Size limit for iphoto library file?

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Level 1

4 points

Size limit for iphoto library file?

I'm in the process of housekeeping my photo folder in readyness to import into iphoto. I have about 30GB of photo's and want to leave iphoto in the mode that makes its own copy.

I'm therefore assuming that the iphoto library file will be over 30GB....is this reasonable or would you say too big? i.e. would such a large file be likely to cause problems?

Also, how does timemachine back it up - I think it is a package, so does timemachine only backup the changes inside the file, or does it take the whole file each time a change is made?

Thanks for any insight.

27" 2.93 i7 iMac, 17" 2.93 Unibody Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4), iPad 64GB 3G, iPhone 4, Asus EeePC 901, WinXP Pro SP3

Posted on Nov 8, 2010 2:39 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,906 points

Nov 8, 2010 3:00 AM in response to kwhite01

The size in gigs doesn't matter to iPhoto, it's the number of items.

iPhoto can manage 250,000 images or videos. The size in gigs is just HD storage space. If space gets tight you can run your Library from an external drive.

If you have 30 gigs of Photos and import them to iPhoto in the default setting (iphoto in the mode that makes its own copy.) then the resulting library will be more than 30 gigs.

TM makes incremental back ups of the Library - that is, after the first it simply backs up the changes.

Note: Many users have found that backing up with TM can fail if iPhoto is running in some circumstances. So be sure to quit iPhoto if it's not in use.

Regards

TD

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Answer 2

kwhite01 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 8, 2010 3:06 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thank-you.

There are about 11000 photo's (will be less when I've finished housekeeping and deleted the really poor ones), so I'm quite safe on the 250000 limit.

Kevin

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Answer 3

Nov 15, 2010 11:33 PM in response to Yer_Man

I've seen iphoto diet and some terminal commands for old versions of iphoto to shrink the library file size (remove some originals, modified) but don't know if they work on '11. Any ideas how to shrink the size of the library file? I've already gone through and removed dupes and housecleaned.
thx
shaun

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Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Nov 15, 2010 11:47 PM in response to Shaun Kennedy1

I've seen iphoto diet and some terminal commands for old versions of iphoto to shrink the library file size (remove some originals, modified) but don't know if they work on '11. Any ideas how to shrink the size of the library file? I've already gone through and removed dupes and housecleaned.

Never run iPhoto diet or other programs including terminal or use the finder that modify the structure or content of the iPhoto library - doing so will corrupt your library and cause data loss

You can run the iPhoto library on an external drive is disk space is an issue - you can not remove some (or any) versions of the photos from the library

LN

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Answer 5

Nov 16, 2010 8:00 AM in response to LarryHN

Thx for the reply.
Unfortunately my problem is bigger than just using an external drive..I have a raid server for that. I'm using dropbox to sync to multi computers and am now topped out at 100GB...the largest size they offer. So I thought there might be a way to reduce the library size, being that I don't need multiple copies of the same pic.
ah well..

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Answer 6

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,906 points

Nov 16, 2010 8:18 AM in response to Shaun Kennedy1

The iPhoto Library doesn't contain duplicates, it contains different versions of the photo, and they are all required for it to work. The only file that might not be required is the iPod Photo Cache.

If you don't need multiple versions for your syncing scheme, why not just use iPhoto Sharing?

Regards

TD

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Answer 7

Nov 16, 2010 9:57 PM in response to Yer_Man

After doing some serious searching, it appears my issue is caused by the fact that upon upgrading to 9.1 (iPhoto 11), I now have two aliases/symlinks that weren't there before. The modified and originals folders now just point to other folders, Masters and previews. So when syncing to dropbox, dropbox syncs all files to all folders and doesn't treat the aliased folders for what they are. So now if I try to use dropbox I'll get some huge files.
Apparently the aliased folders don't exist when creating new libraries. And it also looks like I can just delete the originals and modified aliases w/o harm. I'm testing it...so far so good.

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