procuring and running iPhoto on Big Sur

[Pedro147]

I am trying to help a customer out in regard to retrieving 13GB of photos. They were originally in iPhoto but he cannot recall what OS his 2013 Macbook Pro was running when he upgraded to Big Sur. He is a bit vague on the full details so I am too unfortunately. He says that the 13GB of photos was compressed into an unknown size (sensing a theme here, me too) file that Photos will not open. My initial thought was to find out what the last macOS that shipped with iPhoto was and instal that on the latest Macbook that will run it. I have looked for a download of iPhoto but see that you can only get it from Apple if you have previously downloaded it from the App store.Neither of us did so therefore we cannot do this. I see that there is a third party app called Retroactive that apparently allows iPhotos to run in later macOS versions but I assume that you still need a download of iPhoto. Any help, suggestions or ideas of how we might recover his precious photos would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

 

[Brian33]

I don't think you need iPhotos.app. The successor, Photos.app, can read (and convert) libraries from iPhotos. At least it could in Mojave -- it read my iPhotos library and converted it just fine. I'd expect that to work even with the latest Photos.app.

He says that the 13GB of photos was compressed into an unknown size (sensing a theme here, me too) file that Photos will not open.

I think your first job is to determine if the photos were really "compressed" or not. That would not be typical -- your customer may be confusing the "library" package with a compressed archive file.

iPhotos.app and Photos.app both (by default) import all pictures into a "library". In Finder, it looks like a file, but it's not really. It's actually a special folder, also known as a "package". The library should have a certain extension. Photos.app uses ".photoslibrary" as an extension. An iPhotos library might end with ".iphotoslibrary" or just ".photolibrary" -- I can't remember. But your customer may think such a package is some sort of compressed archive. (By the way, you can "open" a package in Finder by right-clicking it and picking "Show Package Contents". You can browse the folder structure inside -- just don't delete or alter anything.)

So, what is the extension of the "file" containing the pictures? .zip, .gz, .bz2, .tar all indicate a compressed archive, and Photos.app wouldn't be expecting that. An extension like .photolibrary or .iphotolibrary would indicate a package (that, I believe, Photos should be able to read).

If it's a compressed archive, probably un-compressing (with the appropriate utility) would produce the iPhotos library package, which Photos should then be able to open and convert.

(Of course, keep a backup copy of the original file or package, in case something goes wrong with the conversion!)

 

[Pedro147]

Thanks for the comprehensive answer Brian. I see your point and I will ask him about the file extension and go from there. I have only had phone contact with him so far so once I actually lay eyes on what he has it should become clearer. I found it hard to imagine that iPhoto exported his photos into a format that would not easily integrate into Photo. I will post my findings here and once again my thanks for your time.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you want to install iPhoto, you will need 2 things:
The FINAL VERSION of iPhoto, which is version 9.6.1
(no other version works to my knowledge, you must have 9.6.1)
BE AWARE that finding this can be difficult, you may have to resort to "non-Apple-authorized" sources (I will say no more on that).

Then, you need something called "Retroactive", which you can find here:

GitHub - cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive: Retroactive has been discontinued. You should transition from Retroactive to supported apps such as Music, iTunes for Windows, iMazing, Photos, Darktable, Lightroom Classic, and DaVinci Resolve.

Retroactive has been discontinued. You should transition from Retroactive to supported apps such as Music, iTunes for Windows, iMazing, Photos, Darktable, Lightroom Classic, and DaVinci Resolve. - ...

github.com

(on right side, look for "latest version")

Retroactive will modify iPhoto so that it will work on newer versions of the OS (which come with Photos).

No promises that it will help, but you wanted to know how to get iPhoto working, so that's something to try...

 

[Pedro147]

Thanks for the reply I appreciate your time. I did find iPhoto 9.6.1 on the internet archive last night actually https://archive.org/details/i-photo-9.6.1#reviews

I will download Retrospective and see how I go. I knew that the combined brain power in Macrumours would help me with this issue so thank you to you both 🙏