FEBRUARY 2020 MACWORLD 15(go.macworld.com/snst).
If you upgraded to
Catalina without first
launching Photos or finding
another solution, what options
do you have? Plenty.
Launch Photos in
Catalina. Photos can still read
and upgrade an iPhoto library,
as it doesn’t require launching
iPhoto. Photos doesn’t copy
the iPhoto images, but it uses
a special kind of link that lets
the same file exist in two places, avoiding
increasing your storage requirements.
Switch to Google Photos (go.
macworld.com/gpht). Google offers
desktop and mobile apps for importing
images and syncs via its cloud service. You
can have the desktop software read an
iPhoto library to upload your images.
Switch to Adobe Lightroom for photo
library managing and maybe for cloud-
based sync. Adobe offers two different
versions: one is oriented toward images
stored on a computer (Lightroom Classic
[go.macworld.com/ltcl]), while the other
leans heavily on cloud-based sharing and
access for mobile, desktop, and Web (the
weirdly named Adobe Photoshop
Lightroom [go.macworld.com/ltrm]). The
cloud-oriented version is just $10 a month
(go.macworld.com/10mn), which includes
1TB of storage and the use of all the apps
across your devices.
> Install a virtual machine to keep
macOS Mojave or an earlier macOS
running for iPhoto and other apps. While
it’s not a solution forever, you can use
Parallels (go.macworld.com/prls) or
VMWare Fusion (go.macworld.com/fson)
within Catalina. You can postpone making
a change for a little or long while. (You
could also revert to Mojave, but that’s a
time-limited choice, too, and Mac models
released after this point won’t run macOS
before Catalina.)
With Google Photos and either
Lightroom choice, you won’t be able to
preserve metadata added in iPhoto,
however. And you might not be able to
import modified versions of photos you
edited within iPhoto—only the originals.
Upgrading to Photos or using a virtual
machine preserves both. ■Google Photos is an easier way to share an entire library
than iCloud Photos.