Will I lose iPhoto if I upgrade to High Sierra?

If iPhoto is not usable in High Sierra then I would consider it lost!

It will depend on the iPhoto version you have. iPhoto 9.6.1 is working on High Sierra, but if you do not have an App Store version of iPhoto '11, you may not be able to update your iPhoto version to iPhoto 9.6.1.

Hello again

I was doing more research on upgrading to HS. In particular whether my three backup hard drives will be readable by HS once my Mac upgrades. You mentioned that your Time Machine backup was unreadable.

Pls see this link below. I think the issue could be simply that you need to convert the hard drive that your Time Machine backup is on to APFS. This is the new file system High Sierra uses. It automatically converts the hard drive your Mac uses but doesn't change any connect hard drives.

Read it thoroughly as there are reasons not to do it. And maybe research in more detail before attempting. But I think this may be the reason you can't see any backups before you upgraded.

Let us know how you got on if you do.

Gus

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/142357-upgrading-to-macos-high-sierra-don-t-forg et-to-convert-your-external-drives-to-ap…

Hello, Terence,

Thanks again for your helpful explanations. I did upgrade my older iMac to El Capitan, and checked out Photos a little bit before giving the iMac to my daughter for the grandkids.

Then, I went for the new iMac with High Sierra. I decided to continue to keep my iPhoto Libraries on an external drive to use when I want to use iPhoto. I copied the iPhoto Libraries I want to use with Photos, and put those libraries onto another external drive. This works perfectly well. I open iPhoto when I am finishing up projects from past years, and I have begun using Photos for my 2017 library. Because I have this set-up, I am not using the same libraries for both. I have not seen if description comments in iPhoto migrate to the information area on Photos, but I assume they will. I do see that individual photos in Photos have to be opened to see or add comments, unlike iPhotos where the comments can be added by selecting the photo and not opening it for editing. You can then just arrow to the next photo for description without having to open and close each photo. A small thing, but a bit annoying.

Also, I noticed in Photos, that images from cell phones don't have the img086 titling under them, but photos from my camera will show DSC0095, for examples. I guess I will have to get used to Photos. You are right, it does have great editing features.

"migrating keeps everything" ???

Does this include the ability to upload to Flickr and have photo titles, descriptions, etc., included, as with iPhoto? Does it include all the other iPhoto - Flickr integration?

If not, then Photos is still a huge step backwards from the library organization point-of-view, which is extremely important for people who have 50,000+ photos and publish their photos and videos on Flickr.

I spent a lot of time migrating to Flickr when Apple said they would no longer be in the web photo album hosting business, and dropped their excellent Mobile Me Galleries, but provided linkage for Flickr upload and synchronization. I have since made extensive use of this Flickr linkage, and have a lot of my time invested in it.

Although I am aware that Photos has some good editing features, I have been waiting patiently, (although not with high expectations), for a release of Photos that finally rises to the organizational level of iPhoto, especially with respect to Flickr integration.

It appears, however, that when iPhoto eventually becomes unusable, Apple is going to cause me to waste a lot of my time manually duplicating titles and descriptions for my Flickr library every time I post new photos and videos. It seems that Apple focus on new users and hope they can count on existing users to "stay loyal" even when their needs are ignored.

Going back to "migrating keeps everything," apart from the loss of Flickr integration, the following are examples of items that appear not to be migrated:

Edited photos no longer have the ability to be edited.

Smart albums with selection criteria that Photos doesn't support

Photo books and calendars made with themes that Photos does not support

Themes in slideshows that Photos does not support

Non-user-defined titles

View of Metadata such s IPTC, including copyright. (Has to be viewed in iPhoto, Aperture, etc.)

(Side note: The one great editing feature I saw in Photos was the ability to lighten shadows, etc., especially for faces, on an iPad using my finger; a really good example of the power and convenience of an iPad. So what did Apple do with that feature? They dropped it! I have no idea why, as I used it frequently with great success.)

I would love someone to be able to tell me that I am wrong, and that High Sierra Photos has most or all of the iPhoto - Flickr integration…

The great thing about migrating to Photos is that it leaves your iPhoto Library untouched, so you can do the migration and try things out for yourself. This is great when you're the only person asking about a particular feature.

I can see IPTC metadata on Photos. There's also shadow and highlight tool, under the Light section in the Adjust editing area.

As for the other list: Photos offers different templates. It's not direct exact carry-over from iPhoto, if it was they'd have called it iPhoto 17 or whatever. It's free. If it doesn't meet your needs then you've got time to do what the rest of us did: find an alternative that works the way you want.

"But even better, you can migrate a library to Photos.app and leave your iPhoto Library completely untouched, and have both side by side but independent of each other. That means you can explore the options that the newer app offers, risk free."

Terence, you surely do joke? My iPhoto library contains approx. 17,000 (228 GB) of mostly high and very high resolution photos. A mountain of work had gone into organising Events, and captioning the collection. If I migrate the library to Photos (an undertaking of many hours), I end up with two 228 GB libraries sitting side by side on the HDD. Unfortunately I cannot do this, because 2 x 228GB is more than my total storage capacity – I run El Capitan 10.11.6 on a 2012 aluminum unibody Macbook Pro with a 500GB HDD. Just to 'explore the options' and hang onto my photos I would have to get myself a new MBP with terabyte-range storage, at a significant cost. What I am going to do, reluctantly, is to forget the OS upgrade to High Sierra, soldier on under El Capitan, and export my 17,000 photos from iPhoto to an external HDD archive, as an extra insurance against Apple suddenly disabling iPhoto.

BTW, whoever decided that you cannot change the viewer background in Photos from white, has never been a photographer. Every photo editing/organising software product under the sun but Photos provides either a default or an option to view your photos against black or dark grey background. Photos uses black background only in the editor, but the non-changeable viewer default is white, for whatever convoluted reason of corporate aesthetics.

An image needs a file name under it.. simple as that! For pros now using I phone.. yeah.. it works pretty good in some situations... we need the file names. mostly to export to manual hard drives or laptop desktop.. Apple please add the file name under the image.. Upgrading to high Sierra.. you have lost... I photo.. that was gone a long time ago.. along with mobile me. which was fab... for pros.... they make you pay now for the cloud...

An image needs a file name under it.. simple as that

Image files always do have that. That's called the filename and it's in the Finder. I guess you're talking about having the Title show under the Photograph. Helps to get the terms right if you're making a feature request.

I upgraded to High Sierra last week running 10.13.3. My iPhoto app is at 9.6.1. Every time I open iPhoto then select a picture, my computer crashes big time! After it crashes, it will loop continuously. I've tried to run iPhoto twice thinking it was a fluke but it is so difficult to get the system back after it crashes that I have no choice but to go back to a previous operating system. So the answer to this question as far as I'm concerned is that NO, iPhoto will not work with High Sierra.

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Every time I open iPhoto then select a picture, my computer crashes big time!

That is not normal.

Before you go to the trouble to downgrade to the older system, test, if the problem is with your current iPhoto library by creating a small test library. iPhoto 9.6.1 is working very well for me on macOS 10.13.3.

Crashes big time: After opening iPhoto in a fairly new and small library, I can see my pictures. I select a photo and as soon as I do, the screen turns gray, then goes blank while the computer appears to shut down. The first time this happened, I tried powering on the computer back on. The apple logo appeared, then the bar below the apple logo progressed to about halfway. At that point, it stopped and didn't do anything further. I waiting a long time before doing a hard power down. I tried to power up several more times and would get the same results where it got stuck.

I unplugged the computer and let it sit before trying again. This time the computer powered up, the Apple logo appeared, the bar started progressing toward the center, then it seemed to do it's own restart getting to the same point on the bar and restarting. It would loop like that until I shut it down. I walked away and let it run for several hours thinking it would correct itself, but it did not.

Thinking that possibly the hard drive blew, I attempted a power on while holding down "command-R" . Unexpectedly, I did not get to the disk utility, but instead, the computer recovered itself. I thought all this was a fluke so stupidly, I attempted to open iPhoto again, selected a picture, and the exact same thing happened. I am afraid if I try again I will not get the system back.

I am running a 2011 MacBook Pro that was upgraded to 16 GB memory and a 1 TB SSD drive as recommended by my local Apple Store. I did a clean install of High Sierra, not an upgrade, to be sure I didn't drag any bugs with me in the transition. The upgrade has not gone smoothly, which is why I am talking about downgrading the operating system. I spent two hours yesterday trying to get Airdrop to work with my iPhone and never got it working either. While I understand this crashing is "not normal", the only conclusion to make is that High Sierra won't work with iPhoto which could possibly be related to the hardware each person is running the program on.

While I understand this crashing is "not normal", the only conclusion to make is that High Sierra won't work with iPhoto which could possibly be related to the hardware each person is running the program on

No, that's not the only conclusion to make. Another - and far more likely conclusion - is that you have a significant hardware problem. That's one for your local Apple Store.

SGS12 wrote:

Curious why you think there is a significant hardware problem? Though only using High Sierra a short time, iPhoto is so far the only program that is crashing the computer. Suggestions welcome.

Because iPhoto works just fine in High Sierra the problem must lie inside your own Mac.

I got one last boot out of the computer and decided to try opening another iPhoto library. The computer did the same thing, but this time I cannot recover so I guess that indeed I am heading to the genius bar. The reason I am skeptical that this is a hardware issue versus a hardware/software incompatibility is that I upgraded a different macbook pro to El Capitan at the Apple Store and had a display issue. They said they had never anything like it before and it must be a hardware/software incompatibility that I would have to live with. Those of us with older macs are not going to have everything work perfectly which is why I don't think people can make a blanket statement that iPhoto will work with High Sierra. I'll update after my visit to Apple.

I have a late 2008 and an early 2011. I don't think you can't make blanket statements that all your macs "run iPhoto perfectly regardless of the OS they are running" because that assumes we all have similarly configured machines to yours so therefore they should all be working. Not every machine built in those years has the same processor, graphics boards, displays, memory, etc. Additionally, the older macs can't be upgraded beyond El Capitan as far as I am aware, and many people are still on Yosemite so it stands to reason that iPhoto works perfectly. Trust me that I would love to have upgraded with ZERO problems, but as Apple moves forward with new technology and software, I expect to have some problems trying to make older hardware work with new software. I'm looking for a fix or a known incompatibility issue if anyone has input for me to try. In the mean time, I have an appointment made with the genius bar. I'm not ruling out some hardware piece has failed.