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I recently acquired a new iMac to replace our iMac from mid-2011, on which I used iPhoto to manage our photos located on two LaCie external drives. Now that iPhoto is no longer around, I am unable to access the photos on the external drives. Wondering if anyone might have a solution for this? Thanks in advance for your help.
iMac 24″, macOS 12.3
iPhoto was discontinued 7 years ago. It is no longer developed or sold. It was replaced by the more powerful (and free) Photos.app that comes with the OS. You can migrate to that app very simply:
Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch Photos. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and point at your iPhoto Library. It will do the rest.
If you prefer not to use Photos there are several 3rd party apps that you can use. Which to choose depends on the kind of photographer you are and your budget.
iPhoto was discontinued 7 years ago. It is no longer developed or sold. It was replaced by the more powerful (and free) Photos.app that comes with the OS. You can migrate to that app very simply:
Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch Photos. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and point at your iPhoto Library. It will do the rest.
If you prefer not to use Photos there are several 3rd party apps that you can use. Which to choose depends on the kind of photographer you are and your budget.
That pretty much depends on what kind of shooter you are? Pro? Serious Hobbyist? Family snapper? Shooting with what? a Phone? DSLR or similar? Point & Shoot? Raw or Jpeg? Volume? How many images in the library? How many get added to it annually? You like to spend time tweaking and fine tuning your shots or you happy to let the computer do as much as possible automatically? You need to share across devices? And, the real question: budget. How much are you willing to spend annually on this?
Thanks again for your very thorough reply. When not traveling, I am mainly a casual photographer using my iPhone 12 Pro Max that has over 49,000 photos on it. When traveling, I use my Sony a7RII DSLR. One external LaCie drive has a capacity of 1 TB and is full. A second external LaCie drive has a capacity of 6 TB and is about 1/3 full. When using the Sony on trips, I generally prepare photobooks as gifts for those who travelled with us. I mainly only spend time fine tuning photos that will go into the photobooks. Regarding budget, I would be willing to spend up to $200 annually but iPhoto really had all of the features and capabilities that I need to something comparable to that would work just fine. Thanks again for your help on this.
I think with the volume of images you're talking about you might want to explore apps like
Adobe Lightroom Classic
On1 Photo Raw
Exposure 7
Mylio
Lightroom Classic is pretty much the industry standard and is a very robust photo manager. The subscription also includes Photoshop. ON1 Photo Raw is a kind of attempt to build a Lightroom/Photoshop combination app. Exposure 7 is marketed largely as a way of applying looks to photos, but it's a robust manager as well. Mylio is quite reminiscent of iPhoto really, but quite a few extra bells and whistles.
Thanks very much for the advice. Will give this a shot.
Failed to ask which third party apps you might recommend? Thanks
Thank you very much. Will give Lightroom Classic a try.
Accessing iPhoto Files with Photos
