Do I need to keep thumbnails, previews and masters in my iphoto library?

Question

Do I need to keep thumbnails, previews and masters in my iphoto library?

Hi, my macbook air is rapidly running out of memory and I can't seem to find an answer to my question..... I have 25GB of masters, 5.7GB Thumbnails and 2.4GB of previews. Are any of folders duplicates? if so, is it safe to delete them?

I am keen to keep my photo library on my macbook, if anyone has some advice on how to optimise space for photos I would very much appreciate it!

thank you,

Malena

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on May 4, 2016 10:33 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,290 points

May 5, 2016 3:09 AM in response to malenafromlondon

Yes they are all needed, no you cannot delete any of them and if you do you'll damage the Library.

So, again: no duplicates, nothing to delete.

Does that answer your question?

Your possible solutions are

1. Move the Library to an external disk. On easy way to do that is to get a small flash drive and leave it permanently attached to your Mac,

2. Get a bigger internal drive.

That's it.

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Answer 2

May 5, 2016 3:10 AM in response to Yer_Man

thank you!

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Answer 3

May 5, 2016 5:58 AM in response to Yer_Man

In my situation, I'm finding the Masters include a .MOV video and the resources include a .MP4. Is that normal? It only exists for a handful of videos and they are very large ones.

Could it be related to slow-motion videos?

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Answer 4

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,290 points

May 5, 2016 9:56 AM in response to AstroMacMan

What resources are those?

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Answer 5

mmcgreal

Level 1

15 points

May 7, 2016 1:55 AM in response to malenafromlondon

Melena, I don't claim to be knowledgeable however I was warned when I was buying the MacBook Air that it would be wise to keep my music, my photos and those big files on an external disk. I bought a 3T external and although I have to plug it in to use Photos etc it works so well. I have 35,000 pics so necessary for me to have an external.

I back up with Time Machine too.

Regards Marilyn

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