One of the largest sets of data I had to transfer from my PowerBook to my MacBook Pro was my picture library. It took two tries and some fiddling around to get everything setup properly, so hopefully my posting here will save someone else the time and frustration I had.
You could use Apple’s Migration Assistant if you were willing to create a new account on the new machine. As near as I can tell Migration Assistant refuses to work unless it targets a new account. I decided before getting my new computer that I want to start fresh and not just blindly copy data from old machine to new, therefore using the Apple too was out.
For my initial attempt I booted the PowerBook into “target disk mode” by restarting it and holding the “T” key down until the FireWire symbol appeared on the screen. I then plugged it into the MacBook using a FireWire cable and it appeared as a new, mounted drive. I opened up iPhoto and chose the “File | Import to Library…” option. In the resulting dialog box I selected the iPhoto library on the FireWire connected drive and sat back to watch. Within a few minutes my entire photo library had been imported.
Unfortunately none of the albums were imported and therefore the collection was highly disorganized. I didn’t realize this at the time and started adding new pictures to the new iPhoto library from my camera right away. When I did realize that the pictures had lost their organization I wanted to re-import the library but not lose the newly added photos. Were I to do this again I would follow these steps and then start adding new pictures: