iPhoto Library Manager and the new Photos app

With Apple unveiling a preview of their new Photos app today, I’d like to outline what our plans are for iPhoto Library Manager with respect to the new app. It’s still very early and there is a lot that is still unknown, so we don’t have answers for every question yet, but here is what I know so far.  Update: 4/8/2015. Apple has now released Photos to the general public. Read more about our new app, PowerPhotos, which will let you manage your Photos libraries. Currently, the Photos app is only available to registered Apple developers, by installing the latest prerelease seed of OS X 10.10.3. Apple has said they will be rolling out a beta to people enrolled in the Yosemite beta program in the next couple of months, with the final release of the Photos app coming sometime in the spring. I don’t recommend installing the current version of the Photos app unless you are very comfortable with running prerelease software, and have solid backups in the event that a stray bug ends up damaging or deleting your photo library. For those brave souls who do install Photos, the current version of iPhoto Library Manager (4.1.11) does not have any interaction with the new app, or with a Photos library. You can still use iPhoto and iPhoto Library Manager alongside Photos if you wish. If you migrate your existing iPhoto library to Photos, the iPhoto library will not be removed. It will be stored separately from your Photos library, so changes in one library will not be reflected in the other. There are a couple minor issues with iPLM and iPhoto libraries that are migrated to Photos that I plan on issuing a bug fix update for soon (see below). My hope in the long run is to be able to have iPLM do all the same things it currently does with iPhoto libraries, but with Photos libraries as well. This includes things like copying between libraries, merging libraries together, eliminating duplicate photos, and so forth. It’s still too early to tell exactly what features we’ll be able to support with Photos though. I will post more information on this once I’ve had a chance to investigate the abilities of Photos more thoroughly. The known issues with iPLM 4.1.11 and Photos so far are: If you migrate an iPhoto library to Photos, the iPhoto library will be renamed with a different file extension, and iPLM may lose track of its location. This will cause an error message to be displayed when trying to view the library, saying that the library cannot be found. Workaround: drag the iPhoto library from the Finder into the iPLM library list, then select the old entry and click “Remove Library” to remove it from the list. Migrated iPhoto libraries will not appear in the search results when using the “Add Library” button. Workaround: drag the library into the iPLM library list to add it instead. Photos libraries will appear in the search results when using the “Add Library” button (they will show a version number of “Unknown”), and can be added to iPLM’s library list, but trying to view one will result in an error message being displayed. Workaround: don’t add Photos libraries to the library list.