How to use photos with multiple users without an external drive

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Level 1

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How to use photos with multiple users without an external drive

Hi,

Hope someone can help me....

New MacBook Pro and Photo's app, and wanting to set it up so both my wife and I can access the same photo library. In the old iPhoto, it was easy, put it in the shared folder. However, this causes problems for the latest photo app and I have to re-build the library.

So, search and find that Apple say it has to be on a volume with ownership is ignored - Sharing photo libraries among multiple users - Apple Support

But I don't want to buy a external drive, I don't want to have an external drive hanging off the side of my MacBook, I don't have a sd card slot to hide a volume in. I have a nice fast, internal SSD that I want to use.

Any suggestions on how to do this?

Would partitioning off a volume work, setting ownership to ignored, and then putting the library on that? I assume not, as Apple don't mention that as a work around. I'm not particularly happy about that either, as I'd have to reserve space for expansion, which is a waste.

My only other alternative thought, is to set up a new "media" user for my wife and I to use, and to put the library in that.

Any better suggestions?

(Edit - I should add - although I think it's irrelevant - I have 500gb of photo's stored on a NAS - which are just referenced by iPhoto, not directly imported - so the photo library is around 40gb; I also have very slow internet upload at home, so iCloud is out of the question)

Posted on Oct 24, 2017 4:29 PM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

215,250 points

Oct 25, 2017 10:47 AM in response to Glyn1234

Would partitioning off a volume work, setting ownership to ignored, and then putting the library on that?

That could work if your boot drive is large enough. How big is it and how much free space do you have on it?

What model of MBP do you have?

Another option would be to put your full library on an external HD and have a smaller "traveling" library on your MBP. As you add new photos to the traveling library or want to move photos between libraries you could use the paid version of PowerPhotos to move the original versions along with their metadata. There are excellent and very small EHDs available here and here.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,525 points

Oct 25, 2017 10:47 AM in response to Glyn1234

Would partitioning off a volume work, setting ownership to ignored, and then putting the library on that? I assume not, as Apple don't mention that as a work around. I'm not particularly happy about that either, as I'd have to reserve space for expansion, which is a waste.

Yes, that would work, as OT said. You would just have to ensure, that the second partition is formatted MacOS Extended or APFS, and the ignore ownership flag should be enabled. If it is the system Photo Library, you should log off, before another user on your Mac is using it.

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Answer 3

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Oct 25, 2017 8:08 AM in response to Glyn1234

You can not except by using iCloud Photo Library and since you are using referenced photos (which is not a good idea -- Disadvantages of a Referenced Library in Photos ) you can not use ICPL - you either need to use Photos the way it works of use different software - Photos does not do what you want

LN

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Answer 4

Glyn1234 Author

Level 1

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Oct 25, 2017 10:47 AM in response to Old Toad

Thanks OT for confirming that approach would work.

I have 2016 MBP 13" (13.2), with 256MB SSD. Don't tend to store that much locally, so currently using 80Gb, of which the majority is the Photo library.

Glyn

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Answer 5

Old Toad

Level 10

215,250 points

Oct 25, 2017 10:59 AM in response to Glyn1234

You would still use a referenced library? That's inviting disaster. If there's a dropout in the wireless connection to the NAS while writing to the library that can corrupt the library and possible make it inoperable. Be sure you have a second EHD as a Time Machine backup of your MBP. I'm sure you'll need it sometime in the future.

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Answer 6

Glyn1234 Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 25, 2017 11:13 AM in response to Old Toad

I'll store the library locally - but keep the photo's on my NAS (which has 6TB of space in a RAID (in case of HDD failure), and is automatically backed up locally to a second NAS (different brand hopefully avoid ransomware attacks), and to AWS (in case of theft of NAS's, or some other disaster) - hopefully I'll never loose a photo!). I trust this system more than I do a proprietary library, and I can access it from other devices (some not Apple 😮, like our TV) with ease. I think there remain advantages of not putting it all in one library :-)

I completely agree, I'd never locate the library itself on the NAS, as it would be liable to get corrupted.

The library is really only for creating books, slideshows and maybe the odd small edit like rotating, and maybe a bit more for some really special photo's, so whilst I wouldn't want to loose it, I at least know my photo's are safe.

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