G.Alby

Q: Photos and iPhoto libraries

I'm on OSX 10.11.5

Not sure how and when happened, probably upgrading and migrating...

Long story short, along with the library of the app Photo, I still can see the library of iPhoto which is quite large.

I have never uninstalled iPhoto with library and I'm wondering what is the best way to go.

Do Photos and iPhoto use the same library up to certain extent?

 

Thanks

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on May 26, 2016 1:56 PM

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Q: Photos and iPhoto libraries

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  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie May 26, 2016 2:05 PM in response to G.Alby
    Level 10 (106,821 points)
    iLife
    May 26, 2016 2:05 PM in response to G.Alby

    The iPhoto Library has been left installed on purpose after the migration to Photos. Not all items of the iPhoto Library can be migrated; some smart albums and your projects could not be fully migrated. Keeping the iPhoto library will help you to check for missing items and to rebuild the missing items in Photos.  See:  How Photos handles content and metadata from iPhoto and Aperture - Apple Support

     

    The iPhoto library has roughly the same size as the new Photos Library, but together they are not using twice the storage.  The new Photos Library is storing the image files in the same disk blocks as the original iPhoto Library.  Essentially, the image files in both libraries are sharing the storage using hard link.  So deleting one of the libraries will not free much storage. You can copy the iPhoto Library to a backup drive and delete it from your system drive, but it will not free much staorage.

     

    See these links:

     

    Both the iPhoto Library and the Photos Library are independent, however.  Photos you import to Photos are not available to iPhoto, and vice versa.

     

    You can still use your iPhoto Library, if you updated iPhoto to version 9.6.1. Is that the version you are having installed?