iPhoto does not work on sierra

Is there a way to export your photos out of iPhoto and keep all the metadata attached including the descriptions?

I have not found a way to do this without having to open one photo at a time and adding it in via photoshop. My plan is to export all my photos out of iPhoto but I do not want to lose all my metadata. So if I am understanding this thread correctly, if I upgrade to Sierra my iPhoto version 9.6.1 will still work and all my photos will still be available to me?!.

Thank you

For many of us, it's not a question of "learning to use Photos." It's a simple program, very easy to learn. I use iPhoto as an organizational tool for my the photos that go into my online sales listings. Photos doesn't have nearly the organizational functionality that iPhoto does. I'm tired of people talking about how great it is because it recognizes faces or whatever. These are not features I need. Photos software for people who take pictures, not for people who USE pictures. The loss of iPhoto is another of Apple's famous "It's not broken so let's fix it" adventures.

You can export from iPhoto including titles and captions - perhaps you already know this - and this does include (at least in 9.6.1) the descriptions. You have to export as JPEG, not as Current or Original (possibly TIFF and PNG will work too, I've not tried that). I sometimes use a command line tool called exiv2 to look at picture metadata, and this shows the description appearing in field Iptc.Application2.Caption.

Of course this is only any use if you can import to some other application which imports that metadata. Maybe Lightroom (which now seems like the obvious upgrade / replacement for iPhoto) does? I'd be interested to hear from anyone who knows.

what version of the OS and of iPhoto?

Yes iPhoto 9.6.1 works with OS X Sierra 10.12 -- but some day it will quit with some update - it really is time to learn Photos which is a vastly superior photo manager with a learning curve and new work flows

LN

Totally agree with this. Whatever fancy editing Photos can do I could already do with Photoshop. I already sync everything to the cloud with Google Photos. I just want somewhere I can actually see my photos well displayed in Events on my Mac, rather than in a mess of 10,000 pixelated photos all on screen at once. It's a shame there's nothing that does this now (or nothing that I've found).

How much did you pay for Photoshop?

Good point, I guess this workflow wasn't for everyone - though there are good cheap/free alternatives out there.

My point is it's a shame they took away an excellent system for actually organising/browsing/displaying photos, and made something else rather than keeping the good stuff and adding useful new features to it.

But ultimately iPhoto is dead, and we'll have to move on in the end.

What I love about iPhoto is the events feature, particularly showing event names in the photo library view. Since you claim Photos to be vastly superior, what would you do in Photos to replace Events? I was so happy with the move from albums to events in iPhoto. Now it looks like I have to move back to albums in Photos?

Ole

I'm weighing up the pros n cons of Lightroom & Capture One Pro.

As neither iPhoto & Photos offer non-destructive editing (i.e. you need to create a duplicate to edit as I understand - even then you have to export RAW and edited images separately rather than in bulk to keep the versions you'll probably want - all meaning unnecessarily large gig-age(!) for libraries. Also, both seem to bury original images deep in their library and reference edited images from them, making them difficult to manage. Both carry plenty of metadata but, as an earlier poster pointed out, it's difficult to get it all out when you export.

Furthermore, until this update Photos converted and RAW images to jpgs! Photos has come on a fair bit but as a metadata storage and management medium it comes a long way 2nd to iphoto. BUT iPhoto will die - the imminent introduction of AFPS almost guarantees that.

I'D be interested to hear of anyone's experience of Lightroom and Capture One for workflows.

Note: I use Photos at times, not against it, but accept its limitations. Outside of iPhone/iPad/laptop synchronicity it's a limited use tool .

HAs anyone had a positive experience migrating their iPhoto library to 3rd party software? - retaining titles, description, AND GPS location, camera and lense data, keywords, etc? (i.e. All of it!)

PS iphoto exports to Photos make all you're Events into Albums... 15 years of events over 750 of them) means I'm definitely not using Photos for all my work!

I want a photo editor, not a filing cabinet.

I agree. I do not like Photos. Not only is the organization limited, but the editing is limited. One of my favorite things about iPhoto is that I can easily choose to edit a picture in an external editor (Photoshop) which is frequently necessary. Photos thinks it knows all, but it does not work well for me. So no Sierra.

So, what is your alternative plan?

As neither iPhoto & Photos offer non-destructive editing (i.e. you need to create a duplicate to edit as I understand

That's absolutely wrong. iPhoto and Photos both have nondestructive editing. All edits are saved to the database and applied to the preview/edited version. Any time you want to go back to the original all you need to do is go into the Edit mode and click on the Revert to Original button:

When you edit a RAW image file there's always a new jpeg version created with the edits. That's the same in all image editors. Also Photos never converted RAW images to jpegs. It just created jpeg versions for viewing in the library.

As for Capture One and Lightroom vs Photos it all depends on what your ultimate goal is.

When you export a jpeg out of the library you can get all of the metadata embedded in it by exporting via this menu opiton

and checking these boxes in the Export window:

Also you can use Photoshop to edit from within the Photos library with the purchase of this 99¢ app from the App Store: External Editors For Photos. With that app/exntension you can use any image editor you have in your Applications folder inside of Photos:

All you need to do is learn how to use Photos.

As for access to the image files you can organize them by keywords, albums, descriptions, smart albums and then export those you want, either original or edited, to use outside of the library.

Csound1 wrote:

How much did you pay for Photoshop?

To quote Hillary "At this point what difference does it make?"

The limited functionality of Photo when compared to iPhote is like how much you are willing to pay for something, it's a personal choice. We vote with our dollars. Not everyone needs Sierra. Had I known about the iPhoto issue with Sierra, Sierra would not have been installed on my computer. Sierra offers no features I need other than security fixes if any.

LarryHN wrote:

what version of the OS and of iPhoto?

Yes iPhoto 9.6.1 works with OS X Sierra 10.12 -- .....

LN

I have iPhoto version 9.6.1 and OS version 10.12. iPhoto does not load. Got any ideas?