SELECTIVELY, gradually importing from Mac Photos

Thanks Sean - I wish that were still the case, but OS Catalina no longer allows you to right-click on the library and see "show package contents."  I somehow found folders called, "0, 1, 2...A, B, C..," each with thousands of randomly collected images with file names like FOA27BA1-D4DC-4F33-9E3C-19E027D368BE.jpg.  They are in no order at all, and they all show today's date. I was able to make aliases, but I sure don't want to move thousands of randomly grouped photos without dates into Lightroom.  Do you know of a solution that will work with Catalina?

To access your original files, you need to go into the package file for the Photos library. Right click on the Photos Library.photoslibrary file and choose Show Package contents. The folder you want to look at for the original files is Masters The images and videos are there in dated folders, so you can drag a month folder onto the Lightroom icon to initiate import. Make sure to import as a copy to avoid potential conflicts with future versions of Photos. 

Hi, yes doing it in bit at first is an excellent idea. 

Here's the deal: all you have to do is to export you images and import them into Lightroom. But to start you need to make a choice: one is to export the images WITH you alterations or the other is without your alterations. The catch is that if you export with your changes, you may loose the chance to make the adjustments to achieve better results that you can get with LR. On the other hand, all of the work you've already done will have been lost. 

that's why it's a great idea to do small runs and see how it goes. 

I do have one big important suggestion though: LR doesn't care where any image is kept as opposed to Photos where it must be kept on the hard drive. Because you have so many photos, that will be a great benifit to getting them off your hard drive. 

to learn more about how to set up LR's storage on an external drive, go tohttps://www.lightroomqueen.com/

Good luck!!