How to recover iPhoto library

December 20, 2023 6:03 PM

During a very stressful period of my life, I updated my OS to Big Sur (currently 11.7.10) from, uhhh, something earlier, discovered the iPhoto app is no longer supported, and figured I would deal with it when things settled down. And here we are. The full situation within.

-I never migrated the photos from iPhoto to Photo on the old laptop, then upgraded the OS to Big Sur without ever doing it. I had some crisis that necessitated upgrading and just couldn't deal.
-I just now bought a MacBook Air and got it going so am free to monkey around with the old laptop OS if necessary.
-I can see my iPhoto library but can't open it. It's 274 GB, and won't fit on the new laptop, which has less storage than the old one.
-Ideally I would get access to the photos and upload them to iCloud so that I could access them with the new laptop.

Seems to me, although what do I know, that I could install an old OS on the old laptop, migrate the iPhoto library to Photos, and then it would automatically appear in Photos on the new laptop. Is it that simple? Which OS? Will it be obvious how to migrate them?

Thank you so much for your help!

posted by HotToddy to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Might help in the migration:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8461

Updating from iPhoto to Photos for macOS (archive copy)
https://web.archive.org/web/20200315041706/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204655
posted by oldnumberseven at 6:12 PM on December 20, 2023

I have a Mac at home but it's my kid's and I don't really use it, this is more from a general computer use perspective. I wouldn't do anything to the old laptop until after you've recovered the photos. So for me step 1 would be to get an external or network drive and dump a copy of the iPhoto library there. Then try to open/import/migrate it into Photos on the new computer. Then spend some time verifying that everything moved over properly and make a backup of it. And then go about trying to migrate it on the old laptop. But until you've verified that your library is safely migrated and backed up I wouldn't touch the original because too much can go wrong.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:30 PM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

If you just want access to the photos, you can control click on the library in finder and show package contents. Inside, there will be folders called originals and modified. If you haven’t edited your photos, you can just take the originals folder and that will have all your photos. You could also take the modified photos, but those will be edited duplicates of the originals.
posted by snofoam at 2:40 AM on December 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have found third-party software PowerPhotos to be very helpful in finding and migrating Apple iPhoto/Photos libraries. It's a $30 USD and in this case won't do anything that has been mentioned above, but might be worth it if you're less comfortable digging into normally-hidden MacOS files.
posted by QuixoticGambit at 5:15 PM on December 22, 2023