As you’ll learn starting on Migrating from iPhoto or Aperture to Photos, there’s a fair amount of preparation you need to do in order to smoothly migrate from those older programs to Photos. If, on the other hand, you’ve been in the Mac universe for a while and you’ve been using iPhoto or Aperture to manage your digital memories, there are some important things to consider before launching Photos.

Feel free to skip everything else in this chapter and move to more exciting topics like importing your pictures and videos, which is covered in Chapter 2.

This chapter also includes a wonderful strategy for managing Photos in a family situation ( Photos for Families) so that your Photos world doesn’t get out of hand. You’ll learn how to get Photos (if you don’t yet have it) and read an incredibly helpful overview of iCloud Photo Library ( Meet the iCloud Photo Library), the Apple service you can use to back up and then sync your Photos library onto all of your Macs and iOS devices.

If you’re new to OS X or you’ve never before used iPhoto, then you can breeze through this chapter in no time flat.

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