After migrating Apple Photos all the albums are empty

[mihalykoles]

I've migrated my Apple Photos library to Lightroom CC, it all went fine, all images were uploaded to the cloud, all the albums and folders I created in Photos were transferred but the assignment of images.

Now I have all the albums empty in my Lightroom CC library.

How can I retransfer/remigrate my photos, so I should not have to move my photos into albums again?

[Sahil.Chawla]

Hi Mihalykoles,

Sorry to hear that the albums are empty after migrating, could you please try the steps mentioned here and let us know if it helps: Migrate photos and videos from Apple Photos to Lightroom CC

Also, please try the steps here for any errors you face with the migration process: Resolve issues while migrating Apple Photos to Lightroom CC

Regards,
Sahil

[mihalykoles · Accepted solution]

I had to restart the migration process by removing all the images from my Lightroom CC cloud library and redownload my Photos lib too. Now I can see my albums with photos in them.

[HudsonGirl]

Hi Mihalykoles,

You said "I had to restart the migration process by removing all the images from my Lightroom CC cloud library and redownload my Photos lib too. Now I. An ser my albums with photos in them."

Hi - I have the same exact problem as you but I do not understand the solution you came up with. 

Before and during the 24-hour migration for 35,000 photos, LR constantly reminded me that THE MIGRATION CAN ONLY HAPPEN ONCE.  After the migration, albums did show up on my Mac with an external disk holding all my Photos.  Then I began uploading everything to the cloud and could not see albums but assumed they would be there after all photos were transferred early this morning.  But now, no albums exist.  Since I cannot migrate again, and there are no albums in the main Library, I'm not sure why redoing anything would help.  So could you explain these steps:

1) remove all images from Lightroom CC cloud library - how?

2) redownload my Photos Library too - how?

It took me 1 full day to migrate and 4 full days to upload all the photos in LR to the cloud.  I'm in Day 7 of a 7-day trial so it would be great if I understood the solution and could test it before.  Otherwise, I'm back to Apple iCloud. 

Note: I followed all the directions very carefully so Sahil's answer was just repeating what is online.

Thanks,

Karen

[mihalykoles]

When I started the migration, I checked the "Download originals" in Apple Photos/iCloud settings, so I had to use an external drive to hold my Photos library, for the migration I had to attach another external drive to hold the Lightroom CC originals. Right after the migration assistant finished copying the images and started uploading the Lightroom CC lib I quit Photos and removed its lib from the external drive... that's why I had to redownload everything again in Photos.

The frightening message of "You can migrate once" is a lie

1. In Lightroom CC select all the images and delete them, it basically empties your library and removes everything from the cloud storage.

2. Make sure Apple Photos downloaded and processed all the assets: Under Photos preferences the "Download originals" is checked. (afaik the Lightroom migration assistant warns you otherwise)

3. Start the migrating again...

It will take another X days to reupload everything, so you might have to consider starting a new trial with a new adobe user...

Does the above make sense?

[mihalykoles]

I don't know what caused the problem in the first try and what helped in the second...

The only thing I can suspect is that there might have been an IO issue on the external drives which prevented the Lightroom migration to read or put the photos into the proper albums. But I didn't find any proof of that.

[HudsonGirl]

Hi again,

Thanks for your instantaneous answer!  I would love to stay with Lightroom CC as I was an avid Aperture user and this is the closest thing I have found to Aperture.  I only recently discovered that there was a Lightroom CC version (not Classic) and was very interested.

I would be thrilled to repeat the process all over again if I thought there was a better than 50% chance of it working. 

My Photos Library (like everyone else's) is contained within the package contents of Photos which is all on my 2TB external disk.  So basically, I need to delete the library and folders LR library created on that same external disk and start all over with a new Trial.  There is nothing different I need to do.  Just take another shot at it. 

Today I will end the trial, delete all the Lightroom files and start again.  If the migration results in my albums being intact, then I will proceed with the upload to the cloud.  By the way, another thing I love about LR CC is that I have folders by date again -- just like I created in Aperture (but it was a bit of work to keep them organized).  One of the downsides of Photos is the huge package contents and everything renamed inside Masters.  I like simple. 

If this does not work I will try Luminar but not sure that will work. 

Thanks again,

Karen

[mihalykoles]

There are some caveats with Lightroom CC (and Classic afaik), you will lose the edits on RAW images, only the original photo will be migrated. The really painful part in this is that there won't be an "edited version" besides the original, so basically you have to move the edited images manually from Photos to Lightroom. I still don't know how to overcome that issue...

About Luminar: it is just a photo editor app, it can't manage your photo library. It can be integrated into Photos, but because of the weak plugin system in Photos, you won't be able to fiddle with the edits later; when you hit done in the Luminar plugin it exports the result as a jpeg back to your library. I didn't like that workflow, although Luminar is a quite capable photo editor.

[HudsonGirl]

Thanks again for all your help - I will not bother with Luminar so you've already saved me a ton of frustration.  In case I was not clear -- all the albums were created properly in the first migration - I have albums galore under iPhoto migration, Aperture migration and now Photos migration.  But all of the albums are empty with no photos in any album. 

I will report back after trying again.  You are a wealth of information and I appreciate your knowledge of the processes involved.

Happy New Year !

Karen

[mihalykoles]

Happy new year Karen, fingers crossed for the second round of migration, I hope it will be ok.

[HudsonGirl]

Hello Mihalykoles and Happy New Year to You!

So on Jan 2nd I cancelled my trial and uninstalled all my Lightroom CC apps on Mac, Windows and iOS.  Guess what?  Yesterday I found that I have an extension of my trial (for all Adobe apps by the way) for 30 days!  How's that for action?  When I cancelled I wrote in that I was leaving due to migration issues with albums from Mac OS Photos.  Maybe they read it, or maybe they extend all cancelled trials.  I will tackle this over the weekend.  This time I won't bother with uploading the migration to the cloud if the albums are not populated with photos. 

Thanks again for all your help and encouragement and can be sure that I will update you as the process continues.

Take care,

Karen

[Ali Pervez]

Hi

I am facing the similar issue. I have successfully migrated 40,000+ photos. I can even see the People tagged from Photos getting migrated to LRCC (which is great!). However I don't see any albums.

I want to check how your re-migration go and did you get the albums in the end?

Ali