Merging photos from several libraries

I have an iPhoto library for myself and my wife as wel. l also have libraries form work on a different computer. I also moved one to a backup hard disk.
I now would like to combine all my photos into one library.
I’m looking at 5 or 6 libraries in three locations totaling about 12,000 pics.
Also there are a lot of duplicates to deal with after the merge.
Is there an easy way to get that done?

Welcome to the users' forum.
First, you must avoid the temptation to open the libraries and copy photos from one to the other.
There's not really an easy way but you can prepare a workflow that will simplify the task. I would suggest exporting the photos and importing them to your chosen library. I don't know if you have done a lot of work on your photos that you want to preserve eg keywords, titles, albums etc. When you export you have the choice of preserving titles, keywords and location information (if any). You can only do this if you are prepared to export as JPEG (or TIFF). You may prefer to export in the original format but this will lose keywords etc. Also keep in mind that many of your photos may originally had the same name so can't be exported in bulk unless you use a new sequential number.
Consider some of these ideas and try out a few albums or rolls and import them again to get a feel for the procedure. Remember you don't need to delete any of the photos being transferred until you are happy that everything is working to your satisfaction.
Let us know how you get on and if we can help any more.

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Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
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Can i simply just drag all the "originals" folders to the new iphoto's originals folder?
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*For Users of 10.5 Only*
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Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
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*For users of 10.4 and 10.5* ...
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Merging photos from several libraries

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