Reverting to iPhoto after Photos migration

Events were the same thing as an Album which is still available for sorting purposes. Events upon import automatically sorted your content by date in iPhoto. So I'm curious where the disconnect comes from between iPhoto and Photos?

I am in full agreement with the comments above. When I upgraded, iPhoto automatically migrated into Photos without any of the thousands of event titles I had used for organization. It is very much like a big messy shoebox full of pictures. I do have the albums I had created - however, I have 109,000 pictures taken over 13 years. Everytime I imported from my SLR Camera into iPhoto I labelled the section of pictures on the "Event" line above them. That is all gone - there is one big huge pile of pictures. Since I use an SLR Camera for most shots - the locations are completely wrong and random.

When I click on IPhoto Events - it brings up 2, 730 events - completely in random order - all organization gone - and this is not all of my Events by any stretch of the imagination. 13 Years of organization is gone.

Is there any way to have the pictures in Photos with the "Event" line above them rather than some random place it thinks the picture was taken (frequently wrong)? By the way, the events line above each group of imported photos is not the same thing as an Album. I can't imagine having thousands of albums.

I think the disconnect between iPhoto and Photos comes with how users used iPhoto. I have zero interest in having pictures in the Cloud or using social media. These are my personal organized photos - I could scroll through 109,000 photos and instantly know whose wedding I was at, where it was, etc. Or vacation pictures were marked by the sites I visited on the day the pictures were taken. Celebrations were marked clearly. Now it is just a big pile of pictures - granted they are in date order - but that is all.

Grrrrrrr, is all I can say. I too had all my photos sorted into (340) events. I shut down the new photos app and reopened iPhoto and all is as before. I have my 340 Events back.

I'm thinking the only way to retain my organization system in the new Photos app is to create an Album out of every Event, because my 30 or so Albums still reflect my setup. Does this make sense? It does mean I have to figure out some sort of nesting system so they're not all in a 340 line randomly ordered list.

Secondly, if I don't enable iCloud sharing, will the photos I take on my iPhone sync into iPhoto as before?

Third, If I DO enable iCloud sharing, will I suddenly have all 40gb of my photo library showing up on my phone and iPad (neither of which has space for so much)?

And finally, will I then have to pay Apple a monthly fee for this additional storage?

I think I"ve answered my own questions. My iPhoto Events are now nested in an Album called iPhoto Events, organized as I had organized them. And it looks like if I want to use iCloud I'm gonna have to spring for $3.99/month 😟

I found a quick work around to add new photos to iPhoto library. They load first into Photo. Select all newly imported photos and drag them to Desktop.

Then drag them down to the iPhoto icon in the Dock. They immediately load onto iPhoto and my wife with her 25,000 odd photos loves it!!

This may be the solution (short term!). Is there any reason why it shouldn't set things back to using iPhoto as default?

Open Photos and go to preferences, then uncheck to copy items to photos library.

Next open iPhoto and go to preferences, then choose iPhoto in the "Connecting camera opens" drop down box.

Open Photos and go to preferences, then uncheck to copy items to photos library.

No need for that. The app won't import anything unless you use the app.

Terence what do you mean by "the App"

Also the problem my wife had with Photos is that she prefers to retain the more options available under iPhoto for Editing photos

If you import picture with iPhoto they go to the iPhoto Library only. Similarly, if you import pics with Photos they go to the Photos Library only.

The setting you're changing there means that - if you use Photos - you'll inadvertently run a reference library and lose photos. Leave it as it is.

BTW, look closely at Photos, it has more powerful editing tools than iPhoto. Laid out differently, but more powerful and more of them.

I agree, I prefer events than 'moments' as 'date based' sorting makes little sense in a file store UNLESS you can see the image. The folder / album sorting is one thing, but the event feature was useful for grouping, rather than geo and date based 'collections' This FEATURE should be returned as a sort and export feature too.

Maybe this should be obvious from your answer, but I still don't get it. Are the photos in the iPhoto Library copied to the Photos library, or just linked? If so, is it not safe to delete the iPhoto Library once you decide you want to move to Photos and not return to iPhoto? That seems very ambiguous, and I can see a lot of people deleting the iPhoto Library thinking they don't need it anymore. Or maybe it is OK. Still not sure.

Ok, to answer my own post, I get it now (at least conceptually). The key word I missed in Chuckles84's response was "hard link", a concept that I was not familiar with previously.

This explains it:

http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/the-hard-link-between-photos-and-iphoto/

So the bottom line is (I think) even though there is only one "copy" of the data on your hard drive and it only takes up the physical space of one copy, you can treat it as if there are two separate independent copies, one in Photos and one in iPhotos, and you can erase either one without erasing the other.

> Are the photos in the iPhoto Library copied to the Photos library, or just linked?

I want to know the answer too. Can I delete the iPhoto Library after I migrate to Photos.

I don't get all the complaints here either. All my iPhoto events are stored under "iPhoto Events" folder after conversion. Why is everyone complaining about missing events? Events are the same as Moments. If you don't like the word Moments, just create Albums to store the events. Am I missing something significant here?

Richard

In my case, the Events are nothing like Moments. First, I have almost 3,000 events (109,000) pictures. Yes, they are in the iPhoto Events folder but in a completely random order - no organization at all. In the old format, the events were in date order. Trying to reorder 3,000 events is out of the question and it is pretty out of the question to go back and create albums for over 100,000 photos.

The other thing is that Moments shows only the date (I use an SLR Camera, so there is no location information). When they were Events instead of Moments I had entered the occasion, location, key people, trip, etc. in the Events line above a group of pictures. Now all I have is a date. I would be okay if the information I had entered into the Events Title above each group of pictures transferred into Moments along with the date. I am hoping that there is still a way to make that happen.

I successfully the Photos library and went back to iPhoto. One thing I would recommend is that rather than deleting it, you move it somewhere as a backup until you are sure that you have iPhoto working correctly. Photos does not work for me because lack of events, inability to add places or to sort by places, losing all the faces I have already done, and increased disk space usage. I have looked into Adobe Lightroom and Elements as a back up solution. I would also recommend that you make sure that you have a copy of the iPhoto and/or Aperture app saved so that you can install it on machines in the future.