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Mac Photo Library Too Big
How to cope with a Photos library too big to fit on an internal Mac drive Apple doesn’t offer the perfect mix of choices with iCloud Photos, and the right answer isn’t obvious.
Mac Photo Library Management
Apr 11, 2019 If you’re using iCloud Photos (previously called iCloud Photo Library) to sync photos and videos between your devices, the originals are all stored in iCloud. In Photos Preferences iCloud, you can enable Optimize Mac Storage, which swaps the full-resolution images for smaller versions, saving a boatload of space. Jan 29, 2020 Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Library and use Optimise Mac Storage, or move your photo library to an external drive. Before you start, make sure that you back up your library.
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Photos User Guide
- Oct 15, 2018 I’m beginning to think it would be better to keep iCloud library turned off and just simply offload photos to my Mac ever so often and maybe keep library enabled on my iPad only, which seems to perform best. Just so tired for paying 9.99/month for a feature that used to.
- May 07, 2015 How-To: Safely shrink your Mac’s giant photo library, deleting duplicate images to save space Gauging The Size Of Your Mac’s Problem. If you’re not sure just how much space your photo collection. Exercise Extreme Caution. Be very careful (yes.
- Feb 05, 2018 I have macbook pro touch 256gb ssd and i found have little free space. Now i check and clean a lot of space but i have problem with Imovie Library. It is very big (At moment 35GB) and i want clean this space but i can't delete my projects. I prefer save the projects because if i need it.
- If you’re using iCloud Photos (previously called iCloud Photo Library) to sync photos and videos between your devices, the originals are all stored in iCloud. In Photos Preferences iCloud, you can enable Optimize Mac Storage, which swaps the full-resolution images for.
Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods:
Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup. For more information about setting up Time Machine, see Back up your files with Time Machine.
WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.
Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.
If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.
Important: If any of your image files are stored outside your photo library, those files (known as referenced files) aren’t backed up when you back up your library. Be sure to back up those files separately. To make it easier to back up all your image files at once, you can consolidate referenced files into your library. See Change where Photos stores your files.
See alsoCreate additional photo libraries in Photos on MacRepair your library in Photos on Mac
Sep 24, 2018 — Managing a huge gallery and organizing photos is a tricky business, even if you’re generally tidy, so it’s always a good idea to use some help. Especially when there’s software out there designed specifically to deal with an overload of pictures.
But the second way is only really feasible when you know where to look. First Method (The Easiest)Go to Finder and drop down the “ Go” menu. Show library folder on mac. You’ll see that the Library folder is not listed.To make the Library folder appear, press the “ Alt” key (also known as the Option key) at the bottom left of your keyboard.
The only trouble with professional photo organizing software is that, much like any photo equipment, it’s painfully expensive. In this article we’ll suggest tools that tame your giant photo gallery without leaving a hole in your pocket.
Best photo organizing software for Mac, as of 2018
Gemini 2: The duplicate photo finder
The first thing you need to do to organize photos is remove the extras. There’s a high chance you’ve got plenty of duplicates and similar images — 15 shots from slightly different angles, for instance. You usually only use one of those, so there’s really no point in keeping them all.
The easiest way to get rid of those files is to get a duplicate photo finder, such as Gemini 2. It can scan your whole gallery, locate duplicates and point out similars. It usually takes a few minutes to clean your whole photo collection, so download Gemini and give it a quick test drive.
Photos: Mac’s native photo organizer app
Here’s the biggest secret to good photo organization: master Photos. You might be thinking: seriously, a native Apple app is any good? And you’d be surprised how much it is.
Mac Photo Library Too Big Mac
Since macOS Sierra, Photos has been getting makeovers and new features. In macOS Mojave, the app lets you organize content just by dragging-and-dropping it, and with Smart Albums, you can instantly group photos by date, camera, and even the person in them. At this point, it’s just a really good piece of photo management software.
Mylio: A free photo manager app
If you’ve been meaning to consolidate your photos in one place for years, Mylio will help you do just that. When you first start using the app, it offers to look for your photos on the current device, on an external drive, and even on your Facebook.
Once all the photos you’ve taken in your lifetime are imported, Mylio organizes into a variety of views. The coolest one is Calendar, showing you photo collections on an actual calendar. That way, you’ll quickly find the photos from your son’s first birthday, even if you forgot how you named the folder. Plus, Mylio offers a free mobile app, so you can access your photo library wherever you are.
Final word on photo management on Mac
There are basically two things you need to remember to bring order into your photographing life:
- Before you get to organization and management, be sure to unclutter your photo library. The easiest way to do it is with a duplicate finder, such as Gemini 2. Otherwise you'll be rummaging around in thousands of photos you don't even need.
- Photos, the native Apple photo manager can accomplish everything you need to make organizing photos into groups and categories easy.
- Third-party tools can provide you with added functionality that’s missing in native macOS tools, like calendar view or managing photos right in the Finder.
Now that you know all the secrets to photo organization, Mac photography shouldn’t be that hard or that expensive. Not when you’ve got the right tricks up your sleeve.