How to migrate only some photos from external hard drive/Time Machine to new Mac?

I just bought a new MacBook Air, after my old Macbook died. Luckily I had everything from the old computer backed up on an external hard drive through time machine. However, when I tried to migrate everything to my new computer, I found I do not have enough room for all of the files. I would like to import just some of the photos/albums from my old Iphoto Library but it looks like I can only migrate the entire library, or else nothing at all? Since I don't have enough space on the new computer, it's not allowing me to import any photos. Is there a way around this?

With iPhoto it's all or nothing.  Therefore get a second EHD to restore the library to.  Then you can duplicate the library, open the duplicated and delete all of the photos you don't want in it.  When that library is small enough to fit on your MBA copy it to the Pictures folder.
Then you can use the paid version of  iPhoto Library Manager to copy new events from your MBA library to the library on the 2nd EHD to keep it up to date with all of your photo. There are portable EHDs that are not much bigger than a mouse (the computer kind ) that would work fine for this.

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