You might need some extra software:
If your dealing with iPhones and iPads a program called iMazing by digiDNA is very helpful
For Photos on a Mac there is a program called Powerphotos by Fat Cat Software - Its good at splitting and combining libraries and a lot of other stuff
Both have trials available
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I was just going to suggest this by Fat Cat Software:
https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/
From memory also, the older Photos/iPhoto libraries (probably from that time) were packages you could open with a right click contextual menu and delve around in but this was never considered advisable as you could mess up the library structure when photos/edits were perhaps cryptically named.
Photos and iPhoto (once they ditched it) libraries were also different structurally I believe.
Assuming however, you have the older libraries and can make expendable duplicates of them in another location no harm I guess in manually trying to recover photos from both into a brand new library.
@Richard.Dane hi Richard, long time apple user so I’ll attempt to answer this.
I have a couple of iMacs and I have already tried the following suggestion. Incidentally one is on Monterey, the other on Catalina - I update when I see a need, not as of rote.
iCloud does not need to feature - I only use for notes and calendar, not iPhotos.
I’m guessing from your original post, Mac is not familiar territory for you. That makes no difference, my background for a very long time was MS, but I will assume a clean sheet.
Best to avoid trying to get MS concepts or mindset to figure out Apple. It is different and each have their supporters, but once used, it is fairly straightforward to exist in the Mac universe.
So iPhotos, Apple treats each user of an iMac as so to speak, unique, so photos don’t reside on a machine, they reside with the Mac user.
iPhotos stores each and every photo once - with what I think is being referred to here as metadata - date, time and if switched on, location.
Imagine taking twenty photos, inserting them into iPhotos from an iPhone and next creating three albums: dogs, birthday and landscapes. If there are 10 photos in dogs, 15 in birthday and 5 in landscapes - there are still only 20 photos, even if the total of the three albums contain 30 photos. Those albums, IIUC, are unique to the user, while the metadata is unique to the individual photo.
Next, you can set up an additional user (user test in this example) on iMac in Settings/User & Groups - just remember to give them admin rights to make life easy. This will enable you to experiment to give you hands on experience.
Then using a USB stick, NAS drive or attached storage, logged on as the original user, having worked out which block of photos is the smaller, then export these to one of the storage devices. Specifically - select the photos - try a small batch first, which is where test user comes in handy - then go File / Export and select the external device.
Next logged in either as user test or the user with the larger number of photos, this time File / Import and highlight the small batch of photos.
The sample batch will now appear in Library (Monterey) or Photos (Catalina) - Apple changed the names, the concept is unchanged - they will also appear in Imports - still only stored once.
The meta data will be there for each photo.
What will not be present is what I might term the sub-album - from example above - dogs, birthdays, views. These were the choice of the first user.
The albums for the first user will still be present on the earlier login.
For imports, any previous album sort (the personal selection) is not transferred. It is possible to sort photos by create date by using smart album in iPhotos. Otherwise although all photos will now be together, it is the albums for the imported photos which will need to be recreated afresh.
In albums - that have been created, two thoughts. A photo can appear in multiple albums - it still only appears once in stored photos (library).
Deleting a photo in say “birthday album, only removes the photo from that album - it does not remove it from the stored photos - depending on iMac iOS, Library or Photos.
Phew… if you have followed so far, I think that’s it. I have been back and forth across two iMacs to check if I have included everything.
Any questions here or you are welcome to email me directly.
Going back to your OP Richard, any import will have the info to which you have referred, I think I have addressed the album issue.
Unless there is a requirement for extensive manipulation, iPhotos is perfectly adequate to store, manage and review photos without additional software.
Best Rich
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Did you resolve the issue?
There are some very knowledgable people at Apple Support Communities who might be able to help or at least advise.
The software option mentioned by NigelA10 and myself would probably work to preserve metadata, but current software versions may need newer versions of macOS.
iPhoto Library Manager was the predecessor I think from the same vendor - if stuck I suspect they’d be happy to supply a licence for the earlier software to run on an earlier version of macOS/Mac OS X if you/your friend sent a query to their email support.
I’ve been a bit too busy of late, but I think I have an idea of what I’m going to do - I think I will just convert them to Photos libraries and then number them so they can be opened individually.
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One work around, would be to set up an additional user like “macBk” and import the second set of photos there - but then the photos will remain under separate users, but on the same machine.
Otherwise I will be interested to learn if you can set two libraries in Photos on a mac. I use the old title out of habit.
When I checked, importing photos does include the metadata - albums or events as I think you have discovered are not imported for the reasons I outlined.
That would work - I often have different iPhoto/Photos libraries for different things - for example I generally backup everyone’s iPhones (or at least used to) to separate libraries. Easy to select between them/create new ones with a single user login just by holding the option key when opening Photos.
You then get a dialogue showing libraries that the system has detected to choose from or option to search elsewhere/create a new one.
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