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Importing Your Photos Using Photos for Mac

Jun 15, 2015

📄 Contents

␡

Migrating an iPhoto or Aperture Library to Photos for Mac
Creating and Working with Libraries
Importing Photos to Libraries
Enabling Automatic Device Imports
Dealing with Duplicates
Disabling Copy Imported Photos

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My Photos for Mac

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Creating and Working with Libraries

If you have no iPhoto or Aperture libraries to migrate and want to start using Photos for OS X from scratch, you need to create a new Photos library. Initially it’ll just be a blank library—that digital shoebox; eventually the library will contain all the pictures you ever import into Photos.

Create a Library

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

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Enter a name for your new library. The default name is Photos Library, which is fine to keep if you only have one Photos library.
Click OK. The Photos app launches with an empty library ready for you to start importing photos.

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Create Additional Photos Libraries

You aren’t limited to only having one Photos library. You can create as many as you like so you can choose which one to launch each time you open Photos. Creating multiple Photo libraries is helpful if multiple people use the Photos app under the same user account on OS X or if you want to differentiate your Photo libraries by criteria such as personal collections and work collections.

Find the Photos icon in the Applications folder. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard while you double-click the icon to open the Choose Library window.
Click the Create New button.

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Enter a name for your new library. The default name is Photos Library, but be sure to change this name to something else if you already have a Photos library called that.
Click OK. The Photos app launches with a new empty library ready for you to start importing photos.

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Switch Between Photos Libraries

When you have multiple libraries, make sure you’re opening the right one each time you launch Photos. By default Photos opens the last-opened Photos library.

Find the Photos icon in the Applications folder and hold down the Option key on your keyboard while you double-click the icon to open the Choose Library window.
Select the library you want to open.

Where’s My Library

If your library isn’t listed in the Choose Library window (for example, if you have it on an external hard drive) then click the Other Library button and navigate to the library in the Finder window that appears.
Click the Choose Library button. Photos opens the library you’ve selected.

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