Photos Library file keeps growing despite deleting over 100GB of videos

You constantly confuse things and supply incomplete information

no one said you delete all photo

what was said was

you said

1. Deleted the photos and videos and deleted them again in Recently Deleted album.

and I said

1 - then the photos are gone totally form Photos and disk (if you used command delete as instructed and if you have a managed library - again no details)

In standard Englis "The Photos" in both statements refer to exactly the same Photos which could be one, two, many or all photos but in any case what every one refers to the other does too - very clear and very simple

and again once you delete photos form the Photos library it is impossible to export them because they are gone

And any managed photo delete as stated twice is totally deleted from the Photos library and from disk

to repair yoru Photos library backup it up and then hold down the option and command keys while launching Photos adn use resulting repair library window (although I doubt that this is the problem - I this it is user error

LN

No idea - you tell us lots and lost of nothing but nothing about what you actually did - to delete a photo from Photos is very simple, select it and press command delete them delete it again from the recently deleted album - it is then gone form Photos - if you have it somewhere else on disk Photos does not manage it, you do and you have to delete it from any place outside the Photos library

LN

moving them to cloud and external drive backups

How did you move files to iCloud?

If you are using iCloud Drive, the files will be stored on iCloud and mirrored on your Mac. You will not save storage, unless you are using "Optimize Mac Storage".

Are you using iCloud Photo Library? If yes, is "Optimize Storage" on?

OK - Then why did you state

So I spent several hours cleaning up space, deleting unnecessary files, moving them to cloud and external drive backups.

No one suggested you use Cloud - you stated you did and you were ask how you did what you stated you did

How did you move files to iCloud?

If you are using iCloud Drive, the files will be stored on iCloud and mirrored on your Mac. You will not save storage, unless you are using "Optimize Mac Storage".

Are you using iCloud Photo Library? If yes, is "Optimize Storage" on?

These are important questions given that you provide little and incomplete details and since you stated that you moved photos to Cloud

LN

delusionist wrote:

Apologies for lack of clarity.

I did mix of 2 operations:

1. Deleted the photos and videos and deleted them again in Recently Deleted album.

2. Exported videos to another folder on my Mac, then followed with step 1 for these files.

I suspect the exported files are somehow still connected to Photos Library.

Any idea how and why? And more importantly, how to reduce the size of Photo Library further?

1 - then the photos are gone totally form Photos and disk (if you used command delete as instructed and if you have a managed library - again no details)

2 - once you did 1 there is nothing to left to export so this does not make sense

An exported photos has no connection to the library

and again the way to reduce the size of a manager library is at posted

- to delete a photo from Photos is very simple, select it and press command delete them delete it again from the recently deleted album - it is then gone from Photos

If that is not working then you have a problem which could be a corrupted library or other cause -- and this procedure will delete any photo form the Photos library but if you have a referenced library (which is a very bad idea) it will NOT delete the original outside the Photos library (one f the more minior reasons it is NOT recommended)

LN