Migration from iPhoto to Photos

"It's not difficult. Just open the iPhoto Library with Photos. Done."

Yer_Man, you need to temper your advice a bit. Opening the iPhoto Library with Photos does not work in Ventura.

The User Guide for Photos 8 is here: Photos User Guide for Mac – Apple Support (UK)

When the manual opens, click the link "Table of Contentens" to see the topics, not just the pretty picturs of smiling people.

"I guess if there are just a few files that aren’t compatible I could deal with them manually afterwards, or is it impossible to do anything other than copying across the whole library and so I need to check this first?"

I would do it before the migration, as a single bad apple in your library could cause the background processes to hang on incompatible items and Photos might not be able to scan for faces, recognize objects, or scan for duplicates, or sync the library with iCloud. It is harder to find and convert the incompatibe legacy items in the migrated Photos 8 Library than in your current library.

At least keep your old mac until all photos and and videos have been migrated properly. On your new Mac it will be harder to convert incompatible videos and image files, as they are no longer supported by the system and you will need to use third party apps to convert the videos and image files.

What you also should do on your old Mac is to identify and convert any videos or image files, that are in a format, that is no longer supported on Macs with a 64-bit only system version. Media files that are incompatible with Photos 8 on Ventura may be causing trouble, when they are still in the Photos Library and cannot be processed by Photos 8.

You can easily test for files that need converting, by creating a new, empty library on your new Mac, then try to import the iPhoto Library into the new test Photos Library. Photos 8 can no longer migrate iPhoto Libraries, but it can import the media files directly from the iPhoto Library.

• In Photos on your new Mac use "File > Import", then select the iPhoto Library.
• Now you should be seeing something similar to this:
• Click "Import new items".

Any image or videos that is giving an error message, needs to be converted on your old Mac, before you try to open the library on your new Mac.

There is no list for Photos of legacy media files, I am using this list for iMovie to find potentially problematic items: About legacy media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support

Yer_Man wrote:

why does Apple make it so difficult to go from iPhoto to Photos ... when we have no choice> ?

It's not difficult. Just open the iPhoto Library with Photos. Done.

...

It it a bit late now. It has been easy for six years, all system versions from OS X 10.10.3 to macOS 12 supported it to open an iPhoto Library in Photos, but now on macOS 13 Ventura we can no longer open the iPhoto Library in the successor app "Photos", it has to be done on a Mac with an older system version.

leonie ... thank you for that link to you Photo 8.0 user guide ... very helpful !

As I recall, in iPhoto, you can go into preferences and select the iPhoto library to use (as with Photos). SO, if you copy your Library to an external drive, be sure to go into the preferences and point iPhoto to the Library you copied to the External drive. THEN, go into Photos and upgrade the Library (which is now on the external drive). To keep things from getting confusing, maybe add a "2" or something to distinguish the library name as you work.

Heads up: Be aware of the settings for iCloud syncing as well. There are all kinds of options in there once you get into Photos. 😃

Adam is pretty much correct, but I don't think you need to make the copied library the iPhoto system library.

Simply launch Photos with the option key held down and use the dialog to point to the library on the external.

why does Apple make it so difficult to go from iPhoto to Photos ... when we have no choice> ?

i am finding things so much more difficult (multiple clicks, if i can figure them out) ...where it used to be just one click.

Is there a manual for Photos 8.0 that i can look at to try to find out how to do some simple things that i used to do?

So frustrating !

Thanks,

Donna ... running Ventura 13.1 ...which i was also forced to upgrade to !

why does Apple make it so difficult to go from iPhoto to Photos ... when we have no choice> ?

It's not difficult. Just open the iPhoto Library with Photos. Done.

Is there a manual for Photos 8.0 that i can look at to try to find out how to do some simple things that i used to do?

Have you looked at the Help?

I agree with Yer_Man. It's not the SAME, but the rollover was 7 YEARS ago now. So, there are new features probably workflow changes that you didn't see slowly over time. It may be helpful to look at some older videos discussing iPhoto vs Photos just to get the overall concept changes (not for a how-to or an instructional guide).

I turned on iCloud Photos just last year. That gave me some issues. The switch from iPhoto to Photos was less problematic, IMO. I DO seem to recall issues with red eye removal I did in iPhoto and pics I edited with plug-ins not working right. I had to revert a lot of pics.

Ahhh, Yes, @Keith. That’ll do it!

Yes, just drag and drop.