Robocopalop

Q: Reformatting Iphoto and Photos

Hi,

I noticed my iphotos and photos is killing the space on my macbook pro (300+GB in each app). I just transferred all the master photos onto a external hard drive and now i want to reset my iphoto and photos back to zero like as if it was new. Is there any easy way to do this?

 

Thanks!

Posted on Aug 30, 2016 10:37 AM

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Q: Reformatting Iphoto and Photos

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  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Aug 30, 2016 11:01 AM in response to Robocopalop
    Level 10 (105,312 points)
    iLife
    Aug 30, 2016 11:01 AM in response to Robocopalop

    I noticed my iphotos and photos is killing the space on my macbook pro (300+GB in each app).

    Is your Photos Library an migrated iPhoto Library?  If you migrated the iPhoto Library to Photos, both applications are sharing the storage for the original master files and the previews by using hard links to the photos. If both libraries are showing a size of 300GB, they will together only use about 400GB, as long as you do not import new photos to Photos that are not in the iPhoto library.  So you may not save much storage by deleting the libraries and starting over. See these documents:

     

     

    and now i want to reset my iphoto and photos back to zero like as if it was new. Is there any easy way to do this?

    You can create a new, empty Photos Library by launching Photos while holding down the options key.  This will bring up the library chooser panel and you can select to create a new library. Then make a backup copy of your previous Photos library and delete the previous Photos library from your Pictures folder. You can create a new iPhoto Library the same way by launching iPhoto while holding down the options key.