I recently bought a mac mini with Leopard (mac os x 10.5.6). I wanted to install my iPhoto library from my old (already 5 years old) powerbook running on mac os x 10.4. How to do?

Well, I tried to use the migration assistant. Unfortunately, the user profile on the powerbook and on the mac mini are different (different user name). The migration assistant simply created on the mac mini a profile for the powerbook user profile I was importing. In a word, the migrated photo library was not available on my mac mini profile. How sad. To have the iPhoto database running, I simply copied the iPhoto library to my profile, updated the user permissions (to have read/write permissions on all files) and ran iPhoto.

Caution: this works, but would overwrite any images that would be already imported in your new computer!!!

Step by Step (sorry, snapshots are done in french...):

  • files to import are in //hd/users/your-profile/Library/images/iphoto Library
  • copy those files in your new computer, at the same place. CAUTION: this will destroy any already existing files!!!!
  • On the "iphoto Library" directory, right-click, information, 
  • run iPhoto !