Transferring Aperture/Photos Library to new Mac: how to handle referenced photos

Question

Level 2

248 points

Transferring Aperture/Photos Library to new Mac: how to handle referenced photos

Here's the scoop. I was a long-time Aperture user with about half my photos managed as referenced photos on an external drive. Photos, as I understand, also sees those photos as referenced.

I have subsequently purchased a new iMac and now want all my photos to reside on its hard drive and I'll be abandoning Aperture.

So, if I transfer the Photos library file to the new computer, how can I get those referenced files onto the new computer?

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Feb 12, 2016 10:38 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,647 points

Feb 12, 2016 11:26 AM in response to Argelius

Do you want the photos to remain referenced or do you want to consolidate them as managed in Photos?

If you want to keep the photos referenced, use Aperture on your old mac to relocate the referenced files to a folder on the new Mac, before you open the Aperture library in Photos to convert it to a Photos Library.

If you are happy with turning the library into a manger library, you can use Photos after you migrate the library to Photos to consolidate the library .

Photos has the command "File > Consolidate" to move photos intone library and make them managed, it has limited tools to fix broken referenced files, but it cannot relocate referenced files. Any relocating you want to do, do it in Aperture, while your library is still an Aperture library.

Aperture 3.6.is still working in MacOS X 10.10.3 .

Reply