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I used to have a MacBook. I now have a computer with Windows 10. I spent hours organizing all my pictures into albums on the Apple's Photo software. I have copied my Photo library on my new PC, and have access to all the pictures, the metadata, etc.

Is there a way to transfer all my Apple albums into Microsoft Photos albums, to keep all this organization ?

gdelab
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If you turned on the iCloud Photo Library, you can go to icloud.com to see and download your photos.

If you click on one folder, select-all, you can download all the photos in the album, one album at a time (or download the whole library if you really don't care about the albums). Use the cloud-with-down-arrow icon to download.

Since you have the original Photos Library photo from the Mac, you can also get the photos from there, but that library has a very weird structure. I think it's date-based, with metadata/XML used to define albums. So, you could probably get all the photos out, but not the album data, unless there are 3rd-party tools that can read the library data.

I'd just re-download from iCloud, album by album.

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jimtut
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Apple Photos stores the original unedited versions of all photos in a folder named Masters (Mojave and prior) or Originals (Catalina and later). The latest versions of edited photos are saved in another folder. Photos aren't saved into any "album folders": the Photos database only stores the file paths, based on which albums are displayed when you run Photos. The Windows Photos database also creates albums similarly. You can read about it here.

You could export one album at a time by selecting all the photos in it, but (a) it would be laborious, (b) you'll miss out the photos that you hadn't added to any album, and will duplicate any photos that you had put in multiple albums. So you may want to export all the photos at once, preserving edits and metadata, from Apple Photos into Windows Photos, and recreate the albums.

Another option is to use Photos Takeout app (Mac only). It can bulk-export the entire library's contents in year-wise or album-wise folders, which you can import into Microsoft Photos. This app can also preserve edits and metadata [Note: I work for App Initio Ltd., the app's developer]

MacEater
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