harryfromboalsburg

Q: How to reduce photo storage on MacBook Pro

My photos were taking up 87 gb of space on my MacBook Pro. I tried to reduce the space used by deleting about 1000 photos , deleted about 25 projects (books, cards, etc) and 100 of 120 videos.

I deleted them all and emptied the trash. After this cleanup, I still had 87 gb of space used by my photos. What is the problem?  How do  I reduce the space used by photos?

MacBook Pro, iOS 9.2

Posted on Jan 1, 2016 7:00 AM

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Q: How to reduce photo storage on MacBook Pro

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  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Jan 1, 2016 7:55 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg
    Level 10 (105,756 points)
    iLife
    Jan 1, 2016 7:55 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg
    I deleted them all and emptied the trash.

    Do you mean, you emptied the "recently Deleted" album, since Photos for Mac does not have a Trash?

     

    Has your Photos Library been migrated from iPhoto or Aperture and do you still have your original iPhoto Library or Aperture Library on your Mac?  Then the storage for the deleted photos will only be released, after you delete the same photos from the iPhoto Library or Aperture library as well.  When Photos is migrating a photo library it saves space by linking to the photos in the Aperture Library or iPhoto Library. The photos in Photos and your original library are sharing the same storage on your ask by hard links. The system is counting the references to the files and as long as the file is used by a library the storage will not be released. See:  Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries - Apple Support

    If you are still keeping the original libraries, consider to move them to an external drive and to delete them from your system drive.

  • by harryfromboalsburg,

    harryfromboalsburg harryfromboalsburg Jan 1, 2016 8:00 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 1, 2016 8:00 AM in response to léonie

    I had actually emptied the "Recently Deleted" album, in Photo's with no reduction in space.

     

    My photos were migrated from iPhoto. I just deleted the iPhoto app and am working on cleaning  up.

     

    Thank you.

     

    Note: My operating system is actually El Capitan, Version 10.11.1; I had listed my iOS.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Jan 1, 2016 8:28 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg
    Level 10 (140,913 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jan 1, 2016 8:28 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg

    I just deleted the iPhoto app and am working on cleaning  up.

    Did you also delete the iPhoto library that was used to create the new Photos library?

    OTNY.png

  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Jan 1, 2016 8:40 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg
    Level 10 (105,756 points)
    iLife
    Jan 1, 2016 8:40 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg

    The iPhoto Library  in your Pictures folder is sharing the storage with the Photos Library, deleting the iPhoto application will not help much.

    The iPhoto Library will look like this - a fan of pictures with a pink flower.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-01 at 17.37.11GMT.png

    Don't accidentally delete your Photos Library with the rainbow flower icon.

  • by harryfromboalsburg,

    harryfromboalsburg harryfromboalsburg Jan 1, 2016 8:40 AM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 1, 2016 8:40 AM in response to Old Toad

    I did not, so I went to the iPhoto library, clicked on it and got the message: Cannot open iPhoto library. The content has already been migrated to photo"

    so I assume it is empty.

    I am still using 87 gb of space for my photos.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Jan 1, 2016 8:51 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg
    Level 10 (105,756 points)
    iLife
    Jan 1, 2016 8:51 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg
    I did not, so I went to the iPhoto library, clicked on it and got the message: Cannot open iPhoto library. The content has already been migrated to photo"

    Drag the iPhoto Library to the Trash. You do not need to open it in iPhoto.

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Jan 1, 2016 10:00 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg
    Level 10 (84,205 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jan 1, 2016 10:00 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg

    harryfromboalsburg wrote:

     

    I did not, so I went to the iPhoto library, clicked on it and got the message: Cannot open iPhoto library. The content has already been migrated to photo"

    so I assume it is empty.

    I am still using 87 gb of space for my photos.

    Bad assumption - as you've been told you need to delete photos from both Photos and iPhoto for them to be gone - and you need to delete from the Photos recently deleted album  --  since you have deleted the iPhoto application (which was not a good idea and is not recommended) then simply archive and then trash the iPhoto library - this will free the space

     

    LN

  • by harryfromboalsburg,

    harryfromboalsburg harryfromboalsburg Jan 2, 2016 9:59 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 2, 2016 9:59 AM in response to LarryHN

    I downloaded iPhoto to restore and sure enough all of my photos, videos, projects were there. I cleaned out iPhoto, deleting all projects, photos etc, emptied the iPhoto deletions and emptied the trash. My photo storage went from 87gb to 37gb so the duplication was gone. However the other storage doubled, so Apple was putting these deleted photos somewhere. I worked on it and freed up 20 gb. I will continue to work on it, but Im good for now.

    This is an issue for anyone who is short on space. Hopefully, this duplication will be eliminated as Apple completes the transition from iPhoto.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Jan 2, 2016 11:20 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg
    Level 10 (105,756 points)
    iLife
    Jan 2, 2016 11:20 AM in response to harryfromboalsburg

    emptied the iPhoto deletions and emptied the trash. My photo storage went from 87gb to 37gb so the duplication was gone. However the other storage doubled, so Apple was putting these deleted photos somewhere.

    Are you using Time Machine?  Then Time Machine may have created a large local snapshot after your massive deletion of files from the iPhoto Library. I have frequently seen the "Other" increase, directly after I did massive changes in photo Libraries. The local snapshots will be removed the next time you connect your MacBook Pro to the Time Machine drive, so this storage will only be temporarily used.

     

    See:  About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support