Moving to MacBook Pro

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TGphoto

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Hi,

I have just got a MacBook Pro, moving from a windows laptop.

My laptop has gone and I have all the stuff on an external hard drive including pictures. Am I able to get this onto my MacBook?

Also, my camera (7D) uses a compact flash card, do I need to reformat this to work on the Mac?

Finally, I use light room and it doesn't seem to work with the photos section on the Mac, what's the best way to store photos so I can get them onto light room?

Thanks in advance.

Tom
 
Tom Green said:
Hi,

I have just got a MacBook Pro, moving from a windows laptop.

My laptop has gone and I have all the stuff on an external hard drive including pictures. Am I able to get this onto my MacBook?

Also, my camera (7D) uses a compact flash card, do I need to reformat this to work on the Mac?

Finally, I use light room and it doesn't seem to work with the photos section on the Mac, what's the best way to store photos so I can get them onto light room?

Thanks in advance.

Tom
Click to expand...

Firstly, Congrats on the MBP - i'm still using a 2011 13" and aside from chucking some more RAM into it, it hasn't missed a beat (touch-wood!).

Plug your external drive into a USB port (or whatever connection it uses) and it will mount the drive straight onto the desktop, from there you can open it and copy files to your hearts content.

Reformat - nope, shouldn't need to

No, I don't think Photos and LR speak to each other, but you can use pretty much whatever file system you like and simply point LR to the folders in the library pane. Personally, I use the default structure and have folders organised by year and shoot date, but plenty of others rename their folders with more useful titles etc - at some point I probably will get around to this, I'm just a bit lazy and generally don't need to find images quickly, so the file structure works for me.
 
Tom Green said:
Also, my camera (7D) uses a compact flash card, do I need to reformat this to work on the Mac?
Click to expand...

As others have already noted, no.

FWIW as a matter of course I always feel it is better to format the card in the camera to make sure it is exactly as the camera requires. Usually I do this at the start of a shoot so I have a fresh, empty card.
 
Thanks for all the feedback!

Ps might sound stupid but by its can read but not write the files, do you mean I can open and edit and save them but not re-upload them to that hard drive until it is formatted to Mac?

Or will it have them in some stupid read only mode?

Thanks
 
Tom Green said:
Thanks for all the feedback!

Ps might sound stupid but by its can read but not write the files, do you mean I can open and edit and save them but not re-upload them to that hard drive until it is formatted to Mac?

Or will it have them in some stupid read only mode?

Thanks
Click to expand...

The whole drive will be read only as it will be formatted in the wrong file system, you won't be able to write to it until it's reformatted.

Might be time to buy a new external HD, format that and copy everything across.
 
Tom Green said:
Yeah so even if I copy the files to my Mac I can't edit them and then save them back to my Mac? (Not the external hd)

Thanks
Click to expand...


No, the files will remain readable and editable and you will have to save them to your Macbook once edited, just won't be able to put them back on the external HD.
 
I'd suggest that since you're starting out with a Mac, that you continue to manually import images and use Lightroom to catalogue them, rather than relying on Photos to do it for you. It's much better to create your own filing system than to abandon responsibility for organisation to the OS and lose track of where you've stored stuff.
 
Good point about not using photos, unless it is the only photos program you are going to use i find it rather hateful.

I use Lightroom and google photos to backup my exported sets.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I'd suggest that since you're starting out with a Mac, that you continue to manually import images and use Lightroom to catalogue them, rather than relying on Photos to do it for you.
Click to expand...

I think you can just copy the Lightroom catalog over from your Windows machine. It shouldn't need to be imported, which would take longer.

Lightroom's licence is cross platform and has been for a long time
 
Musicman said:
I think you can just copy the Lightroom catalog over from your Windows machine. It shouldn't need to be imported, which would take longer.

Lightroom's licence is cross platform and has been for a long time
Click to expand...

It certainly works going the other way - you just need to tell the catalogue where to find the images, since the pathname will be different on the new OS.

What I really meant was for the user to import pictures themselves into folders that they created and named, rather than just plugging in the camera and letting software take over import and filing duties. I've known a couple of people do that, and struggle to find their images when wanting to locate them manually.
 
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