What can/should be deleted after Photos migration?

[anewman143]

OK - I'm predominately an Aperture user with a ~140GB library on my MacbookPro. Don't really use iPhoto at all - but don't iPhoto and Aperture share a library now?

I think I understand that when I migrate/try the new Photos app, it will create it's own library file, but it will largely just be a set of pointers (my word) to my old library so that I don't lose any disk space.

If that is correct (please please be correct), then I can't ever delete my Aperture or iPhoto library file(s) since the new app "points" to them to get the actual image data.

Do any of these questions make sense?

Any advice/explanation would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

OK - I'm predominately an Aperture user with a ~140GB library on my MacbookPro. Don't really use iPhoto at all - but don't iPhoto and Aperture share a library now?

I think I understand that when I migrate/try the new Photos app, it will create it's own library file, but it will largely just be a set of pointers (my word) to my old library so that I don't lose any disk space.

If that is correct (please please be correct), then I can't ever delete my Aperture or iPhoto library file(s) since the new app "points" to them to get the actual image data.

Do any of these questions make sense?

Any advice/explanation would be greatly appreciated.

You're half-right. The "pointers" ("hard links" is the common term) don't point from the Photos library to the Aperture/iPhoto library (as if Aperture had seniority over Photos) - both Photos and Aperture libraries have independent hard links to the same image file. If you delete either the Photos or Aperture library, you delete that library's link to the image file. The other link remains. To actually delete the image files, you'd have to delete both the Photos and Aperture libraries.