My photos library takes too much space; what is the best way to reduce it to the minimum possible

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Level 1

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My photos library takes too much space; what is the best way to reduce it to the minimum possible

I've got ~70,000 photos . They're stored on an external drive and sorted in a file structure of my own.

The only thing I really need from photo app is the face recognition feature to search through my photos.

I've tried to index them with photo app , keeping them "referenced" and not "managed", in order to keep the photo library to a minimum... I supposed that the metadata and face thumbnails would not take so much space... But photo app tells me it requires 250gb of storage space just for the library. That is enormous !

I have 3 questions:

-First, maybe I'm doing something wrong... Such a huge storage need cant be right after all! I noticed that when I right click on a photo on the photo app, the "Show Referenced File in Finder" is greyed out... I;m quite sure though that I have unticked preferences > "copy items to the photo library" so normally the photo masters should not be copied in my library... Do I do anything wrong?

-second, (assuming that I'm doing it right), is there a way to minimize the size of the photo library (for example by reducing the size of the thumbnails)?

-otherwise, if I cannot use the photo app, is there another way to index faces using another third party software that would be ultra-light?

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 31, 2019 10:31 PM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

195,025 points

Jun 1, 2019 12:50 AM in response to pmolinar

The size of your Photos Library seems to be normal for so many photos and a managed library, not referenced..

My library has currently 50000 photos and videos, and a size of 230GB. Most of the photos inside the library are JPEGs, only some are high resolution TIFFs or DNG files.

I noticed that when I right click on a photo on the photo app, the "Show Referenced File in Finder" is greyed out... I;m quite sure though that I have unticked preferences > "copy items to the photo library" so normally the photo masters should not be copied in my library... Do I do anything wrong?

The option "Copy items to the Photos Library" will only be applied to new photos you are importing, not for the items you have already imported. It looks like most of the photos in your library are still managed and not referenced.

You can test this with a smart album (File > New Smart Album) with the rulec"Photo is Referenced". How many photos are in this smart album? Create also an album with the rule "Photo is not Referenced" to see the photos, that have been copied into the library.

If you want to keep the library small, you have to delete the photos, that have been copied into the library and import them again as referenced, with the option "copy items to the photo library" disabled.

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Answer 2

pmolinar Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 10, 2019 1:26 AM in response to léonie

Thank you Leonie,

You were right. All my photos were somehow imported as "managed" and not "referenced"... Probably because initially I had imported them by mistake as "managed" instead of "referenced". When I tried later to reimport them as referenced, then the app considered that they were already imported and ignored them...

So I created a new empy library, and reimported the photos (a subset of them, to do some tests...) as referenced. Now all the photos appear properly referenced...

Now... The way photos app manages referenced photos is a bit cumbersome unfortunately... I can import a new folder, and there are apple scripts out there to import new photos that I would add to my folders (scripts triggered on a folder action...). But I havent found a simple way for photos app to keep track the photos I delete on my external drive, or keep track of the changes I would make in my directory structure on my external drive. Basically a sync feature... It is not offered on the photos app. or did I find any script online for that purpose...

Have you by any chance ever seen such a script or automator workflow ?

Otherwise, I guess I'll have to find another photo management app that better manages sync... Do you have any suggestion? My only need really is to be able to view my photos in something a bit better than the finder, and with face recognition...

Many thanks for your advice!

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

195,025 points

Jun 10, 2019 8:36 AM in response to pmolinar

No sorry. I have not seen any tools that support a referenced library in Photos.

The best you can do to delete referenced photos safely would be to use "reveal in Finder" before you delete the photo from Photos,Delete the referenced file, then delete the photo in Photos.

I converted all my referenced Aperture Libraries to managed libraries, when I switched from Aperture to Photos. It is just to cumbersome to fix broken References in Photos. It will be hard to relocate referenced libraries to a new drive, when the drive no longer suffices.

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My photos library takes too much space; what is the best way to reduce it to the minimum possible

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