How to disable/delete Apple Photos?

I haven't used Yosemite or El Capitan yet, but in all of my reading since last spring, I've not yet found any way to delete Photos for OS X (or maybe I did read of a way a long time ago, but have forgotten???). I can't find anything in a Google search at this time (a lot of my failure -- anyone's failure -- to find anything has to do with the ridiculously generic name of "Photos for OS X").

When you say you "have left unchecked 'open photos for this device,'" where is this check-mark box to which you refer? Do you mean the popup menu in the Image Capture app? If not, that's the place to permanently change the default from Photos for OS X to some other app. The catch is that you have to have the camera or iPhone (or whatever) connected to the computer (or the card inserted into the SD slot) during the time that you are changing the default in Image Capture. This MacWorld article from two days ago (09-14-2015) shows you how.

 

I haven't been able to found a way to work around reformatting bug. I reported it to Apple in 10.11.3 beta and it hasn't been fixed yet.

Radical way to remove the problem is to delete Photos. I don't recommend doing so because Photos is integrated to OS X. I am not certain how removing Photos effects OS X, if you are lucky nothing bad happens. Photos will probably be reinstalled in future updates so this fix is likely temporary.

Follow these instructions at your own risk!

First back up to external drive, then open Terminal and paste this: sudo rm -rf /Applications/Photos.app
Press enter, if necessary give administrator password.