# Transfer from iPhoto



## pyounger (Oct 7, 2011)

Hi, Victoria, alas, I have another question. When I imported my iPhoto pictures, duplicates and thumbnails were brought in. It's going to take me forever to organize this. Is there a plugin that automatically does this? Any recommendations? Thank you!


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 7, 2011)

Honestly, I don't know.  It's on my to do list to investigate, but it's not a question that comes up very often.  The most useful writeup I've seen is http://lightroomsecrets.com/2009/03/moving-your-images-from-iphoto-to-lightroom/ written by our very own Gene, so I'll split this off into a separate thread so hopefully he'll see it and add additional information.


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## LouieSherwin (Oct 10, 2011)

Hi,

You might want to look into Phoshare. This is an app that is specifically designed to help expose your iPhoto library in ways that make it easy to access with other applications. I was playing with it a bit to help a friend migrate out of iPhoto into Lightroom. 

It can deal with things in iPhoto albums but doesn't have a way to directly convert them to "Collections". But it does export iPhoto keywords so you could assign a unique keyword in iPhoto for each album and then use "Smart Collections" in LR based on the keyword. It can be tedious if you have a zillion albums but it can be done. 

None of the other tools I found had as much flexibility.

-louie


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 12, 2011)

That looks great, thanks for posting that Louie.


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## cynwit (Jan 24, 2012)

Thanks Louie but where do you get Phoshare it is not in the Apple store?


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 24, 2012)

cynwit said:


> Thanks Louie but where do you get Phoshare it is not in the Apple store?



Click on the link in Louie's post....


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## sizzlingbadger (Jan 25, 2012)

The simplest thing to do is export the originals from iPhoto into a folder and then import them into Lightroom. This doesn't keep keywords, edits or ratings though.

Another option is to get a trial version of Aperture which has an import from iPhoto option. Then once you have all your photos in Aperture in projects (albums) with keywords etc. you can export them into a folder structure by date or by projects with an xmp file. Then you can import (using add option) into Lightroom and delete Aperture. This will keep all the keywords and star ratings and give you an original and edited version for each photo (that has been edited).

I have used the 2nd option several times for friends and its very good.


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## LouieSherwin (Jan 25, 2012)

Hi Nik,

If you have a PC then that is what you probably have to do. However, using using this tool does one better by creating an exported tree of all your iPhoto images but does it using hard links. That way you get the same effect as copying but with out taking up that much disk space. It will also extract all your iPhoto albums in a way that will allow you to capture that  into collections. 

-louie


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## cynwit (Jan 26, 2012)

Hi louie,
Thanks for the reply but the link didn't work for me so I have copied and pasted my pics into folders under the pictre icon which then shows up in the import on LR.
Cynthia


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## LouieSherwin (Jan 26, 2012)

For anyone having a problem with the link to Phoshare here is the full URL:

http://sites.google.com/site/phosharedoc/

-louie


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## pyounger (Feb 9, 2012)

Hi, everyone, 

Apologies, but I'm a complete neophyte. If anyone can point me to clear instructions on how to use Phoshare, I would appreciate it. I'm trying to get all of my pictures out of iPhoto and into Lightroom only. I believe that iPhoto has duplicate pictures (original and modified) and I want to reduce it to just one picture to help save computer space. I understand that Lightroom is a database that uses the files. I'm hoping to get all files into my Lightroom folder. Right now my computer is stuffed with photos, and it seems like I have multiples of many photos. I need to get this cleaned up so that my computer is usable again. When I tried using Phoshare I used 'export.' After it seemed like it moved the files over into my Lightroom folder, I went into my finder window and deleted the iPhoto library. The iPhoto library is gone now, but it hasn't made a different in my hard drive. Is there something that I'm missing? Doing wrong? 

Thank you for your time and help.


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## LouieSherwin (Feb 9, 2012)

Hi and welcome to the forum. 

Have you emptied the trash yet? Deleting in Finder simply moves all the files to the trash folder in case you change your mind. To actually remove them from your hard drive you need to empty the trash.

You did make a backup of at least the iPhoto library before you started just incase?

-louie


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## pyounger (Feb 13, 2012)

Hi, Louie, 

Okay, I'm not that much of a neophyte. I did empty the trash and it made no difference. Then I ran disk utility to erase any extra space. Then I restarted my computer (hoping that would do something). I have iPhoto '08, which just shows the library, none of the folders within it. I dragged the library to the trash and then emptied it. It is gone (and I did back it up before doing this). 

I would not be surprised if I am still doing something wrong though. I really want and need to get my pictures organized and minimized. 

Thanks for your help!


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## LouieSherwin (Feb 13, 2012)

Ok a couple of things come to mind.
iPhoto has an option to import photos but leave them in the original folder. In that case deleting the iPhoto library would not delete any of the original images.
Did you use "Link Mode" when you exported from iPhoto? This uses a feature of the underlying Unix filesystem to have two or more files reference the same data. Long story short, Link Mode creates a set of image files and folders that look like you copied them out of iPhoto but in reality both are pointing to the same image files.

In this case deleting the iPhoto library would not delete the image files since they are still referenced in the new folders. Deleting it would have little effect on overall disk usage since only the only thing you end up deleting is the filesystem directory.​
If neither of these scenarios is useful then I would suggest that you use View -> Show View Options (Cmd-J) in finder, click "Calculate all sizes" and start at the top of you hard drive and start drill down as it shows you where all your disk is being used. 

-louie


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## pyounger (Feb 15, 2012)

Huzzah, Louie! I think you found my problem. 

I have the options set as: 



Because I am a neophyte, what exactly should I have clicked on and what should I have clicked off? Check 'Export Originals' and uncheck 'file links'? 

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. This has been making me crazy. I have a baby and am sleep deprived, so that's not helping my thought process.


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## LouieSherwin (Feb 15, 2012)

Hey you're very welcome. There is just more to know than any one person can reasonably keep track of which is why I also rely on this discussion group when I come up against something I can't figure out. So stick around and you can learn a lot just by reading all the questions and answers here. 

Back to your issues. "Export Originals" means that Phoshare will also export the original image that was imported into iPhoto if you have made any edits to an image. Choosing this option depends on whether or not you want to be able re-edit images using Lightroom non-destructive, parametric editing. This is up to you but without using this option you cannot go back to the original capture and see if Lightroom might be able to do a better job. 

If you do not check "Use file links" the export will duplicate copies all your image files in the export directory doubling the amount of disk used. This could be a problem if you don't have enough free space on your hard drive. If you going to keep your image files on the same hard drive I don't see any reason not to use this option. If you want to move your images to a different hard drive then they will be copied anyway. 

There is more information available by clicking the "I" icon link next to each section. 

I noticed from your screen shot that you do not have exiftool installed. If you have done any metadata input like faces and keywords in iPhoto then you definitely want to download and install it on your system and rerun the export. Otherwise this information will not be included when you import into Lightroom.

Congratulations on your child. It's a wonderful thing but it does effect your life more than you can ever imagine. I can only say that eventually you really will get enough sleep so hang in there.

-louie


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## pyounger (Mar 26, 2012)

Louie, 
Sorry again for the late reply. Thanks so much for all your help, and for telling me about exiftool. You would have been receiving another post from me if you didn't. 

I'm doing the slow process of bringing all the pictures over. Seems like everything's working as it should Thanks again for all your help. I really appreciate it! 

Here's hoping the sleep will come....

Best, 
Paula


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