 He says I have an issue I need help with and he then includes this so if you're writing a question Please include this information. I'm running a 2017 iMac 27 inch on Monterey 12.7.1 That's always helpful to have that that is yeah fair. Uh, I seem to have two photo libraries I'm not sure why I did not intentionally create two I did have an issue several years ago where I accidentally deleted all my pictures Oh, sorry when I was deleting pictures off my iPad I did not realize it was taking them off iCloud as well Fortunately, I have multiple backups, so it was mostly fine Perhaps that is how it happened regardless. I would like just one library I have looked it up on google, but seem to find different ways of doing it I'm not wanting to delete everything again Good plan, and I would like some guidance, please and thank you. Sean. Um, wow Yeah, yeah, wow so I found an article at otherworld computing about Which has a lot of good options for merging multiple photos libraries and they they talk through doing it manually You can use the import function Of photos you can export in a variety of different ways. So there are options One of them which would be my favorite is power photos from fat cat software It is a piece of third party software you will pay for this And by golly if you're gonna if if you care and you clearly do about The integrity of your photos library in the end Please take our advice and go this route Also make a backup before you head down any path because anything can happen But I have been through some it and does correct. Yeah I have been through a ton of these And and it will it power photos is helpful I don't want to use the word magic because it will require you to interact with it at some level But it really is magic. It's just not Set it and and forget it because you don't want that when you're doing these merges You want to be able to review things But it will crunch through both of your photos libraries or all three of your photos libraries That you want to merge and then it will show you the duplicates and it will guide you and say I think this is the one you should keep And this is the one you should you know let go and all of that stuff And it will pull it all together and it will maintain your albums and all of those things It is absolutely an essential tool if you're doing this I highly like like you can hear it in my voice. Just go get it. That's the way to go You can read the article at owc if you want to know Sort of the the ways that you're not going to choose and then you're going to just choose this one I I don't I don't mandate things often here and this isn't really a mandate, but you should go It's as close as i'm going to get. Yeah This is one of those tools that I don't think a competitor to it exists Which is weird because of how valuable it is like don't let the fact that this is its own thing out there in the market Don't let that mislead you into thinking that it's not valuable. It is absolutely valuable So that's my praise. Uh, how much is it Dave? You know, uh, I am looking at the purchase page. It is a new license It's $30. So totally You know, it's 30 bucks worth keeping your photos integrity And and you're going to just save so much time with this too It like I I I I saw and heard you sort of acknowledging that that you're your love for this too adam Is that did I get that right? Yeah, I was gonna I was going to jump in when I had an opportunity I have recommended this over and over and over and over again throughout the year Is it is absolutely the tool to do exactly what this question is asking? Um with all the caveats that you already mentioned, you know backup I'm anybody who's listened to my show for years knows I am like crazy about backup Um, and so somewhat related to this another feature of this that's really great from a backup perspective And just a cleaning up your library perspective is if you're like me and I think a lot of people out there Right, you have a huge library with all your photos and stuff in it But maybe a large majority of them aren't like the greatest photos But they're photos that obviously you want to keep right and if you want some a tool to help you Clean and again, you're gonna have to do the manual work for this but clean your library This tool will let you manage multiple libraries and create multiple libraries So a great one a great tip I've given in the past is you know Why not just create an archive each year of the last year's photos and you can do it by doing us You know a smart album just says you know from January 1st to December 31st of this year Create that and then put it into a separate library And then you can archive that you know put it in backup put it on like archive at multiple places And then you know for that year you could go back and safely Remove those less, you know keep keep the photos you really want from that year But you know the ones that are kind of iffy or maybe not so great, right Now you've got in a separate library And then you can use a tool like this to go back and pull that library back Obviously, you can just open the library and photos by holding I think it's the option key right when you can select different libraries So you could keep them around you could just have archive But then that way you're not you don't have your main library cluttered up with a bunch of junk, right? So okay, so I want to I want to restate what you just said for my own benefit to make sure I understand this Because what you said or at least what I heard I really like this Your idea is that you're not when you create this archive and then you save it off somewhere safe And that is a hundred percent of everything that survived the year You know, you might have deleted some things that you know, you took a picture of your pocket or something But right. Yeah. Yeah otherwise everything goes there and then at that moment You don't then delete that entire year from your main library You just then go through and prune freely Knowing that you have this back you have a backup of that of all that other stuff And if you want to go access that stuff, right, you can just go back and open that library, right? And this will let you manage it and you know, it takes diligence, right? You have to be actively It's not an automated thing. But yeah Yeah, go ahead and say that again and then you can be more aggressive and getting rid of all You know, if you have 10 photos, you know, you know, you're gonna get rid of the ones with the eyes closed But uh, it's the mouth smiling is yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah more aggressive going This is the one I really like I'm gonna get rid of the rest and you've got that safety net You've got that safety. Yeah for for those of us that make sure you're backing up your archives to multiple places Just I'm gonna tell you that you should have a local copy somewhere on a hard drive You should have something in the cloud somewhere like Yeah, don't know that you don't have three copies of that that archive library It's not backed up in my opinion that that's just I I totally agree. Yes 100% Yep No, this is great because it it relieves the That I know there's probably a term for this too, you know, like like I said earlier. I'm a packrat I save everything But I don't always need it at my fingertips, right? And so this caters to that whatever that version of of you know data retention anxiety is That it's like, okay. There it is. You've got it. You know storage is cheap Like you said put it in multiple places to However many you need to appease yourself and and then carry on freely With a photos library that as you're scrolling through to show somebody something from your vacation Four years ago, you're not like, oh, I gotta go through this. I gotta, you know, that kind of thing so and that week between Christmas and New Year's is a fantastic week to find like a little down moment And prune through your photos. I try to do it once a month I generally do it once a year and it's during that week. So yeah, and it's it's good Especially if you use something like iCloud photo library because the larger your library gets one You're having to buy more storage and that's fine if you're you're willing to buy more storage But the other thing is just takes longer to sink everything