Best way to view photos on MacBook Air, but which are held on external hard drive

Question

Best way to view photos on MacBook Air, but which are held on external hard drive

New to Mac: I hold my photo library on an external hard drive, but I am finding it a challenge to view anything but one photo (only in preview mode). What is the best solution to viewing photos such as in a slide show, so far I can think of the following methods:

Extract chosen photos and add to Photos and view and delete when finished
Use software that accompanies Camera such as Canon Image
Use iMovies

I know that iPhoto is no longer an option since the OS X Yosemite was released.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Jun 2, 2015 1:46 AM

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Answer 1

R C-R

Level 6

17,794 points

Jun 2, 2015 2:24 AM in response to Marcusfromsurrey1

You may want to use referenced files. See the Photos help topics Where are my imported files? & Change where Photos stores your files for more detailed info about this, but the basic idea is to leave the files on your external drive (which naturally must be accessible any time you are using Photos) & import only references to them into the Photos Library.

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Answer 2

Jun 2, 2015 3:40 AM in response to R C-R

Thanks R C-R

Having reviewed these threads, I think that this will not work as I rename my photos. See comment below:

"Although storing files outside your Photos library is a great way to save space on your Mac, be aware that:

If you disconnect the device where the files are located, or move or rename the files in the Finder, Photos won’t be able to locate them, so you can’t work with them in the Photos app."

Therefore, is there another solution, obviously the Photos App will not be a workable solution particularly as I have 10,000 photos taken pre-Mac.

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