Will Photos be a mandatory upgrade?

[Tumbleweed666]

I'm sure this is mentioned somewhere but my search skills have deserted me on this one.

When Photos goes mainstream, eg is Beta no more, will it be an automatic / mandatory upgrade or will I be able to continue with iPhoto until such time as I decide that enough bugs have been cleared out by the eager beavers ahead of me ?

TIA

 

[redheeler]

iPhoto is still usable for me after the update to the 10.10.3 beta, so you'll likely still be able to use it after the update.

 

[maflynn]

You'll be able to use iPhoto and also Aperture if you own that, but it will not be getting any more updates. At some point in the future, an OS update will break the ability to use the apps, when that may happen is anyone's guess.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Thanks folks.

On similar lines will you able to to dip your toe in the water by doing a partial import? Just selected albums or events for example. Or is it all or nothing?

And similarly, could you start Photos from new, adding new photos to it, whilst retaining iPhoto, and then when you are ready, merge in your iPhoto library?

 

[robgendreau]

Thanks folks.

On similar lines will you able to to dip your toe in the water by doing a partial import? Just selected albums or events for example. Or is it all or nothing?

And similarly, could you start Photos from new, adding new photos to it, whilst retaining iPhoto, and then when you are ready, merge in your iPhoto library?

A caveat to earlier advice: Photos will convert a library for its own use. So you would then have separate iPhoto and Photos libraries; you can't continue to use the same library for both.

There isn't a lot in Photos to facilitate merging. That was an Aperture thing. Maybe third parties, like iPhoto Library Manager will come along, but maybe not. You can, however, still create separate Photos libraries; only one, however, can synch with iCloud Photo Library.

The flexibility you seek, to export and import subsets of libraries, was an Aperture thing, and isn't in Photos. If you reference photos, instead of managing them in iPhoto (i.e. copying them into the iPhoto library), you have some more flexibility. But the issue would be preserving any edits you made in iPhoto, and organization in albums, etc.

But if you just wanna test, then create a new test libary in iPhoto and mess around with it and then use Photos to see if the results are as intended. Then chuck the whole thing when you've seen what it can do.

 

[abn0rma1]

Thanks folks.

On similar lines will you able to to dip your toe in the water by doing a partial import? Just selected albums or events for example. Or is it all or nothing?

And similarly, could you start Photos from new, adding new photos to it, whilst retaining iPhoto, and then when you are ready, merge in your iPhoto library?

One thing I did to allow myself to do the transition at my own pace was to do a Time Machine backup just prior to installing the beta, then I upgraded and converted my iPhoto Library to Photos (which of course did require a bunch of reorganizing, etc...)

Then after it was converted, I restored my iPhoto Library via Time Machine so that iPhoto works independently of Photos.

Only caveat obviously is if you continue to import/manage in iPhoto the changes won't replicate in Photos and you would either have to import or transition over again afterwards.