

Does this have anything to do with the library being migrated from iPhotos?

I sure hope not, because at some point I'll be in the same situation! If your problem were only about doing a migration first, it seems like a whole lot of people would be complaining about this. One interesting point about the migration from iPhoto to Photos is that the process created a lot of Unix-style "hard links" to the image files within the filesystem. As far as I can tell, though, the hard links aren't likely to be causing the problem you're seeing.


The only thing I can think of is to either (a) delete the library on the 2016 machine and re-copy again from the 2011 Mac, hoping for a different result (unlikely), or (b) use Migration Assistant to copy just the "user data" for that one user from the 2011 to 2016 machine. I believe MA will let you do that without copying preferences, etc.

Or, turn on iCloud Photo Library, wait for all the 2011's photos to be uploaded, start a new Photos Library on the 2016 with Photos' "optimize storage on this mac" turned OFF, and wait for them to be downloaded. (You need that option OFF to ensure that full-quality masters for all photos are downloaded to the 2016 machine.) Crazy slow, plus you'd need enough iCloud storage to accommodate the full library.

This problem sounds really frustrating -- hopefully someone else will have a better idea...

 

[MitzEclipse]

>did you use Finder (drag/drop or copy/paste)?
Yes - connected directly to the 2011 MBA via File Sharing

>turn on iCloud Photo Library
the Photo library size is 100gb and simply too big for iCloud, I don't have the space and anyway would take too much time to upload/sync and do not want to sync the full library anyway.

Back to the original question, actually the albums now show up - not sure if it took time to show up but they're all there now!

Thanks all