Transferring Photos to a New Mac
The next thing I wanted to do was move my Photos and Music libraries over. I dug into my last Time Machine backup and transferred the 90GB Photos library file to my new Mac. However, when I opened Photos, things got…weird. Only a few thumbnails appeared, and Photos refused to let me switch on iCloud Photo Library without purchasing more space, because it was planning to re-upload everything. I went ahead and upgraded to the next storage tier hoping that Photos would check with the server, realize it didn’t need to re-upload everything, and calm the heck down. I was wrong.
So, I closed the program, trashed the library, and started over. This time I switched on iCloud Photo Library to begin with. All of my thumbnails appeared, and Photos started downloading all 11,000 photos and 200+ videos from the cloud. Although not ideal, this was the better option for me because my download speed can top out at 10Mbps while my upload speed is only 0.73Mbps. As of right now, 6 days later, there are ~2,500 left to download.
Still, I can’t believe Photos forces users to either re-upload everything or re-download everything if they use iCloud Photo Library.
If you can’t practically transfer the Photos library, then it sounds like you would have to re-tag all the faces.
Oh, no. I was hoping there'd be some way to transfer the Photos library to my new MacBook Pro, so that I could (for the first time in more than a decade) do a truly clean install. :-(