Import from iPhoto albums

Carol C. Kankelborg cckborg2 at kankelborg.net
Fri Oct 17 00:15:00 BST 2025 

I forgot to reply to the whole group when I sent this directly to Thierry Merle. It may benefit someone else as well. I used osxphotos — it is amazingly powerful.

Here is my notes for the process of exporting photos from iPhoto to DigiKam. I did this process back in May this year. I am still running Sonoma (14.7.8). iPhoto is a 32-bit app, so it doesn’t run on its own past Catalina (I think). There is an app called Retrospective that fixes the 32-bit libraries so that iPhoto will run (sort of) past that. But that app is not being updated to run on later MacOS than Sonoma. 

If you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. Skimming what I documented, I hope my notes are good enough for you to follow.
One thing I didn’t mention was that on many imported photos that had faces recognized, the face box had shifted downward in the process. In DigiKam, the box is there, correctly labeled, but lower, such as at chest level. I haven’t explored an efficient process to fix that, whether by delete & re-recognize or move the box.

Good luck.

Here is my experience.

Useful information for exporting Photos to Digikam

Tools:
homebrew as package manager.

	brew update
	brew upgrade
	
# https://github.com/astral-sh/uv
	brew install uv 		# (a python package manager)
	# https://exiftool.org <https://exiftool.org/>
	brew install exiftool 	# (used by osxphotos to export metadata)
	
	

# Install osxphotos:
	# https://rhettbull.github.io/osxphotos/ (Documentation)
	uv tool install --python 3.13 osxphotos
	uv tool upgrade osxphotos

# Fix permissions in iPhoto library 
# From osxphotos email list, Rhett Turnbull. (3/21/2025)
# "$(id -un)":"$(id -gn)" would automatically insert your user id and group. 
# The photo library should have read/write access by you and be owned by you. 

sudo chown -R "$(id -un)":"$(id -gn)" <photolibrary filename>


# Create directory you will export images into
mkdir <dirname>

Export Files:
	# Puts in directory based on year and merges exif info with file.
	# Title, Caption, and keyword are visible in Digikam.
	# osxphotos keeps track of what photos have been 
	#         exported in a .db file in the export directory
	# The export directory has to exist. osxphotos will not create it.
	# It preserves the original image format.
	# Movies (.mov) and live images (.heic + .mov) are exported.
		
Dry Run option:
	# Useful to test out what will be exported
	osxphotos export /path/to/export --dry-run export.csv
	

***For Dad's iPhoto library***

Reference Source: https://www.herzbube.ch/blog/2018/11/migrating-iphoto-digikam/ (by PatPatrick Näf Moser)
However, this is rather old and now that osxphotos exists, there is no need to write an apple script. Also, iPhotos was still fully functional for the author, whereas today iPhoto running on Retroactive on MacOS Sonoma, 14.7.4 is severely hamstrung and will freeze with annoying frequency.

His third point under Migration Step 1 seems to be something I have encountered. In the dry-run, there are 2050 images that could not be exported. The one I investigated more closely was pre-2011. The edited version could not be found, but the original existed. Interestingly, in the iPhoto library, the one osxphotos could not find was under the "Preview" file structure while the one it did find was under "Masters."

His process was to use an AppleScript to export images, with metadata in a separate file, organized by album name and keeping both original and modified files. The script exhausted system resources so he had to process subsets of albums at one time over several iterations. He then had to configure DigiKam to read sidecar files.

Problems encountered that required post-processing: Converting his metadata files to .xmp format and adding file extensions to files that lacked them. He also decided to only keep the latest version of each image. 

After importing, he had more clean-up to do. 
+ There were "useless technical JPEG comments" such as "AppleMark," camera names, GIMP, and empty spaces. He did this via the SQL database. 
+ Titles and comments needed encoding fixed. He did this manually, but used DQL to find a list of all image comments so he could find them easily. NOTE: I tried the caption " très ça c’est bon. güt." and it was imported correctly into DigiKam.
+ Final step: Write metadata to image file, not leave it solely in the database. 
	- In Preferences, change Metadata-> Behavior so that tags, captions, title, and rating are checked. Also, consider not updating file timestamp when files are modified.
	- In the Menu Tools -> Maintenance, select "Sync Metadata and Database." Choose Database -> Image metadata.

My Experience:
Running osxphotos on 17,560 images (up through Dec. 31, 2010) took 8m47s. 17,462 photos were imported and 978 photos were missing. osxphotos-dad directory was 43.96GB. Importing them into DigiKam took under 2 mins. However after that, the computer is getting pretty warm as DigiKam is presumably analyzing and categorizing the photos.
It handles nested photo albums but not smart albums.



Add this in for a dry run: --dry-run --verbose 

# For limited date range
*** {/Users/cckborg/Pictures} ***
Shalom-cckborg $ osxphotos export osxphotos-dad/ --from-date "2009-09-19" --to-date "2009-09-21" --jpeg-ext jpg --exiftool --keyword-template "osxphotos-{today}" --keyword-template "iPhotoALB-{folder_album_project(>),No Album}" --keyword-template "TYPE-{media_type}" --keyword-template "LOC-{place.name.country}" --keyword-template "CAM-{exif.camera_model,NoCamera}" --strip --touch-file --report "export_{today}.csv" --directory "{created.year}" --library ./Dad\ iPhoto\ Library.photolibrary

# For specific photo

*** {/Users/cckborg/Pictures} ***
Shalom-cckborg $ osxphotos export osxphotos-dad-iPhoto/ --name P8270121.JPG --jpeg-ext jpg --exiftool --keyword-template "osxphotos-{today}" --keyword-template "iPhotoALB-{folder_album_project(>),No Album}" --keyword-template "TYPE-{media_type}" --keyword-template "LOC-{place.name.country}" --keyword-template "CAM-{exif.camera_model,NoCamera}" --strip --touch-file --report "export_{today}.csv" --directory "{created.year}" --library ./Archived\ Photo\ Collections/Dad\ iPhoto\ Library.photolibrary

# To clear out db in export folder.

# For the whole library (except some added by Mom)
# Results:
### Processed: 26368 photos, exported: 25849, missing: 2050, error: 0, touched date: 0
### Elapsed time: 0:13:20
### 540 missing that were not edited (original not preserved by iPhoto)

*** {/Users/cckborg/Pictures} ***
Shalom-cckborg $ osxphotos export osxphotos-dad/ --to-date "2015-01-23" --jpeg-ext jpg --exiftool --keyword-template "osxphotos-{today}" --keyword-template "iPhotoALB-{folder_album_project(>),No Album}" --keyword-template "TYPE-{media_type}" --keyword-template "LOC-{place.name.country}" --keyword-template "CAM-{exif.camera_model,NoCamera}" --strip --touch-file --report "export_{today}.csv" --directory "{created.year}" --library ./Dad\ iPhoto\ Library.photolibrary --dry-run

#  (Mom's Photos) in the iPhoto library
# Results:
### Processed: 144 photos, exported: 144, missing: 0, error: 32, touched date: 144
### Elapsed time: 0:00:04

*** {/Users/cckborg/Pictures} ***
Shalom-cckborg $ osxphotos export osxphotos-mom-2/ --from-date "2015-01-24" --jpeg-ext jpg --exiftool --keyword-template "osxphotos-{today}" --keyword-template "iPhotoALB-{folder_album_project(>),No Album}" --keyword-template "TYPE-{media_type}" --keyword-template "LOC-{place.name.country}" --keyword-template "CAM-{exif.camera_model,NoCamera}" --strip --touch-file --report "export_{today}.csv" --directory "{created.year}" --library ./Dad\ iPhoto\ Library.photolibrary --dry-run 


***For Carol's iPhoto library***
# For the whole library
# Results:
### Processed: 60054 photos, exported: 60438, missing: 81, error: 770, touched date: 60436
### Elapsed time: 0:36:41
### Destination size = 44.41GB. iphotolibrary size = 264.25 GB
### 60,511 items minus 73 folders = 60,438 photos
### 60,519 entries in report. Includes 8 .mov files that froze osxphotos. 
### 81 missing: 8 .mov problems; 1 add'l .mov; 1 not edited; the rest edited.
### 14,319 exiftool warnings
### 769 osxphotos errors
### 771 exiftool errors

### 249 Unsupported file type for exiftool: pict, pct, bmp, AVI. 3 with no extension.
### 1   Extension HEIC, but jpg file --> renamed. 2020/IMG_4023 (1).jpg
### 14,075 errors and warnings. Took about 2 hours to fix.


*** {/Users/cckborg/Pictures} ***
Shalom-cckborg $ osxphotos export osxphotos-carol-iPhoto/ --jpeg-ext jpg --exiftool --keyword-template "osxphotos-{today}" --keyword-template "iPhotoALB-{folder_album_project(>),No Album}" --keyword-template "TYPE-{media_type}" --keyword-template "LOC-{place.name.country}" --keyword-template "CAM-{exif.camera_model,NoCamera}" --keyword-template "PROJ-{project}" --strip --touch-file --report "osxphotos-carol-{today}.csv" --directory "{created.year}" --library ./My\ iPhoto\ Library.photolibrary --dry-run




==> For errors where file extension did not match file type, fix those.

==> Then run fix-exifdata-dadiphoto (pipe output to log file)

1. Set up filters to select any error, exif-error or exif-warning. Eliminate the "unsupported type" (e.g. PICT, AVI, BMP) and "not valid" (mismatch between extension and file type).
2. Copy column of file names with paths into text document (e.g. in BBEdit).
3. Put double quotation marks around each file name. Use Find/Replace (Grep, Show matches)
^/Users => "/Users"
\.(\w*)$ => .\1"
4. Add in the other code to run fix-exifdata script.
4a. I recommend testing out the script on a few files in a test area first to convince yourself it is working correctly before running it on several thousand files.
5. Run Script, sending output to a log file.
bash fix-exifdata-caroliphoto 2>&1 | tee -a fix-exifdata-caroliphoto.log
6. Examine the log to ensure problems have been fixed to your satisfaction.


Examine warnings and errors. They all turned out to be inconsequential (for my purposes).
Import each year folder into DigiKam. If you select the parent album in the left sidebar, then you don't have to keep selecting the right one. If there are a lot of files in a given year, it may take a while for the folder to show up in the sidebar. DigiKam will warn you if you try to import a given year twice.
Make sure you have enough disk space to have 3+ copies of your images: iPhoto library, osxphoto export, original versions of files exiftool changed, DigiKam library.

Note, the "check mark" keyword is not correctly rendered. You will get an error that there are non-Latin characters.

To avoid memory usage issues, I imported each folder separately.

==> Manually evaluate errors from log file. (For Dad's iPhoto album, I found all of them to have been resolved satisfactorily.)
Hint: Search for ^>.*minor or ^>.*Warn or ^>.*error for errors or warnings in updated files.


==> Evaluate missing photos from osxphotos report file. (For Dad's iPhoto album, I found most of them were missing originals in the database. Only 2 actually existed. For those missing originals, it seems like they were copies from Dad's iPod or used in projects such as slide shows. There do seem to be a number of missing captions in the 2010 photos. I still need to investigate that.) For Carol’s iPhoto album, there were a few that I had to manually export from iPhoto. Most, though were either missing or a problem related to edited vs. original.


==> Next stage
Generate fingerprints, under Similarity. Eliminate duplicates.
Scan for faces. Recognize faces.
	Some photos were imported with Confirmed face of _UNKNOWN_. I had to select all, then move into the true "unknown" category and re-recognized them. 
	People can be combined by selecting photos under one name and dragging into the correct name.
	
Auto-tag. Save this for last, after you've culled your collection. This is a time consuming step.



> On Oct 15, 2025, at 09:32, Bill Allen <ballen at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
> But, you explicitly say it's no longer supported and recommend: https://github.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos.
> 
> On 10/15/25 10:18 AM, Jens Benecke wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> you can try this tool: https://github.com/jensb/iphoto2xmp
>> Disclaimer: I wrote it.  🙂
>> 
>> Jens
>> 
>> 
>> Am 15.10.25 um 11:22 schrieb Thierry Merle:
>>> I have "inherited" a MacBook and CDs with iPhoto albums, with apparently metadata in separate database folders (iPhotoMain, iPhotoAux, Library.data and Library.iPhoto) I can't read from windows.
>>> 
>>> I'm not familiar with apple tools.
>>> 
>>> Is there a way, on my PC or on the macbook to transfer the photos to my digiKam folder without losing the metadata ?
>>> 
>>> Thanks
>>> 
>> 

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