Consolidate Pictures from Family into a Single Mac/Computer

Hello Gr8OnE,

You can import the photos from the iPhones into your Mac mini library as follows:

"You can connect a camera, iPhone, iPad, or other mobile device to your Mac and import your photos into the Photos app.

You can also import photos from a camera’s memory card. See Import photos from storage devices and DVDs using Photos.

Import photos from a camera, iPhone, or iPad

1. Connect a camera, iPhone, or iPad to your computer.
2. Make sure the camera or device is turned on and the camera is set to the correct mode for importing photos.
3. For information on which mode to choose, see the instructions provided with your camera. If your camera has a “sleep” mode, make sure it’s disabled or set to a time span long enough to allow your images to download.
4. Open Photos (if it isn’t already open), then click the device under Devices in the sidebar.
5. Note: Devices appears in the sidebar only when a camera or storage device is connected.
6. 
7. Photos displays all the photos and videos on the device. 
8. Tip: If you want Photos to open whenever you connect this device, select the Open Photos checkbox.
9. If you want to delete photos from the camera after importing them, select the “Delete items” checkbox. 
10. This option does not appear for all cameras.
11. To set where to import the photos, do one of the following:

• Import into an existing album: Click the “Import to” pop-up menu, then choose the album you want from the list.
• Import into a new album: Click the “Import to” pop-up menu, choose New Album, enter an album name, then click OK.
• Import into the Photos library without specifying an album: Click the “Import to” pop-up menu, then choose Library.

Do one of the following:

• Import all new photos: Click Import All New Photos.
• Import a selection of photos: Click the photos you want to import, then click Import Selected.

1. If a message asks whether you want to delete or keep the photos on your camera after they’re imported, click Delete Items to remove the photos, or click Keep Items to keep them on the camera.
2. Photos imports your photos. To cancel importing, click Stop Import.
3. When all photos have been imported, disconnect the camera or device from your computer. 

If you didn’t import the photos into an album, they appear in the Imports album in the sidebar. They also appear among the other days and months in your Photos library; to browse them, click Photos in the sidebar. 

If you have photos taken with a film camera, you can import them into Photos by converting them to digital files (using the Image Capture app and a home scanner). With Continuity Camera, you can take a picture or scan a form or document using your nearby iPhone or iPad and have the photo or scan appear instantly on your Mac. See Insert photos and scans with Continuity Camera. You can also use the Image Capture app to set Photos to open automatically whenever you connect your camera. See Scan images in Image Capture and Transfer images in Image Capture.

Tip: You can change the date and time of scanned images in Photos; select the image and choose Image > Adjust Date and Time."

Cheers.

I have a collection of over 400 GB (about 70,000) family photos on a 2012 Mac mini that is my family media server, hooked to an HDTV and a sound system. I do not use iCloud Photos to sync across devices.

We are a Mac, iPhone, and iPad family, with WiFi and wired network of obsolete, vintage, and recent Macs, including a MacBook Pro 2009, MacBook Air 2015, iMac 2019, a 2021 MacBook Pro M1Pro, three iPads, and three recent iPhones.

So a few caveats:

1) If you use the Photos app to import and organize the images, as Neil22R suggests, Photos 5.0 is the only version that runs on macOS Catalina. If Photos 5.0 handles all your photos organizing and editing needs, that's great. (Photos 5 does not have a 'Find duplicates' feature that was added to Photos 8.0, for example.)

2) The newest macOS version that runs on a 2012 Mac mini is Catalina 10.15.7. Apple typically provides security updates for the THREE most recent macOS versions (Ventura, Monterey, and Big Sur), so except in very unusual circumstances such as a severe security issue, Catalina 10.15.7 will no longer receive any updates, period.

(My Mac mini nags me to install a 'required update' every time I connect my iPhone or iPad via USB to import photos, but the update always fails to install, even in Safe mode, and the photos always upload just fine anyway. I've reported the issue in these forums and filing a bug report, but no solution has been forthcoming.)

3) If you have more than one Mac, and any of them have newer versions of macOS installed, be aware that accessing that Photos 5.0 .photoslibrary file (such as sharing your .photoslibrary file across your network) with any newer version of Photos (6.0 from Big Sur, 7.0 from Monterey, or 8.0 from Ventura, respectively) will make the 5.0 photoslibrary permanently unusable by Photos 5 and that Mac mini. It will become usable only by the newest version of Photos that has accessed it.

4) You can never be too rich or have too many backups, especially when it comes to family photos.

It is impossible to recreate lost photos of children growing up, holidays, family reunions, and vacations. Plan ahead for multiple backups of your photoslibrary on multiple devices, using multiple backup strategies. I use CarbonCopy Cloner to make multiple bootable backups of my boot drives onto locally-attached hard drives for fast recovery. I use Time Machine to make ongoing backups onto separate local and network-attached storage drives. Time Machine is not a 'permanent' archive. If you delete something from Time Machine today, it will eventually be deleted as your oldest backups are replaced by newer backups, as Time Machine manages the backups using the space available on your Time Machine backup drives.

I recently discovered that a failing SSD corrupted a Photos 7 library. (It is essentially a copy of my Mac Mini Photos 5.0 library, but running in my 2019 iMac, so Photos 7.) I was able to recover all but about a dozen of the 70,000 images, and none of the ones lost were 'priceless' images, only ones of a series taken at that same time.