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Importing Your Photos Using Photos for Mac

  • Jun 15, 2015
This chapter from My Photos for Mac explains the ways you can import your pictures from various devices, including your digital camera; an iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad; and folders on your computer.
This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

My Photos for MacMy Photos for Mac

Learn More Buy

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

My Photos for MacMy Photos for Mac

Learn More Buy
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Adding pictures to your Photos Library is called importing. With Photos there are several ways you can import your photographs. This chapter explains the ways you can import your pictures from various devices, including your digital camera; an iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad; and folders on your computer.

  • Migrating photos from an iPhoto or Aperture library
  • Creating a library
  • Importing photos from a device, folder, or Mail
  • Turning off automatic imports
  • Dealing with duplicates
  • Finding your Photos Library

It used to be that importing photos into a photo application was a big pain. Every different source of the photographs—hard drives, digital cameras, mobile phones—seemed to have a different, complex import process. With the latest version of Photos, Apple has simplified importing and, at least as far as devices go, after you know how to import from one source, you know how to import from the others.

Migrating an iPhoto or Aperture Library to Photos for Mac

If you have previously used iPhoto or Aperture and are switching to Photos, you need to know how to migrate your photo library into Photos.

Migrate a Library to Photos

  1. After launching Photos for the first time, click the Get Started button to open the Choose Library screen.

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    Migrate Now

    If you’re totally new to the Mac and don’t have an iPhoto or Aperture library you can skip this task and continue to the “Creating and Working with Libraries” section later in this chapter. But if you have photos in iPhoto or Aperture, you’re going to want to move those over to the new Photos for Mac because Apple is discontinuing both iPhoto and Aperture. At some point, the programs will no longer run on a future version of OS X, and you’ll be locked out of your pictures forever.

    My Library Isn’t Listed

    If you have saved your iPhoto or Aperture library on an external hard drive or in a unique place on your Mac, and Photos doesn’t find it and display it in the existing libraries list, click the Other Library button and navigate to the library in the Finder window that appears.

  2. From the list of iPhoto and Aperture libraries, select the one you want to migrate into Photos.

  3. Click the blue Choose Library button to open the Preparing Library screen that lets you know how much more of your old library needs to be migrated. This could take as little as a few minutes to over an hour depending on the size of your library. When it’s complete you’ll be taken right to the new Photos app.

    02fig02.jpg

    Your Old iPhoto and Aperture Library Remain Intact

    Importing an iPhoto or Aperture library to Photos doesn’t alter or delete the old library. You can still open those libraries in iPhoto or Aperture by launching their respective app. Migrating an iPhoto or Aperture library over simply creates a new Photos library from the pictures in the iPhoto or Aperture libraries.

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