First select the largest library and wait for it to completely migrate from iPhoto or Aperture (this could take a very long time, depending on how many pictures you have in your largest library). When you first open Photos, you will be asked to choose a library. You can use Photos without iCloud Photo Library - just make sure you turn it off in the Preferences menu. With iCloud Photo Library turned on in the Photos app, all of your images will be uploaded to the cloud, which does eat up your iCloud storage space.

One quick note: Before you migrate all of your existing photos into Photos for OS X, make sure you have enough iCloud storage space if you want to take advantage of iCloud Photo Library, which syncs your images across al of your devices. You may need some help figuring out how to manually migrate additional libraries, so we've created a handy guide to explain how to get those other libraries into Photos quickly and easily. However, you may have more than one photo library on your Mac if you've split your iPhoto library up or if you use both iPhoto and Aperture, which makes things a little more difficult.

The migration from iPhoto or Aperture to Photos actually happens automatically if you only have one library in your Pictures folder. The Photos for OS X app took several months to complete because it was designed from the ground up to work with OS X Yosemite and integrate with both the Photos for iOS app and iCloud Photo Library.īecause Photos for OS X replaces both of Apple's existing photo apps, Aperture and iPhoto, you're going to need to migrate your Aperture and iPhoto libraries into the new Photos app if you want to be able to use Apple's latest and greatest photo editing tools with your images. With the launch of OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite, Apple released its much-anticipated Photos app, which was first announced during its Worldwide Developers Conference in 2014.

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