You can move your iPhoto library to an external drive easily by simply dragging the iPhoto library package to another location. But keep in mind that external drives are slower than internal ones, and networked drives even more so. You can also create multiple iPhoto libraries, storing seldom-accessed photos elsewhere.
Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today’s episode, let me show you how to move your iPhoto library to another drive, and why you may not want to.
Moving your iPhoto library is not as complex as moving an iTunes library, because you don’t have any choices. The iPhoto library is one single file. It’s actually a package. You could put that anywhere you want, but it all stays together, so you don’t have any choices about putting some things in one place and some things in another.
Let me show you. Here I am in my Home folder, and under my Home folder I have Pictures. There you can see I’ve got something called iPhoto Library, and this is the default location for your iPhoto library. It’s a single file, it’s actually a package, and you can look in it if you want but I’m not going to go into that right now. You can move this anywhere you want. You can put it in another folder, and you can move it to another drive. For instance, if I wanted to move it to my external drive – and here I’ve got one with no files in it at the moment – I can simply copy the entire thing there, and it will copy all the photos, everything associated with that iPhoto library.
Now that that’s done, I’ve got two copies of that library, one in the original location and one in the old one. I can go back to this one later and delete it once I confirm this one is working fine.
Now I’m going to launch iPhoto, but I’m going to hold down the Option key on my keyboard when I do it. What will happen is instead of it just opening as normal, I’m going to get presented with this dialogue box here. Here’s where I can select a different iPhoto library. I’ve got three here: the one that you would normally open, that’s the one we took the copy from, and I can look here and see there’s another one that is on the external drive, which is the one that I just used, and it’s called iPhoto Library. That’s the one we want. I’m going to choose that one, and now it’s going to open up iPhoto and it’s going to have the same pictures I saw before. So I can confirm that everything’s okay and I can go through the photos, and once I know this one is fine, I can delete the original, just put it in the trash for now. Then next time I launch iPhoto – I’ll quit it and I’ll launch it again – it’ll know to go to that library, it won’t ask me again unless I hold down the Option key.
That’s all you need to do to move your entire iPhoto library to an external hard drive. Now, there are things to think about when you’re moving it there. One is speed. Typical speed for an internal hard drive inside of a computer, say an iMac, is about 3 gigabits per second. That’s a transfer rate to get the files from your hard drive into your computer so you can see them. So, to bring a photo onto the screen. 3 gigabits per second is about 3000 megabits per second. Remember that number, 3000. Now, if you’ve got a USB 2.0 hard drive hooked up to your computer and you move the photo library there, the transfer rate across that USB cable is only going to be 400 megabits per second. 400 versus 3000. iPhoto isn’t the fastest program because it’s showing you lots and lots of photos, so you’re going to cut that speed considerably in half by about a seventh if you’re going to move your library to an external drive. If you have lots of photos and you’re used to just scrolling through them fluidly, you may find it doesn’t work as well when it’s on an external drive.
Even worse, a lot of people try to move their iPhoto library to a network drive. A network drive is going to be much slower, somewhere between 50 and 100 megabits per second compared to the 3000 that you were getting when you had your iPhoto library on your internal drive. Moving to an external USB drive may be okay for you; moving to a network drive probably is not going to work.
A good option is to split up your iPhoto collection. Notice that I could have created a new library in addition to choosing one of those. If you have a ton of photos but you find you really only access the ones from your last trip or from the last year or two, you can create multiple iPhoto libraries. It’s hard to work with them, because you have to switch libraries all the time, so if you want to access all your photos it’s not a good idea. But, say, if you wanted to create a specific iPhoto library for a specific event or a big trip, or one per year, you could store older ones on an external drive or perhaps on your network, and the current one, the one you’re always accessing, on your internal drive where it’s nice and fast.
I hope you liked this look at how to move your iPhoto library to another location. Till next time, this is Gary with MacMost Now.
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today’s episode, let me show you how to move your iPhoto library to another drive, and why you may not want to.
Moving your iPhoto library is not as complex as moving an iTunes library, because you don’t have any choices. The iPhoto library is one single file. It’s actually a package. You could put that anywhere you want, but it all stays together, so you don’t have any choices about putting some things in one place and some things in another.
Let me show you. Here I am in my Home folder, and under my Home folder I have Pictures. There you can see I’ve got something called iPhoto Library, and this is the default location for your iPhoto library. It’s a single file, it’s actually a package, and you can look in it if you want but I’m not going to go into that right now. You can move this anywhere you want. You can put it in another folder, and you can move it to another drive. For instance, if I wanted to move it to my external drive – and here I’ve got one with no files in it at the moment – I can simply copy the entire thing there, and it will copy all the photos, everything associated with that iPhoto library.
Now that that’s done, I’ve got two copies of that library, one in the original location and one in the old one. I can go back to this one later and delete it once I confirm this one is working fine.
Now I’m going to launch iPhoto, but I’m going to hold down the Option key on my keyboard when I do it. What will happen is instead of it just opening as normal, I’m going to get presented with this dialogue box here. Here’s where I can select a different iPhoto library. I’ve got three here: the one that you would normally open, that’s the one we took the copy from, and I can look here and see there’s another one that is on the external drive, which is the one that I just used, and it’s called iPhoto Library. That’s the one we want. I’m going to choose that one, and now it’s going to open up iPhoto and it’s going to have the same pictures I saw before. So I can confirm that everything’s okay and I can go through the photos, and once I know this one is fine, I can delete the original, just put it in the trash for now. Then next time I launch iPhoto – I’ll quit it and I’ll launch it again – it’ll know to go to that library, it won’t ask me again unless I hold down the Option key.
That’s all you need to do to move your entire iPhoto library to an external hard drive. Now, there are things to think about when you’re moving it there. One is speed. Typical speed for an internal hard drive inside of a computer, say an iMac, is about 3 gigabits per second. That’s a transfer rate to get the files from your hard drive into your computer so you can see them. So, to bring a photo onto the screen. 3 gigabits per second is about 3000 megabits per second. Remember that number, 3000. Now, if you’ve got a USB 2.0 hard drive hooked up to your computer and you move the photo library there, the transfer rate across that USB cable is only going to be 400 megabits per second. 400 versus 3000. iPhoto isn’t the fastest program because it’s showing you lots and lots of photos, so you’re going to cut that speed considerably in half by about a seventh if you’re going to move your library to an external drive. If you have lots of photos and you’re used to just scrolling through them fluidly, you may find it doesn’t work as well when it’s on an external drive.
Even worse, a lot of people try to move their iPhoto library to a network drive. A network drive is going to be much slower, somewhere between 50 and 100 megabits per second compared to the 3000 that you were getting when you had your iPhoto library on your internal drive. Moving to an external USB drive may be okay for you; moving to a network drive probably is not going to work.
A good option is to split up your iPhoto collection. Notice that I could have created a new library in addition to choosing one of those. If you have a ton of photos but you find you really only access the ones from your last trip or from the last year or two, you can create multiple iPhoto libraries. It’s hard to work with them, because you have to switch libraries all the time, so if you want to access all your photos it’s not a good idea. But, say, if you wanted to create a specific iPhoto library for a specific event or a big trip, or one per year, you could store older ones on an external drive or perhaps on your network, and the current one, the one you’re always accessing, on your internal drive where it’s nice and fast.
I hope you liked this look at how to move your iPhoto library to another location. Till next time, this is Gary with MacMost Now.
Related: MacMost Now 372: Moving Your iTunes Library, Moving itunes library on an external drive already., MacMost Now 590: Blurring A Moving Face in Final Cut Studio Pro X, MacMost Now 631: Moving Your iTunes Media To an External Drive, MacMost Now 481: Blur a Moving Face in Adobe Premiere Elements for Mac.
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Gary, great video, thanks for addressing the realities of the transfer rate. If I upgrade to Lion, will PhotoStream still sync with iCloud and my iOS devices if iPhoto is on an external drive?
Should, yes. The PhotoStream feature doesn’t care about the specific location of your iPhoto library.
Do I do these same steps if I’m moving onto an external just for back-up? I tried to move pics over but they went into thousands of individual pics, rather than my labeled folders. Help :(
If you want to back up your iPhoto collection, you can just drag and drop the iPhoto library package file to another drive, yes. But I would recommend a more complete and robust backup plan, like using Time Machine.
Very informative video. I’ve been using multiple iPhoto Libraries for several years – all on external HDs, because I had an unfortunate experience with my built-in computer drive a few years ago. Most of these are work-related and are quite large, and I have to switch back and forth quite often. I can’t overstress the usefulness of the third party iPhoto Library Manager in doing this, as well as transferring albums from one library to another and generally managing my photo records. It’s easily worth the $20 price tag.
Is it possible to have more than one iphoto library, say for different categories of photos, located on the same HD? For example, iphoto library1 and iphoto library2?
Absolutely. I say that in the video.
What is the largest file size an iPhoto library should be before having to creating a new library?
Not completely sure, but I hear it is 250,000 photos. No limit on file size.
I’d imagine that if you are even close to that then you are pretty serious about photography and may want to look at more “pro” solutions like Aperture.
Is there a way to set up iPhoto on my Time Machine so that i can access/manipulate/add to from multiple computers? Share that library so to speak? Thank you in advance for your help! Very helpful videos!
You could put it on a network drive, yes. But it will be slow (I mention that in the video). And you’ll have to watch out for cases where more than one machine is trying to access it at the same time. Many disadvantages to doing it that way.
Hi Gary,
After moving my iPhoto library to my NAS, now I want to still work on my local drive iPhoto library, by scaling down its file size, i.e. by specifically deleting the older albums manually one-by-one. However, when I do that, I realized only the albums are deleted and not the pictures. (so the iPhoto library file size remains the same).
May I know a way or short-cut keys to be able to delete the albums and the pictures in it at the same time?
Thanks!
Kelvin
Albums are list playlists in iTunes. The photos aren’t there — they are just links to the photos. Deleting from an album only removes it from the album. So use the Photos or Events listing to delete photos, not the albums.
How about a similar video on moving the Aperture Library?
I’d like to use some of the techniques your video and commentators have suggested to split up/move my iPhoto library [currently 198 events/14,000+ images and film clips]. (I am using a FireWire external HD with an transfer rate approaching that of my internal HD to hopefully minimize transfer speed issues)
Considering that iMovie is somewhat dependent on the content of the iPhoto library, what are the implications to iMovie as a result of moving or “remodeling” my iPhoto library?
Firewire, while fast, is still not nearly as fast as an internal drive. Keep that in mind.
I wouldn’t say that iMovie is dependent on iPhoto. Sure, it is a nice shortcut to be able to browse and select iPhoto images in iMovie, but you don’t have to. You can also drag and drop images from the Finder into iMovie. But if you make a lot of slideshows in iMovie, and you like the iPhoto integration you would just have to switch to the right iPhoto library before working in iMovie.
Hi Gary, Hoping you can help me out. Two questions. First, when I take pictures I shoot with the raw file format. They import to iphoto as raw files, but when I want to open one in photoshop it opens as a JPEG. And when I moved the files to my external hard drive, they all became jpeg files. Not what I wanted. Is there a setting I am missing? Second question: occasionally (more frequently lately), when I download my pictures to iphoto, there are some images that don’t get imported and I have a message saying that iphoto could not read the files, although 90% of the same shoot with the same file (NEF) are imported. I don’t want to loose those pictures, adn I don’t know what to do.
I don’t use the RAW file format, so I don’t know the answers to your questions. Maybe Photoshop doesn’t handle them? Maybe drag-and-drop out of iPhoto converts them to jpeg automatically? And maybe there is a sleigh incompatibility with your camera and iPhoto?
Perhaps a more hard-core photography forum would be the place to ask.
But that also gives me the idea: If you are hard-core enough to use RAW file format, then why use iPhoto? I’d imagine that Aperture would be a better tool. I’m not a Aperture user, so I don’t know if it fixes these issues for you.