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Participant
April 25, 2020
Question

Keep photo edits when migrating from Apple Photos

  • April 25, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 793 views

Hello. I just became LR user (LR CC version 3.2) and went through the Apple Photos to LR migration process. I used the corrsponding button in LR under File > Migrate From > Apple Photo Library. I followed instructions as per below Adobe webpage. That instructions webpage does indicate what gets migrated and what does not. But it does not mention anything about "Edits" that were made to original photos. It seems that only the 'originals' are migrated while none of the 'edits' are migrated. Is that correct? Is that the intend of the migration function in LR? Is there another/better way to migrate in order to keep the edits (as well as album structure, faces, keywors, location...)? Here is the adobe instructions I followed: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/lightroom-cc/using/migrate-apple-photos-library.html

I do not understand why this built-in migration functionality would migrate originals instead of edited photos.

 

Thanks to any of you who could advise on how to migrate without loosing stuff.

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1 reply

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 25, 2020

RAW edits are proprietary for every raw converter, including Apple Photos. That means that raw edits will not come over if you switch from one raw editor to another one. If you want to migrate edited photos, then you will have to export them from Apple Photos as TIFFs. A TIFF is no longer a raw file, of course, but it has the edits 'baked into its pixels'.

-- Johan W. Elzenga
Bob Somrak
Legend
April 25, 2020

To add to what Johan said, you might want to export the TIFF files using 16 bit so you dont lose as much editing ability as you would with 8 bit TIFFS

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