#POWERPHOTOS MERGE ORDER DOWNLOAD#

If you haven’t previously used iCloud Photos, go to System Preferences > iCloud and click the Options button next to Photo.

#POWERPHOTOS MERGE ORDER DOWNLOAD#

Plus, it will probably download the entire cloud-based collection of photos to each library whose images you want to merge so that you may need a lot of local disk space too. If you haven’t already started using it, it could take a week or more to upload many thousands of photos. More problematic is that the iCloud Photos way of merging will be very slow.

iCloud Photo is a good service, so it’s likely worth paying for anyway.

Almost everyone will have to pay for additional storage space ($0.99 per month for 50 GB, $2.99 for 200 GB, or $9.99 for 2 TB) for at least the month in which you’re doing the merge. On the downside, using iCloud Photos almost certainly won’t be free unless you have so few photos that the combined library will fit within the free 5 GB of iCloud space Apple gives everyone. It also retains all the metadata surrounding your photos-titles, keywords, albums, facial recognition, projects, and more. The trick is that whenever you designate a library as your System Photo Library, Photos automatically uploads all images that aren’t already present, adding them to the photos already in iCloud Photos. Merge through iCloud PhotosĪpple’s iCloud Photos service offers the best solution for merging libraries. You have three options: merging through iCloud Photos, using the PowerPhotos utility, and merging by exporting and importing.

Unfortunately, the process is slow, can require a lot of disk space, and may lose some metadata. If you struggle with multiple Photos libraries, never fear-you can merge them. But too much separation is annoying-you have to keep switching between libraries, and it’s easy to import new images into the wrong one. For instance, a real estate agent might want to keep personal photos different from house photos taken for work. That’s good when images need to be kept entirely separate. Photos make it easy to create and switch between libraries.

Powerphotos merge order