> Running iPhoto on a new Mac
I’m still using iPhoto version 9.5.1 in Mavericks, but plan to buy a new iMac. iPhoto has one feature that I need, the ability to compare two photos side by side, which isn’t in Photos. Can I still run iPhoto on my new iMac?
You can still run iPhoto on your new iMac, using the free Retroactive from bit.ly/ mac360rtroactv, and that seems to work with Big Sur too. However, as iPhoto has been unsupported for years and Photos is becoming increasingly incompatible as time goes on, it’s likely to get harder for users to convert old iPhoto libraries to be compatible with Photos in the future. You should also be planning for that.
Although there’s no sign of Photos getting the same comparison feature, it does offer before and after picture comparison when editing. When you have made a change in Edit mode, simply press and hold the M key to see the original before that particular edit. To compare the effects of changes such as cropping, use Ctrl+M instead when you’re in Adjust or Filter views; oddly, that doesn’t work in Crop view.
Third–party image editors, such as Affinity Photo (affinity.serif.com), enable you to open and compare multiple images, and are now well-integrated with Photos. They also offer a great deal more power and flexibility than the limited editing tools available in either iPhoto or Photos. When you want to discover duplicate images in your library, there are other tools such as Fat Cat’s Power Photos, costing $29.95 (store.fatcatsoftware.com) which should do the job well, although its support for iPhotos libraries is waning.