Tried Photos... Not for me. But quick questions...

[Mavimao]

I gave it a try, but its organization leaves much to be desired and I never thought I'd say this... But iPhoto is much speedier. I'd like to know if it's safe to drag the Photos library file into the trash?

Second question: let's say Photos becomes a great application in the next couple of years and I'd like to move on from iPhoto, will it be possible to re-transfer my iPhotos collection?

Thank you!

 

[superflush]

I gave it a try, but its organization leaves much to be desired and I never thought I'd say this...

You saw the sidebar in Photos right? Before I had it show the sidebar, I momentarily thought the organization of Photos wouldn't do for me.

 

[Ledgem]

I gave it a try, but its organization leaves much to be desired and I never thought I'd say this... But iPhoto is much speedier. I'd like to know if it's safe to drag the Photos library file into the trash?

It should be fine to do so. It just means that whenever you open Photos it'll go through the process of searching for an iPhoto or Aperture library and will have to convert everything all over again.

Second question: let's say Photos becomes a great application in the next couple of years and I'd like to move on from iPhoto, will it be possible to re-transfer my iPhotos collection?

That depends on what "a couple of years" is. 2-3 years? I think there's a good chance Photos will still retain support for important photos from an iPhoto library. 3-4 years? Probably still safe. 5+ years? That gets iffy, as Apple have shown that they're not afraid to drop support for "legacy" formats fairly quickly.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to predict partly because we don't know the roadmap for Photos. Right now it doesn't seem terribly different from iPhoto, and of course Apple has gone through great effort to ensure that users can transition from iPhoto cleanly. But if Photos receives major revisions in the coming years, to the point that it becomes very different from iPhoto, then it may be a different story.

 

[Mavimao]

You saw the sidebar in Photos right? Before I had it show the sidebar, I momentarily thought the organization of Photos wouldn't do for me.

Thank you for your tip. I had seen it and turned it on. The main problem is that for the past 10 years, I've organized my entire life's worth of photos into events. This includes my baby/childhood pictures scanned from prints and negatives, along with every digital picture taken since my first digital P&S in 2004. This is a crapton of photos and organization. The issue now is that these Events are in a folder in a folder - and I have to scroll and scroll to find the ones I want.

I feel Apple should have created an "Events" tab on top rather than put it as a subfolder in "Albums". This would have solved this problem.

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It should be fine to do so. It just means that whenever you open Photos it'll go through the process of searching for an iPhoto or Aperture library and will have to convert everything all over again.


That depends on what "a couple of years" is. 2-3 years? I think there's a good chance Photos will still retain support for important photos from an iPhoto library. 3-4 years? Probably still safe. 5+ years? That gets iffy, as Apple have shown that they're not afraid to drop support for "legacy" formats fairly quickly.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to predict partly because we don't know the roadmap for Photos. Right now it doesn't seem terribly different from iPhoto, and of course Apple has gone through great effort to ensure that users can transition from iPhoto cleanly. But if Photos receives major revisions in the coming years, to the point that it becomes very different from iPhoto, then it may be a different story.

That's fine if it has to reimport. I will actually prefer this as I will continue to use iPhoto exclusively for the foreseeable future and I don't want to have to do some convoluted method for getting the photos back into Photos one day.

I say this because I am not naïf in thinking that I will be able to use iPhoto forever. Eventually, OSX will look for the Photos library for future services and iPhoto will become more and more dilapidated. I feel like Photos needs a little more time in the oven. Give me a Dark mode and a better method to use my old events and I'm happy.

 

[superflush]

Thank you for your tip. I had seen it and turned it on. The main problem is that for the past 10 years, I've organized my entire life's worth of photos into events. This includes my baby/childhood pictures scanned from prints and negatives, along with every digital picture taken since my first digital P&S in 2004. This is a crapton of photos and organization. The issue now is that these Events are in a folder in a folder - and I have to scroll and scroll to find the ones I want.

I feel Apple should have created an "Events" tab on top rather than put it as a subfolder in "Albums". This would have solved this problem.

I believe you can take all of the Events/Projects from iPhoto/Aperture out of that nested folder, and that they would then become their own albums. Mine are exactly how you describe, and I plan to eventually move them out as Photos.app Albums.