Will_Ldn
Level 1 (6 points)
Notebooks

Q: Inconsistent photo library sizes

I have signed up for a 1TB iCloud account, but am seeing some inconsistent photo library sizes. These are as follows:

Photos - 492.21GB

Aperture - 280.78GB

iPhoto - 69.84GB

iCloud Photo Library - 398.3GB

 

I know from other articles that when you convert an Aperture or an iPhoto library to a Photos library, some of the photos stay in the original library, so it is recommended that you do not delete them. However, why such inconsistencies between the iCloud Photo Library and the sum of the other three? I have been shooting a lot of stuff in RAW + JPEG on my camera, so both are imported and could explain some of the difference, but I'm not sure it is a complete explanation. I've also consolidated ALL photos into my Library (selected all and gone to File -> Consolidate, where it confirms this). When I browse photos on my other devices (iPad, iPhone), I seem to see all of my photos, suggesting that the TRUE size of my photo library is the figure given in the iCloud Photo Library.

 

So, what should I be doing to clean all this up? I have a 1TB hard drive on my MBP and I'm already running low on storage space as a consequence primarily of these different photo libraries.

OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Nov 6, 2015 6:51 AM

by léonie,Solvedanswer
léonie léonie
Level 10 (108,693 points)
iCloud
A:

How did you migrate your iPhoto Library and your Aperture Library to Photos?  Diid you merge both libraries into one?

 

Do your Aperture Library and your iPhoto Library have different sets of photos?

 

If you migrate an Aperture library to Photos, the size of the new Photos Library can be larger than the original Aperture library. It will depend on your settings for previews in Aperture and how many edits you are having applied to your photos.  In Aperture you can disable the generation of previews or pick a small preview size.  Photos will create previews for all photos and with a fixed size, so the storage required for previews can differ. Photos will always run a face detection, you cannot disable it like in Aperture. And if you have edited photos in aperture with edits that cannot be recreated in Photos, the edits will be migrated as a new quasi master - you will have an additional original image file for the edited photo.

 

Your library in iCloud will not have the previews and faces, so it will be smaller than the library on the Mac.

 

 

You can delete the original Aperture library and iPhoto Library  from your system drive, if all photos are now in Photos. Just make a backup copy of the two libraries on an external drive, just in case.

 

Your libraries together will need less storage than the sum of the total sizes, because Photos is creating hard links to the original image files in the Aperture library and iPhoto library. So some of the image files will be sharing the storage, but you can still delete the original libraries. The storage will only be released, once all hard links to the same files have been deleted.

Posted on Nov 6, 2015 7:26 AM

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Will_Ldn

Q: Inconsistent photo library sizes

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  • Helpful answers

  • by léonie,Solvedanswer

    léonie léonie Nov 6, 2015 7:26 AM in response to Will_Ldn
    Level 10 (108,693 points)
    iCloud
    Nov 6, 2015 7:26 AM in response to Will_Ldn

    How did you migrate your iPhoto Library and your Aperture Library to Photos?  Diid you merge both libraries into one?

     

    Do your Aperture Library and your iPhoto Library have different sets of photos?

     

    If you migrate an Aperture library to Photos, the size of the new Photos Library can be larger than the original Aperture library. It will depend on your settings for previews in Aperture and how many edits you are having applied to your photos.  In Aperture you can disable the generation of previews or pick a small preview size.  Photos will create previews for all photos and with a fixed size, so the storage required for previews can differ. Photos will always run a face detection, you cannot disable it like in Aperture. And if you have edited photos in aperture with edits that cannot be recreated in Photos, the edits will be migrated as a new quasi master - you will have an additional original image file for the edited photo.

     

    Your library in iCloud will not have the previews and faces, so it will be smaller than the library on the Mac.

     

     

    You can delete the original Aperture library and iPhoto Library  from your system drive, if all photos are now in Photos. Just make a backup copy of the two libraries on an external drive, just in case.

     

    Your libraries together will need less storage than the sum of the total sizes, because Photos is creating hard links to the original image files in the Aperture library and iPhoto library. So some of the image files will be sharing the storage, but you can still delete the original libraries. The storage will only be released, once all hard links to the same files have been deleted.

  • by Will_Ldn,

    Will_Ldn Will_Ldn Nov 6, 2015 8:13 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (6 points)
    Notebooks
    Nov 6, 2015 8:13 AM in response to léonie

    I migrated from Aperture to Photos by running the migration process. I'd lost some files in the old Aperture library that had been moved to a NAS, but I consolidated these back into my Photos library hence I'd expected the Photos library to be larger. The problem was, I don't know whether the full Photos library is all of those photos plus new ones, or if it includes Aperture. As for the smaller iCloud Photo Library size, your explanation makes sense (I hope!). Am currently saving the Aperture & iPhoto libraries to an external drive, and will test things out. It will be nice to get a significant amount of hard drive space back...

  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Nov 12, 2015 1:59 AM in response to Will_Ldn
    Level 10 (108,693 points)
    iCloud
    Nov 12, 2015 1:59 AM in response to Will_Ldn

    If you have no longer any referenced photos in your Photos library, and consolidated all referenced files, all the photos from your migrated Aperture library will now have been included in the Photos library.

     

    Have you tested with a smart album with the rule "Photo is referenced"?  If this smart album is empty, all photos have been copied into the library.

     

    The potential hard links to the Aperture library should not worry you.  A hard link is a copy of the original file and you can delete the original file without deleting the hard link. So you can now remove the Aperture library. But I'd keep a backup copy on an external drive, just in case you need to check metadata, books, smart albums in Aperture that did not migrate well to Photos, see:    How Photos handles content and metadata from iPhoto and Aperture - Apple Support