Photoshop saved photos from windows to Mac OS

[jay24080906v1x1]

Hi all. I've come on here to help my mum. She has used adobe photoshop on only a windows desktop and laptop before and has thousands of edited photos saved on both devices and a seagate external storage. As she is now part of the apple ecosystem now, (keep opinions to yourselves lol) she is looking at getting an iMac and purchasing adobe photoshop.
So my question is the process to get all her images from the desktop, laptop or seagate (these are all the same photos saved on multiple devices) over to an iMac. Thanks in advance for your help. It will make a mum very happy.

[barbara_a]

That should be an easy task. She can attach the seagate with a USB to the new iMac, then copy the images onto her new compouter. Photoshop images are compatible on both PC and Mac. It doesn't matter which OS they were created on orginally.

[jay24080906v1x1]

Thank you so much for your reply. When I went to apple with my mum they wasn't very knowledgeable in what I was asking. They said in reference to the seagate hard drive, if it has only been used with a windows device to start, the Mac OS may not be able to read it. They said it would have had to have been configured to use both operating systems from the start and that would now require formatting the hard drive so Mac can read it. This isn't going to work as all the pictures would be deleted. So even though the pictures are compatible, they are saying that the Mac may not be able to read the seagate. 

[Conrad_C]

It shouldn’t be a big deal, Windows and Mac have a lot in common now. A couple of possible routes:

Transfer files using the home network. Connect all three computers (Windows desktop and laptop, and the Mac) to the same network, if they aren’t already. Turn on file sharing on the Mac, then go to the Windows computers, mount the Mac as a network share, and drag any files you want to the Mac. Or do it the other way: Turn on file sharing on both Windows computers, go to the Mac, mount both Windows network shares, and drag the files from the Windows computers into the Mac’s storage. This works because Windows and Mac both use SMB file sharing.

Transfer files using external storage. If you don’t want to use network file sharing, you’ll have to drag files from both Windows computers onto external storage such as that Seagate drive, then plug that storage into the Mac. Whether the Mac can read or write the drive depends on how it’s currently formatted (FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS...). macOS can read more Windows storage formats that it can write, so if the goal is just to read the files, it might work on the Mac right away. If the goal is to both read and save to that same storage, you might have to buy additional software for the Mac that adds Windows file system support. Or get another drive that uses a Mac format and copy everything to that.

Also, the latest M1 iMac has only USB-C ports, so if her cable for the Seagate storage has USB-A on the other end, an inexpensive adapter or adapter cable will be needed to plug it in into the Mac.

[jay24080906v1x1]

Thank you for your help. The laptop and desktop are quite old so will they have the file sharing ability?

In regards to the seagate external storage, when I went to apple to seek technical support, they said that because the hard drive was originally initiated on a windows os, the Mac wouldn't be able to read it. Is there any way to find this out before purchasing the iMac. Obviously she doesn't want to buy it, take it home and realise after plugging it in that it's doesn't read it. 

[gener7]

Perhaps she can being it with her to the showroom and see for herself. She can purchase an adapter if needed.

I have a 2012 Macbook Pro and no problem reading files from external drives.

A online storage service is a great option. There's Apple's iCloud. I like to use Dropbox. You do not worry about connectors or the drive eventually failing and you access the files from any device, Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone or Android mobile phones.

[Conrad_C]

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@jay24080906v1x1 wrote:

Thank you for your help. The laptop and desktop are quite old so will they have the file sharing ability?

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They should, because Windows SMB file sharing has been a standard for many years. Looking quickly on Google, if those PCs are up to 15 years old they should have it.

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@jay24080906v1x1 wrote:

In regards to the seagate external storage, when I went to apple to seek technical support, they said that because the hard drive was originally initiated on a windows os, the Mac wouldn't be able to read it. Is there any way to find this out before purchasing the iMac. Obviously she doesn't want to buy it, take it home and realise after plugging it in that it's doesn't read it. 

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As I said in my earlier reply, it depends on how it’s currently formatted. In recent years, many Seagate external drives have been formatted as exFAT, which lets them work with PCs and Macs out of the box. If hers is older, it might have been formatted with a Windows-only format. In other words, the Apple Store person assumes it was originally initialized in Windows, but that is not necessarily true.

The way for you to find out is plug it into a Windows PC and find out the formatting there. I don’t have a PC in front of me right now, but Google found these instructions:

How to check the file system (FAT, FAT32...etc) of the hard drive

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@jay24080906v1x1 wrote:

Obviously she doesn't want to buy it, take it home and realise after plugging it in that it's doesn't read it. 

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If you check the file system using those directions and it is a format that a Mac does not read out of the box, as I said in my earlier reply, it’s possible to buy software that will add that capability to the Mac, and then it will be readable. However…

There is another, big question here. Are those files both valued and irreplaceable, and is that Seagate drive the only place where the photos exist? If the answer to those questions is “yes,” then there is no backup, but there needs to be one in case that aging drive fails. That means she should have at least one more hard drive anyway, as her backup. If she does not have a backup, then she should buy a new external hard drive and copy the entire contents of the Seagate drive to it. (And ideally, learn how to use backup software to keep the backup current.)

That would solve two problems at once. First, she would have a backup, which is essential if she doesn’t have one already. Second, a new external drive is likely to be formatted as ExFAT out of the box (before buying, make sure), so that would allow her to unplug it from the PC after copying the Seagate’s content to it, then plug it into the Mac and use it there.

After creating a backup on a drive that works on a Mac, it will be possible to format the old Seagate with a Mac-friendly format and copy everything from the backup back to it. Now she will have two copies of the photos, on external drives that both work with a Mac.

[melissapiccone]

It just depends on how the external drive is formatted- it might work just fine. You can try a back up service like backblaze to back up the external and then copy it down to the Mac or as suggested below, Dropbox or if she has Mocrosoft 365 upload the images to one drive and then you can access them from the iMac. Lots of solutions. Will the Apple store allow you to hook up the external to a computer to see if it can read it?