How to move iPhoto Library to the new Photos App?

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With the official release of OS X Yosemite, it is time to move your old iPhoto library to the new Photos app. Moving photos to the new Photos app is much easier than you may think of. Following are the steps to move all your iPhoto library photos to the all new Photos App:

  1. Check your iPhoto library and delete all the duplicates if any. Update & edit any meta data that you wish to.
  2. Close both the Photos app and iPhoto as well.
  3. Open ~/Pictures and you should see at least two photo libraries: one for the new—Photos Library— and one for the old—iPhoto Library
  4. Double click on Photos Library and it should launch the new Photos app. Verify that the Photos app is empty, which it should be on a new installation of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3
  5. If the Photos Library is empty as confirmed in Step 3, delete the Photos Library database from ~/Pictures. We do this to avoid having multiple libraries for the Photos app, and to prevent weird names like “Photo Library 2″
  6. Launch the Photos app, and it should state that Photos cannot find the System Photos Library. That’s okay, because we just deleted it
  7. Click Open Other…
  8. Select the iPhoto Library and click Choose Library
  9. Wait while all of your data and photos from iPhoto are imported into the new Photos app.

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