I backed up my computer on external hard drive, I am trying to access my photos but they are on iPhoto and my new Mac doesn't support that. Help how do I recover my photos?

Well champ if you tell us all the details first then we might be able to give you more useful information. You're welcome. Champ.

Thanks champ but the restore button is grey and won't let me click on it. I'm on a new device so I think I have to go back to my old device and manually save photos to a new hard drive. I naively thought the Time Machine was saving all my photos and I could transfer them to a new device.

Use the Photos app.

Hold down the option key while opening Photos and it will give you the option to select your iPhoto Library. It will open and convert it to Photos.

I am trying to open iPhoto from my Time Machine back-up and it says I can't access iPhotos because it is in an app. Is there a way to access my photos from the external hard drive?

Thanks

First restore the library from Time Machine, then open it with Photos.

I think you misunderstood my friendliness for sarcasm and I was actually appreciative of your comment and help.