How to access photos from old iphotos library

Question

How to access photos from old iphotos library

I have a few older iphoto libraries that contain years of valuable photos. If I try to hold down option and open the library in Photos, the library is grayed out. In older posts I read about the iphoto library upgrader tool, but I tried that and it won't run on my computer, presumably because my OS is too new.

Is there an updated upgrader tool somewhere that I'm not seeing? Otherwise, any advice on how to retrieve these photos? On some other older iphoto libraries I can right click and select Show Package Contents, but that doesn't show up on the older one. Would it help to give it a new extension? I'm at a loss and quite worried that I'll lose these.

Mac Pro (2019)

Posted on Sep 8, 2025 09:06 PM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,516 points

Sep 9, 2025 01:01 AM in response to portlandgirl2

With more recent versions of Photos the job is to not upgrade the old iPhoto Library but instead to import from it to your current one.

Rather more useful is to use PowerPhotos which does a much better job than the built-in procedure. Have a read of the relevant portion of its documentation

https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/VersionedDocs/v8/migrate_libraries.html

and it can be got here:

https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

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Answer 2

Sep 9, 2025 07:55 AM in response to portlandgirl2

As Yer_Man says, you can use File>Import to load the picture from an iPhoto Library to Photos , but you lose the event structure and organization. You have way more control with the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($35.) We all use it for all sorts of stuff.

You should be warned about the dangers of messing around inside of a Photos or iPhoto Library package. Everything the apps do depends on the database in there, and the database relies on everything inside the Library remaining exactly as it remembers them. If you do want to look in there, do it with copies.

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