Category: Apple

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A new MacMini 4 Pro for LrC – some lessons learnt, and an issue resolved.

So … I did succumb, and I did purchase the Mac mini 4 Pro with 24Gb RAM and 500Gb internal SSD, and the Satechi Mac mini M4 Stand & Hub with SSD Enclosure with 2Tb of NVMe SSD storage which I liked the look of in the previous post

What have I learnt, what could I have done differently – if anything?

I’m pleased I purchased the Mac mini 4 Pro, I got a remarkably good discount on it (c.£300 from Amazon (breaking a golden rule), and was able to pay for it over 4 months at 0% interest. A good buy. The processor just swallows up anything and everything I throw at it, and with the 24Gb RAM, I believe I’ll be future proofed for quite a few years!

The SSD both internal and external (in the hub) however has caused some issues and consternation, which initially caused me to think I should have gone for a much larger internal SSD, but thankfully (as explained below) I’m now quite relaxed about that decision and 500Gb is definitely sufficient for my needs.

The Satechi Hub is not a Thunderbolt hub, and if I’d been prepared to wait (or pay a lot more for one that was not so aesthetically pleasing), the connection between the Hub and the Mac mini could have been faster – but to be honest the data transfer rate using the USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (up to 10Gbps) has not proven to be a problem. The 2Tb Crucial NVMe SSD storage in the Hub is not being used intensively and so data transfer rate has not been a problem. The ports on the front of the Hub are all in use to serve music, movies and other stored media, and the SD-UHS-II card slot has been well used to import images from my camera.

The Mac mini’s Three Thunderbolt 5 ports are connected to the Hub, an external G’Drive SSD drive for Images, and a connection to two external G’Drive HD Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloning drives. The Headphone jack connected to a pair of Logitech powered speakers. Magic!!!

[PS I treated myself to a Pioneer Blu-Ray Player as well because my old SuperDrive was not working with the new Mac mini hardware.]

Did I learn anything from the purchase? Well, yes – but it was nothing to do with the hardware!!

As I was editing images in Lightroom Classic, I discovered that I couldn’t save a Catalog Backup to a folder on my iCloud Drive. There was plenty of space for the file, so what could be going on?

It took me a couple of days to get to the bottom of the problem, and one that was quite unexpected.

The problem was that the System Data on my internal drive was growing to a ridiculous size, to the extent that there was not enough space on the Internal Drive of the Mac mini to do the save to the iCloud Drive. So, a couple of things had to be addressed. Why was the System Data growing so large, and should I review where some of my Lightroom files were being stored. This was the first thing to be considered.

I moved the Lightroom Classic Catalog Backups folder from the iCloud Drive to the external SSD drive in the Hub, I also reviewed all the other peripheral files and folders that Lightroom was using and either moved them to the Internal SSD on the Mac mini, or to the External SSD in the Hub.

The folders on the external SSD in the Hub – none of these require “fast” access and so are “happy” to sit on an external drive with data transfer rates still at up to 10Gbps.

These folders are located on the internal SSD of the Mac mini and are ones which could benefit from the fastest data transfer rates.

It is also important to make sure you’ve changed all the preferences in Lightroom Classic to match the “new” configuration …

So that’s got Lightroom Classic sorted to give me the best performance on the new kit, but still I had an issue with System Data in General > Storage on the Mac mini. For a while I thought “shall I just upgrade to Tahoe (from Sequoia) and perhaps it’ll go away, but having upgraded my Mac Book Pro to Tahoe I was astonished to see that even with 2Tb of Internal SSD storage, System Data was eating as much it could of that storage. Obviously something wasn’t right.

The solution which I discovered eventually after extensive use of Perplexity was counter-intuitive and one that I would never have worked out.

I needed to switch-off synchronising of my Desktop and Documents Folders – this meant some re-organisation of file store which was in itself long overdue, and then switch on Optimise Mac Storage!!!

Surprisingly System Data will gobble-up local disk storage if you switch this off. Switching it on gets everything back into a sensible state of order.

So … I applied these settings to both the Mac mini and the MacBook Pro (even though it had loads of Internal SSD space), and System Data shrunk on both systems to a manageable level.

Who’d have known that! Thanks Perplexity.

[Addendum: After upgrading the Mac mini 4 to Tahoe this morning (15/12/2025) the System Data shrank again to c.67Gb – this was also recommended in the Perplexity threads as a “if the above doesn’t work … try a re-install”]

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Lightroom Classic, Apple Photos and Google Photos working together

plus Transferring Files from Apple Photos app on your Mac to Lightroom Classic – addendum provided by Michael Barnes

The more I use my iPhone for taking photos, the more I’m forced to review whether I have the correct strategy for sync’ing, sharing and backing-up my images. This update to my posts from last year started by me puzzling over whether there wasn’t a better way of uploading images from Lightroom Classic to Google Photos for subsequent sharing – other than Export to Desktop; open Google Photos from a browser; upload images, ie Method 1 – which was described in last years post. This then led to me reviewing how Apple Photos and Google Photos were now working (or not working) together, one year on!

Let’s just start by saying I’m not going to follow the advice in this article, the use case of which I described in the original April 1st article – however sound it seems – because I’m NOT going to go back to having three copies of an image to manage (or in my case, confuse me)!

However starting from the consideration of me needing to get images out of Lightroom Classic and into an alternative service – a process that is NOT supported or enabled by Adobe – led me to the realisation that there was a better way of doing the upload to Google Photos, that moreover NOW allowed me to re-start re-syncing files in my Google Drive folder on the Mac desktop, to Google Drive in the cloud as Google Photos and Google Drive have separate sync’ing processes. Win Win!

Furthermore, I discovered that there is now a way of exporting older images from Apple Photos to Google Photos which enables you to then delete images from your device (iPhone, iPad, MacOS, or iCloud Photos) without worrying about losing them. WinWin again!!

Use Case 1 – getting images from Lightroom Classic (LrC) to Google Photos.

You might want to do this to enable sharing images with friends/family/everyone. (Although you can share from iCloud, the facilities in Google Photos are much better and they are more friendly for non-Apple users to follow.)

Step 1: Create a Google Photos folder at the Home level on your MacOS desktop …

… you’ll notice that there’s a Google Drive folder there as well – more on that later.

Step 2: Choose the images you want to send to Google Photos and then Export from the LrC Library. These are the Presets I have for that process. You’ll note that I’m going to Export to the Folder I’ve just created …

… I can then create a sub-folder to put the image(s) in, and Rename them should I choose.

Step 3: ( which isn’t a step, because this is where I found Google has changed). You enable Sync’ing from a named Folder from the Google Drive app that you need to have installed on your Mac desktop, and Active, and the images upload automatically to Google Photos.

So you can see from this that if you Export an Image to a named folder, in my case called Google Photos, it will automatically be added to Google Photos.

Thank you Google.

Use Case 2 – getting images from the iPhone to Lightroom Classic (LrC)

I’d always been reticent to use the Adobe Creative Cloud to sync images from the Camera Roll on the iPhone to LrC, but I now think that was probably being a bit short-sighted. So this workflow, although it does require some management and intervention, is by far the easiest way of transferring images.

Step 1: Enable Auto-add in the Lightroom app on the iPhone – … > App settings > Import > Photos (I’m not going to import Screenshots or Videos)

… the downside is that everything that goes into Camera Roll will be uploaded to LrC, the upside is that the process is automatic as long as you’e enable sync’ing in LrC. However, if you leave Sync’ing paused on the LrC desktop …

… you have the opportunity of deleting images from your Lightroom app on your phone before they are sync’ed up to the LrC chosen location …

… you can then Move the images to the chosen Folder in your catalog from the location you’ve sync’ed them to, deleting the ones you don’t want.

Step 2: The management step you then have to do periodically (eg when your Adobe Creative Cloud storage is nearly used up) is to open Lightroom Web on your desktop and delete all the images stored on Creative Cloud. You should also look to see if the Cache needs to be flushed in the Lightroom app on your iPhone … > App settings > Cloud storage & sync > Clear cache.

Use Case 3 – getting images from the Apple Photos to Google Photos to enable deletion of images.

One of the real issues, or problems, with Apple Photos is that deletion of an image in one place – the iPhone, iPad, Photos app, or iCloud Photos will delete it off all platforms. This may not be what you want. It’s therefore prudent to get the images off Apple Photos, or do a Backup, before you do any deletions. But there is another way.

You can now go to Apple and request a transfer out of your data. This currently only allows you to transfer Photos and Videos from Apple Photos. Read about the process on the Google site and the Apple site. The process can take between 3-7 days to complete, but when it has finished you should have all the content from your Apple Photos Library in Google Photos. Google states that it will NOT import duplicates in this process.

You can then confidently and safely delete image from Apple Photos in the knowledge that they will still be accessible from the Google Photos website, or indeed be viewable in the Google Photos app on your phone – even if you’ve deleted the image from Apple Photos!!!!

You should only need to do this once if you’ve enabled Sync’ing from a named folder (see Use Case 1 above); and most importantly you don’t need to switch on Backup in the Google Photos app.

No doubt this will not be the last post on this topic, however it does appear that Adobe, Apple and Google are moving slowly towards allow inter-working. Watch this space for an API that will make everything so much easier. You may be waiting a long time however!!!

Addendum – Transferring Files from Apple Photos app on your Mac to Lightroom Classic.

This is a relatively easy way to transfer file from the Photos app on your Mac running MacOS directly into Lightroom Classic.

1 Open Photos on your Mac. Select LIBRARY (see image below)

2 Select images you wish to copy to your hard drive 

3 Right-click on the Selected Images and click EDIT WITH (see half way down the options shown) and look for ADOBE LIGHTROOM CLASSIC

4 If it is NOT shown (and that is probable as the default list has Adobe Lightroom – the Desktop version of the cloud-based software – in the list) you can add it by clicking ‘other’ at the bottom of the menu options (which opens a list of  programme apps on your computer) and you can then find Lightroom Classic and add it to the list of options.

5 Click that and it will open Lightroom Classic and it should take you direct to the IMPORT dialogue . 

6 Now click IMPORT and continue as normal 

Note:  

a) You can open any available programme app listed including preview. 

b) There are other ways to achieve the same result especially if you store your phone images in the cloud