How to recover photos from iPhoto on my older MacBook?

You can move the iPhoto library to your new Mac, open your current Photos library and import the photos into the library.

If you have a lot of organizational effort in the iPhoto library, i.e. Rolls, totes, descriptions, etc., you might be better served by using the paid version of PowerPhotos to merge the iPhoto library into your current Photos library. A comparison between Photos and PowerPhotos merging capabilities is as follows:

I ran a number of tests with a 3119 photo, 72 video and 97 keyword Photos library with keywords, captions, keywords and locations.  I merged it into an empty library using Photos and PowerPhotos.  This is what I found was imported by each;

PowerPhotos:           Photos:

Albums***                                           -----------

Smart Albums (as regular albums)** -----------

Captions                                             Captions

Titles                                                   Titles

Keywords* Keywords (some but not all in tests)

Original images                                  Original images

Edited images                                     Edited images

Loctions                                         Locations

Favorites                                             Favorites

Can detect and exclude                      Duplicates

duplicates upon import or not

Neither method could import/merge projects. 

Both methods could import older iPhoto libraries into a Photos library when the iPhoto library couldn't be migrated into a Photos library. 

*The Photos app only imported 84 keywords our of 97. PowerPhotos merged 147 keywords, some which apparently were in the images but not read by Photos at the time of import or keywords delete along with photos but not purged from the database.

**The original library had 90 Smart Albums. All were merged by PowerPhotos but, as indicated above, the Smart albums were brought over as regular albums. No album of any kind were imported by Photos.

***The original library had 34 regular albums and 1 folder with some nested albums. PowerPhotos merger all of them successfully.

The original library had 72 videos. Photos imported only 57. PowerPhoto got all 72 in its merge.

areti240 wrote:

i have an old macbook #1 - it was connected with internet and it was connected with internet and #2 - was updated automatically .after that I lost some events of the iphoto library.not all but some of them. i didnt use time machine or any other recovery or backup method how can i recover my old photos?

Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem in detail: 

     Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community

What Mac model and year is the old Mac?

Is the library really an iPhoto library or an early Photos library? iPhoto was discontinued 9 years ago.

#1 - did you use any online photo storage facility?

#2 - what was updated: the system, the iPhoto app, the library?

Do you have any backups, i.e. Time Machine or other app?