backroader Loc: Wherever we park our motorhome

I just downloaded Lightroom 5 onto my iMac with Yosemite upgrade. My first problem happened immediately. All of my photos in iPhoto are stored on an external hard drive I named "iPhoto External". And they are backed up through Time Machine. When I open LR5 and click on import, I am shown iPhoto External but when when I click on it a message says iPhoto External does not have any photos in it. I have not been able to get beyond this problem. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong would be very helpful?

wisner Loc: The planet Twylo

IPhoto stores photos in the Pictures folder of your home folder on your hard drive. Did you place your photos on the external hard drive or just the catalog? Check the pictures folder to see of your images are there.
You might also try pointing the LR import source to your Pictures folder to see if it finds any images.
Let us know what happens.

Wallbanger Loc: Madison, WI

Use the proper method. 5.7 has an iPhoto import tool.

(Download)

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Really not clear to me what has happened or what you are attempting to do. Is this your first time using LR? Are you intending to import the iPhoto images into the LR catalog? I ask because you refer to images in an iPhoto library.

Does iPhoto show the images correctly?

Please provide more info.

FYI I have been using Yosemite since day 1 of it's release along with LR CC ,and Aperture (RIP). I have not had any problems with LR running under Yosemite.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Backroad, so you were trying to import your iphoto lib? Please don't forget to backup everything first! Very important. Then use the import tool as noted by Wallbanger.

Also please post results on how well it worked!

backroader Loc: Wherever we park our motorhome

This is my first time using any photo editor other than the one in iPhoto. I thought I was importing some selected photos that already existed in my iPhoto library so I could practice working on them in LR5.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Well that is a very good idea to do a trial first. LR is a lot more complex than iPhoto. And it has those "modules" on the top. You have to have the module selected to do that type of work. That's one difference from iPhoto and Aperture. There are other differences.

I have used Aperture since Aperture 1.0, and iPhoto before that. I will miss Apertures kick butt organizational tools but LR is a fine program and the LR editing tools are more powerful. But with power comes responsibility!

There is a lot of community support for Lightroom. I recommend you view some of the info and tutorials available on-line. I think the learning tutorials by Jan Kabili are particularly good.