Moving to Mac & Lightroom--file management

[paddlenbike]

I am making the move from Windows to Mac and currently have all of my photos backed up onto an external harddrive in a Windows-like file structure with folders for each event. What I don't want is to give Photos (what used to be 'iPhoto) the power to hold my photos in a library, I want to maintain my existing file structure. I assume I can dump my files onto the Mac in the existing folder format and tell Lightroom to reference those files?

 

[CXS]

That should work fine. I'm a long time Mac user but not a fan of the Photos.app - there are alternatives but none I'll suggest at this time. One thing you might want to try is using Photos on your machine but preserve your photos as is on the external drive as is.

Depending on the quantity you could load into Photos manually to maintain the struture too.