How to compact iPhoto library

No there is no way to compress or purge the iPhoto Library.

You can easily move a Library to an external disk:

Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

1. Quit iPhoto

2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.

3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.

4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.

Regards

TD

That said, this:

Then I imported a ton (about 2 GB actually) of photos and home video (taken mostly with iPhone) into it. The size swelled to more than 2 GB. Then I went to delete EVERYTHING and emptied the iPhoto trash can & Mac OS X trash can. When I checked, the iPhoto library pretty much stayed at more than 2 GB although I have ZERO photo or video within the library.

shouldn't happen. But it can happen if you delete large amounts of data at one go. The delete fails to clean up properly.

What version of iPhoto?

Where is the Library Stored?

I'm not sure why that would surprise you, tbh, as it would make no sense to not work as efficiently as possible. But a non-destrucutive workflow does use disk space, no matter what app you use.

That said, 800 gigs for 64k items does seem somewhat large, but you do mention that you're storing video there too.

Try this:

Go to your Pictures Folder and find the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.

Look there for a Folder called 'Masters' or 'Original'. How big is that?

Repeat the same for the Previews Folder.

Are there any other very large folders in there?

Make no changes. Just check the sizes.

PegFalcon,

It has been a while since you posted so hopefully I am not too late. When you have iPhoto open control and click on the trash icon in iPhoto and you can empty the trash.

I just cut my iPhoto library in half by dropping a couple of big images and doing this.

Hope that helps

With iPhoto closed, find and open /Applications/iPhoto by double-clicking it in Finder with the Option and Command keys pressed. Ensure that all of these options are enabled and then click the Rebuild button.

This is rebuilding the Library. How do you think this compacts it?

Do you do much syncing of your library to mobile devices, i.e. iPads, iPods, etc.? If so there's a way to cull some excess weight from the library from time to time.

PegFalcon wrote:

My iPhoto library that contains 64,000 photos has grown to over 800GB! 😮

Is there a way to compact / compress / purge / etc the iPhoto library? Please help.

64,000 photos would take up 800 GB if each photo required ~ 12 MB.

Fairly low resolution movies can require about 1 GB for ~ 10 min, more for higher resolution. So an hour of video can easily take up 5-10 GB. How many videos do you have?

My daughter is a photographer and she uses iPhoto and Adobe Lightroom. She uses iPhoto as a sort of archive for all her original shots. She shoots in RAW format, which means each photo is ~ 25 MB, hence the iPhoto Libraries grow very large quickly. She can take 500 photos easily in a "shoot," say, at a wedding. To keep the iPhoto Libraries relatively small, she creates a new iPhoto Library when the current one reaches 50-100 GB in size. Switching between libraries is easy. It's important to back everything up that is of value. I am constantly buying 2 TB external USB 3 portable drives for her, which she uses with a Macbook Air.

You can split your 800 GB library into multiple ones by obtaining iPhoto Library Manager and using it to move portions of your big library into smaller ones. Defining the smaller libraries by date is one approach. iPhoto Library Manager does not change the original library, it simply creates new ones and moves the items you tell it to move into the new library/libraries. So you can keep or back up the original big library and archive it, for safekeeping, and then switch to using the smaller, more manageable libraries, going forward.

hen I went to delete EVERYTHING and emptied the iPhoto trash can & Mac OS X trash can. When I checked, the iPhoto library pretty much stayed at more than 2 GB although I have ZERO photo or video within the library. What's going on here?

What was left in the library were many files needed by the library to operated. Since you deleted all photos from the library you should have just delete the library itself and started over with a new one. That new library would have started out at 7.5 MB in size.

My iPhoto library that contains 64,000 photos has grown to over 800GB!

I am beginning to think that this is not going to be sustainable & I am just an average Dad taking the usual family-photo-home-movie.

An iPhoto library can hold up to 1000000 photos. The number of photos is no problem. Just keep your library on a drive with enough disk space. And consider to weed out the library and delete bad or mediocre photos. But don't split the library. Having to switch between libraries makes it difficult to search for specific photos, because you can only search one library at a time. You will lose much of the power of iPhoto, if you split your library.