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
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.
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.
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?
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.
Don't accidentally delete your Photos Library with the rainbow flower icon.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
This is not an answer of ur Query rather I m surprised to face same problem with my less than a year MBP. Found one more issue with display update from 'About my Mac > Storage tab' (color bar with space values) and Finder 'size' col.
In color bar 'Storage' tab, combination of my 'Movies' ( green color) and 'Photos' ( reddish color) = 37+20= 57 GB. Which matches in Finder with Pictures > 'Photos Library.photoslibrary' which is taking 57GB space.
But after deleting almost 19GB of videos from Photos App, total video space now became 18GB, and deleted almost 8GB of Images. So in effect total media space now became 18+12 = 30GB. But this updated space =30GB is not displaying either in Finder or in Storage tab as well. They are still showing 57GB, means Movies remains 37GB and Photos 20GB in color bar.
But when you select all in 'Photos' app, n check info u will see updated space of 30GB, i.e 18 and 12 GB respectively for movies and images. In fact shockingly my free space value reduced. Pls chk color bar screenshots taken at 2:20am (before delete) and 1:45pm ( after delete of 27Gb space ).
I emptied my trash. Dont know why such behavior? I must be missing some extra step to clear system cache kind of action. Please help. Attaching screenshots of values from all d places mentioned above.
Also note:
'Backups' taking 13 GB space! How to reduce that? Anyway I use Time Machine for external backups frequently.
El Capitan latest version ( wanted to update to Sierra after learning up spaces).
2:20am (before delete)
1:45pm ( after delete of 27Gb media files, free space value reduced !!!!!! and no change in media spaces ).
Finder shows same 57GB even after deleting 27GB media files.
But After delete, info inside 'Photos' App shows correct value.
How to reduce photo storage on MacBook Pro
