Q: Best way to manage multiple libraries?
Before we start offering third party suggestions like PowerPhotos, please bear with me for a moment.
I have somewhere around 55,000 photos/videos in my iCloud Library. While I would ideally like to keep everything in one library for the sake of only having to manage faces/places/locations/keywords etc in one library, I'm finding it to be a bit less ideal since it is taking up a good deal of storage space on my many iPads/iPhone which in turn slows things down especially when accessing the photos app on iOS.
Unless anyone knows of a way to prevent iOS Photos from taking over my storage (even on 128GB options it's too much), or a way to create a separate iCloud Library while having the faces, etc be available for both iCloud Library and the Non-iCloud Library, I'm out of ideas aside from having 2 Photos Libraries, one of which is for iCloud, the other for my aged media, and have to manage faces and all other metadata for both.
I can imagine now...having to build a routine just to periodically move stuff from Library A to Library B. What a nightmare. Anyhow, does anyone have any insight to any of this? Thanks in advance!
Posted on Apr 27, 2016 9:21 AM
So it sounds like there is no good way to edit metadata and have it sync from iMac to Macbook Pro and vice versa? I read an article once about a shady way to accomplish it but it seemed kind of risky.
Most metadata will sync between your Macs, your keywords, titles, captions, places you assign, and even the names of the persons you assign a faces label to. It is just the exact position of that face in the photo that will not upload to icloud.
I am mostly tagging my photos on my MacBook Pro Retina, and and all edits and keywords, etc will sync to iCloud Photo Library and my imac and the other macs. On my iPad and iPhone I can search for the photos based on the faces names, the titles, the places, the keywords. Have you seen this document? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204486 It explains what will sync between Macs.
.... these items appear in the Photos app on all of your Macs:
- All original photos and videos
- All folders and albums
- Smart Albums
- Keywords
- Searchable keywords based on Faces tiles
- Key photo selections
These items are available only on the Mac where you created them:
- Books, cards, and calendars
- Slideshows
- Keyword shortcuts
- Unused keywords
- Last imported album (this album contains photos you most recently imported on a specific Mac)
- Faces tiles and Faces data
As to My Photo Stream:
So that I understand correctly, am I reading that I can disable iCloud Library on my iOS devices but as long as I have Photostream enabled on my iOS devices, it will do the following?
- Add the photos taken on those devices for permanent storage in my Photos Library
- Show me the last 30 days worth of Photostreamed photos from each of those iOS devices on each of those iOS devices?
Yes, you can use it for devices that do not use iCloud Photo Library as you described above.
Only issue there: what happens to the videos I take on those devices? Since they don't upload to photostream, I guess I'm back to the initial issue of having to manually import stuff assuming I didn't have iCloud Library, right?
For videoas and Live Photos connect the devices to USB to download them. Shared albums can transfer videos, but reduce the quality
Posted on Apr 27, 2016 12:54 PM