Photo Library Size in GB or/and TB

Photos can handle large libraries. Photos sis supposed to be able to open Aperture Libraries, and an Aperture library could hold up to 1 000 000 photos.

But I second Tony's warning. The size of the library matters for the performance of Photos.

• You will have to be patient, when you need to upgrade the library to a new system version.
• Or when Photos is scanning the library for objects, faces, places, and curating the best photos.
• Or when Photos is updating your smart albums.
• Or when you need to repair the library, because Photos crashed.
• And as Tony pointed out - making backup copies will be very slow as well.

A Photos Library should be on a volume, that has as as much free storage as the size of the library. Repairing and upgrading the library may temporarily need a lot of extra storage. And you may want. to be able to. create a copy of the library as a current backup, before you are doing a major reorganisation of the library. Then you need free storage on the same volume for the copy of the library.

It is very useful, to be able to search all photos without having to switch between libraries, or have all photos you need for a project in the same library, but od you can find subsets of your photos that absolutely need to be together in one library, and other subsets, that never need to be together in one library, create separate libraries, for example, photos for work, and photos for private use.

Adobe Lightroom gets my vote. One of the benefits is that it is a ‘referenced’ library so unlike Photos which keeps all of your photos in one package, Lightroom just maintains a link to wherever you store your photos.

As Tony said, your backup strategy is key. I would be looking at, not only a Thunderbolt connected drive but offsite storage (such as a separate copy of the photos on a hard drive kept at your office or family house) and online storage such as CrashPlan. Version copies of the Lightroom catalog should be kept offsite as well.

if you are looking at photo storage services such as the ones you mention you need to make sure you are able to redownload the full file and not a compressed version of the photo.

Yes, it is possible.

The downsides only come if you want to sync with iCloud (you need a lot of iCloud space), or need to move the library due to (for example) space problems on your mac. Then it becomes time consuming.

You also want to make sure you have a good backup strategy in place. If the library becomes damaged, you potentially lose access to all your photos.

Have a look at Mylio. It is what I would be looking at if I was going to drop Apple Photos.

https://mylio.com/

Other options would be Adobe Lightroom more expensive if you want any sort of cloud sync) or Capture one - expensive purchases, but a one of payment (until you need to upgrade). No cloud service with Capture one.

Yes, Apple ceased development of Aperture about 6 years ago.

Frankly, if you're talking hundreds of thousands of images and videos I would be looking for a robust 3rd party media manager. Which one depends on your budget and other requirements.

sallyfromsearcy wrote:

I thought that APPLE DROPPED APERATURE.

I mentioned Aperture, because it is the only hint available to see, how large a Photos Library can be - at least as large as the largest possible Aperture Library. Apple claims that Photos can open Aperture Libraries, so it needs to be able to manage a library with 1000000 photos and videos. The documentation for Photos does not mention any limits to the library size at all.

The internal filenames used by Photos are a string of 32 hexadecimal numbers. So Photos could store at most 16^32 different image files in its "originals" folder.

Like who? Amazon photos? Google photos?........ yes, I am confused....

As I said above:

The best five options will depend on what kind of shooter you are. How many items? How many do you add each year? Are you shooting Raw or Jpeg? What's your budget?

And sticking pointless images into the thread only makes it harder to read.

The best five options will depend on what kind of shooter you are. How many items? How many do you add each year? Are you shooting Raw or Jpeg? What's your budget?