iPhoto import library help

[allisonv7]

Before I started in on this I'd like some advice..

I have about 60gb of photos in iPhoto I need to import onto my new Mini. The previous computer is an iMac from around 2005.

What is the best way to do this to ensure that I get all the photos and events (and albums if possible)

I really don't want to go back through seven years of photos and split them up again.

I have an external hard drive to use for the transfer.

Thanks!

Allison

 

[LaWally]

You could have used migration assistant to migrate your iMac data to your new Mac-mini. That would have brought everything over for you, including your photos. Any reason why you didn't use it?

On your old iMac:
1. Connect your external hard drive.
2. Stop iPhoto if it is running.
3. Copy the ~/Allison/Pictures/iPhoto Library file to the external hard drive.
4. Unmount (eject) the external drive from your iMac and disconnect it.

On your new Mac-mini:
1. Connect your external hard drive.
2. Stop iPhoto if it is running.
3. Copy the current ~/Allison/Pictures/iPhoto Library file to the desktop (just in case we need to put it back)
4. Copy the iPhoto Library file on the external hard drive to the ~/Allison/Pictures folder replacing the existing iPhoto Library file
5. Start iPhoto. All your photos should be just as they were on the iMac. If so, you can safely remove the iPhoto Library file you saved to the desktop in #3 above.
6. Enjoy your photos.

One important caveat. This process assumes the version of iPhoto on the old iMac and the new Mac-mini are the same. Are they?

For peace of mind, even if this does not work for some reason, you still have your original photo library on your old iMac and on your external hard drive so don't worry.

 

[allisonv7]

Thank you for your suggestions!

I thought about Migration Assistant but when I tried it the old iMac said it needed to be updated. With the machine being pretty unstable at this point (it's 7+ years oldand my hard drive was basically full) I didn't want to risk disrupting something and not having it boot back up.

Will the method posted keep the events and/or albums I've created intact? That's my primary concern, on the bright side if they don't I'll be doing some major cleanup of photos, which I should probably do anyways.

Allison

 

[allisonv7]

Went to do this today and got this error, is there any hope of being able to keep the Events & Albums I had created?? Or should I just give up and clean out some old pics and reorganize?

I'm OK with either I guess, but splitting up all my stuff into different events is going to be difficult just to get dates correct.

 

[Mal]

Went to do this today and got this error, is there any hope of being able to keep the Events & Albums I had created?? Or should I just give up and clean out some old pics and reorganize?

I'm OK with either I guess, but splitting up all my stuff into different events is going to be difficult just to get dates correct.

That's normal when you've moved to a newer version of iPhoto, it won't destroy your albums and events (though I hope you have a backup just in case).

jW