Can I backup my iPhoto library to Amazon Cloud?

You cannot back up your iPhoto Library to any cloud service with confidence. Time and again see reports on here from folks who have found their libraries corrupted because the disk format it is stored on in the cloud is inappropriate.

You can however, export your Photos from the Library and back them up to the cloud. Any service will do - Amazon, Flickr etc

This User Tip

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921

has details of the options in the Export dialogue.

It depends on the service and that's a question you would need to check with the service provider before choosing.

I want to find the easiest way (assuming it's possible) to back up my iPhoto (9.5.1) to Amazon? Any info on this would be appreciated.

Even if the cloud storage is unlimited, I would not recommend a cloud backup as the only backup. As a second, off-site backup it is useful. A backup should be readily available in an emergency. If the network should be down, when you need your backup most, you will out of luck. And restoring from a network backup will need a long time. Any backup on a local drive is much preferable.

rather than export - I did a drag and drop upload (using chrome browser) of the "masters" folders after selecting "show package contents" on my iphoto database.

That lets you drill inside the iphoto database file and get right to the master picture files. This won't give you all the iphoto metadata but for me was a simple way to back up the original pictures.

show package contents then drag and drop each "masters" folder (which represent the year iphoto imported those pictures not when they are taken) into the upload window

That's not backing up your Library, though, is it? No edits, no added metadata, no albums, no projects, slideshows and so on.

BTW it would be safer to export the Masters, rather than muck around on the library package.

File -> Export

Kind: Original gets exactly the same thing.

This User Tip

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921

has details of the options in the Export dialogue.

You can use Phoshare. It is a way much better than export manually (you can add it to cron too!).

You can use Phoshare.

You might want to consider that carefully. It has not been developed since 2012 and iPhoto 9.4 and has limitations with metadata. Also, yet again, it's not backing up the Library, just the photos, no edit history, no albums etc etc etc etc

true - for me I don't use iphoto as more than a basic photo album so this is a "last resort" backup I hope to never have to use that at least gets my originals backed up and saves the extra step in time and temporary disk space of doing that export ... definitely not for everyone though

For me it worked very well until I installed 10.10.3 Beta and begin to use Photos App.

yes no metadata, but at least is automatic and works like a charm.

With no other solution that support apple apps packages and the coming of Photos App the only solution will be... pay for iCloud Drive.

For me it worked very well until I installed 10.10.3 Beta and begin to use Photos App.

Which is good, but you know, when you recommend and app or a workflow you need to warn people of the limitations of your suggestions.

With no other solution that support apple apps packages and the coming of Photos App the only solution will be... pay for iCloud Drive.

There are many ways to back up an iPhoto Library, an Aperture Library, a Photos library. Online is on the only way to back up - and is certainly the most expensive and the least efficient.

Which is good, but you know, when you recommend and app or a workflow you need to warn people of the limitations of your suggestions.

Of course!! But we where talking about Amazon Cloud and "File => Export"... and Phoshare until Photo app did that work quite well (and automatically with cronjob)!

There are many ways to back up an iPhoto Library, an Aperture Library, a Photos library. Online is on the only way to back up - and is certainly the most expensive and the least efficient.

He talk about "sync", too. And I never found nothing able to do it (except Time Machine... but it's not cloud).

It's an unsupported piece of software from years ago, nothing more.

But we where talking about Amazon Cloud and "File => Export"... and Phoshare until Photo app did that work quite well (and automatically with cronjob)!

No we weren't. We were talking about backing up an iPhoto Library to the Amazon Cloud. Again, if you're referring to a specific part of someone else's post best make that clear, it's less confusing for folks who search and find old threads.

Here is what I did, and it worked (mostly) to back up my photos to my unlimited photos with Amazon Prime:

(1) I made a symbolic link to the directory (folder) containing the originals inside my iPhoto library. This is normally hidden in the Finder, so I typed this in terminal:

ln -s ~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/Masters/ ~/Pictures/iPhoto-Masters

"ln" is the command to make a link; "-s" is the option to make it symbolic. "~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/Masters/" refers to the folder inside the iPhoto library where all the original are kepts. "~/Pictures/iPhoto-Masters" is the location and name I gave for the link.

After doing this, in my Pictures folder I can see a folder alias called "iPhoto-Masters". Inside that is a series of folders that are named after years.

(2) Using Google Chrome, I logged into my Amazon Cloud Drive. When I got to the page where I can upload photos (https://www.amazon.com/gp/photos/list), In the Finder, I dragged the iPhoto-Masters folder over the Chrome window, and it started uploading.

It failed on a few files (I have a few videos longer than the 2GB limit), and eventually used up all of my limit of non-photo files, but it uploaded most of my 271GB of photos, 8,710 photos and counting so far.

This of course does not back up any of the organization (albums, smart albums, slideshows, books, etc.) or changes I have made over the years in iPhoto. It does however preserve the original pictures.

I tried the same thing using the Amazon desktop app, and it didn't work. I assume that the browser's traversal of the file hierarchy gets around Amazon's limitation on uploading package contents.