Q: How to move all photos to Photos and delete iPhoto and Aperture libraries?
How can I move all my iPhoto and Aperture photos to Photos and delete iPhoto and Aperture libraries? Photos automatically links back to the old libraries on migration to save space with two libraries.
As a related issue, there does not seem to be anyway to determine where a photo is stored when viewing from Photos. Incredibly frustrating when there are duplicates because how do I know which one I should delete?
iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)
Posted on Apr 28, 2016 6:10 AM
If the photos are linked, they are connected. Apple explains that the images are connected: Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries - Apple Support
Hard links create two independent files, that just happen to be stored on the same blocks in the disk. Both files are referencing the same entry in the file table. If you delete one of the two files, the other file will remain, no data lost, and no storage freed.
My only concern is losing the master file. When I migrated my libraries to Photos, were the master photos in iPhoto and Aperture actually moved out of the iPhoto and Aperture libraries to some other location and shared back with iPhoto and Aperture?
All image files in the new Photos library are new files - exact copies of the master files and previews in the original libraries. They are just stored in an efficient way to save storage. You should be able to see that, when you compare the sizes of the iPhoto Library and Aperture Libraries with their migrated counterparts in Photos. The sizes of the libraries will be about the same.
Posted on Apr 28, 2016 8:17 AM