Reverting to iPhoto after Photos migration

I just 'upgraded' and at first was alarmed at the new look. But once I showed the sidebar again, it all started to look familiar. My folders are all there. I must say, I am not a fan of the photo-icon instead of a folder, but that's minor.

Yes, the 'event' bar is gone. But when I go to 'iPhoto Events', all my years of sorting is there. Only the more recent photos are first. And I get an image of the event and the events go across the top, instead of down the page. I prefer down the page. The set up now is too chaotic for me.

But my point is that I didn't lose any of the organization.

I MISS the direct link to my iCloud photo stream. Now my shared device photos show up automatically and I dislike that. I want control.

I can still edit and move new photos into older events. Just like before.

So this doesn't actually answer the initial query about migrating back. But I did want to point out that, at least for me, all the 8 years+ of organization did not disappear.

How were your Events labelled that they are still in some kind of order? Mine put 13 years of events in completely random order. Even a week long vacation where I had created an event for each day since we saw so many things daily - I had to scroll through 3,000 events to find the seven days. They don't appear to be in either date or alphabetical order.

I was thinking I would have to go back and label them with a date first - the way I used to keep Albums in order on my ancient Windows computer (does this feel like going backwards?). It will be a huge job with so many events.

Assuming I can do this - is there then a way to rename the 'date and location' line above each group in Moments so that it is useful going forward?

is there then a way to rename the 'date and location' line above each group in Moments so that it is useful going forward?

No. http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html is the place for feature requests and feedback

> How were your Events labelled that they are still in some kind of order? Mine put 13 years of events in completely random order.

MTNLUVR, you can sort them alphabetically by title: View>Keep Sorted by Title

>Would be nice if it had concept of separate libraries so that I do not need to wade through 60000+ picture every time.

Photos can handle multiple Libraries. You can keep one Library for sharing and another for storage, etc. Also, Photos can reference files instead of importing everything into the Library. You can organize all of your photos into folders in the Finder by date, then reference them in different Photos Libraries.

> Thanks for the suggestion but (there is always a but) I am already using keyword for parallel indexing to indicate

relevance of certain sets of photo for certain applications....grrrrr... Thanks anyway

I don't see how that stops you from using keyword to tag photos in many different ways. You can search multiple keywords/criteria in Photos. For example, I have Vancouver as a keyword and as an album name.

I cannot get iPhoto to work again. I just today upgraded the OS and it installed and replaced my iPhoto with Photo, and never gave me a warning that it was going to change my iPhoto library folder and no warning that I would lose the ability to ever use the iPhoto app with this upgrade. I, too, have always filed photos by events, and have no interest whatsoever in seeing random locations as a way of naming my photo downloads, nor the download dates in such an unuseful way.

I went into Time Capsule and have just saved my original iPhoto library from a month ago onto an external drive, so I have it, but now I don’t know what to do because I cannot access iPhoto anymore on my iMac— the machine I do all my real stuff on and that I would expect to be able to use as something more significant and sophisticated than my iPhone or iPad, or in ways more substantial than Instagram or Facebook.

I could not have said it any better myself. The unorganized shoebox analogy is perfect. Simply because our pictures are in chronological order does not mean they are organized in any meaningful way to us. Adding the location doesn't help either. There are a handful of locations at which I spend a lot of time, so something being designated as happening in my house, at my kid's school, or at the beach in San Diego is not helpful unless I am able to name it as an event that will mean something to me when I scroll by it or search for it. Luckily, I haven't moved to Photos from iPhoto yet because I was afraid of this very issue. While Photos may have a lot to offer in many ways, unfortunately I won't be using it until I have no other choice simply because of this reason. I thought that one of the main goals of the app is to help us better organize and store our pictures. Someone forgot about the organizing part.

I think the new Photos is a dog. I wish Apple would stop doing this! I just get used to a program and start using it efficiently, and some 30 day wonder decides he or she knows better the way users should be "using the product". If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Fortunately, I also have Canon's Digital Photo Professional, which I'm beginning to use. I was surprised to find, when I began looking for better alternatives to Photos, that DPP is a very good program. I'll be content to use it until Apple gets its act together. Two thumbs down!

I have decided to leave the whole issue. I am investing in Adobe Lightroom, which, after watching the extremely helpful tutorials, appears to be the perfect catalogue friendly app. Hefty price, but buying the download off amazon saves a few bucks, and I think it will b very worth it. The app also does not alter the original photo when you make edits! Seems like a safe and much longer-lasting alternative to the photo app game-playing by the newer Mac app writers.

> events and albums are two totally different things in iPhoto

For me at least, iPhoto Events are preserved in Photos as "iPhoto Events." They are searchable and can be alphabetized and renamed if needed. To me, both Events and Albums are just 'Play Lists'. How are they different, may I ask? What am I missing here?

> The app also does not alter the original photo when you make edits!

Uh, all apps do that.

iPhotos, Aperture, Lightroom, Photos, they all do nondestructive editing/adjustment. All of them organize photos by date, album, keywords, faces, location.

This discussion thread really hits the spot. I am not a professional photographer, just a mother making a family photo album every year for my family. We take about 10K photos a year among the 4 of us with 6 camera (including iPhones). iPhoto has been the workhorse because I can import everyone's photos of the same occasion into separate EVENTs. The kids' EVENTs usually have lots of bad photos but sometimes they do capture moments adults do not notice. I rank each photo at the time of import so that I only need to look at the good photos when I start working on the album at the end of the year. I also create events like CAT which has all the photos of the cat throughout the year so I can create a CAT chapter.

I think Apple is too arrogant to think that they know how best to organize people's photos for them. There is nothing wrong with doing what they did with Photo if they ONLY allow people who like to organise the tools to do so too, AND they also migrate all the handwork we have done like ranking into the new system. I have 10 years of iPhoto libraries and I am not letting them go. So far, I have gone back to iPhoto. If Apple won't give us the tools and stops supporting iPhoto, any company who can do a good migration will get my business.

I know I am not saying anything new here. However, I want to make a point that the complaints are not just from a small group of photographers. They are from the common man and woman who have been loyal followers of Apple. I will also put this to Apple directly.

This is not strictly true. If, like many of of us who are complaining you have conflated say two weeks of photos on e.g Holiday Florida Feb 14 & saved them as an event searching iPhoto events doesn't bring it back . If however you had made a 'virtual event album' by picking photos for example some of the photos from Holiday Florida 14 then they are preserved & searchable but otherwise they just have not migrated. To make matters worse in the Uk we can't even revert to iPhoto as it is just not available here to a compatible Yosemite version. Altogether a disaster

This last statement I do not understand:

I'm running 10.0.3 (Yosemite) in Europe and I had Photos installation (via AppleStore).

At that point you have on your HD both iPhoto AND Photos (i.e. iPhoto does not get deleted)

To revert you just delete Photos.app and the corresponding directory in your ~/Pictures folder.

The you continue using the old iPhoto as before.