If you’re using the new Photos app on your Mac instead of the older iPhoto app, you most likely have a duplicate photo library floating around on your hard drive. For a lot of people, that could mean gigs and gigs of wasted storage space, especially on shared Macs with multiple migrated libraries.
Here’s how to check for multiple libraries and how to delete them…
Forums Macs Mac Apps and Mac App Store. IPhoto and recovered photos. Discussion in 'Mac Apps and Mac App Store' started by desmond, Jul 4, 2007. It seems complex to go through and try to figure out the difference between what I have in iPHoto and what didn't get in. Even though it says recovered, I can still view them fine, so why doesn't. Jun 16, 2014 Craig's Photos for Mac App demo showed the rainbow flower petal icon in the dock, and if they are using the iOS photos icon on the Mac version of the app, then you can bet they will use the same rainbow flower petal icon for iOS photos as well.
Before deleting your old library: Make a backup
- Step 4: Double click on Photos Library and it should launch the new Photos app. Verify that the Photos app is empty, which it should be on a new installation of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 Step 5: If the Photos Library is empty as confirmed in Step 3, delete the Photos Library database from ~/Pictures.
- Photos was released more recently and has the option of being cloud centric (meaning you can still use it entirely on local storage just like iPhoto). It's also a much faster and less bloated app. It also has better editing tools and a better timeline/organization system.
- The Photos for OS X app took several months to complete because it was designed from the ground up to work with OS X Yosemite and integrate with both the Photos for iOS app and iCloud Photo Library.
- While iPhoto has been the go-to app for Mac users to manage their photos for several years, the application didn’t evolve much and has become quite complex for the requirements of most users.
While the Photos app should have imported all your photos and videos just fine, I always recommend having backups handy. Perhaps you’ll delete an old photo by accident at some point and want it back later. If you have a copy of your old iPhoto library still handy, you can pull it form there as a last resort.
I saved my old iPhoto library to my Dropbox account. You can of course use any service of your choice, or just drop it onto an external hard disk you have laying around. Regardless of how you do it, I’d highly recommend saving a copy before deleting it.
Once you’ve backed up your old iPhoto library (if you chose to do so), you can proceed with deleting it:
- Open a new Finder window on your Mac.
- Click on Pictures in the left hand navigation. If it isn’t there, just search for your pictures folder using Spotlight.
- You should see two libraries, one is your old iPhoto Library and one is your new Photos library.
- Move your iPhoto Library to your trash can and empty it.
Check the storage space on your Mac, you should notice that you have more storage space available. If you are on a shared Mac and have multiple user logins, everyone using the new version of Photos on that Mac should make sure they don’t also have duplicate libraries.
I’m not sure why Apple doesn’t create a process to delete old versions of libraries after migrating to Photos, but they should. Until that happens, you’ll have to delete your old library manually.
Give this tip a try and see how much storage space you were able to clear up. As you can see in the screens above, my old iPhoto library was over 30GB, which was definitely a healthy chunk of hard drive space that I now have back.
Your Mac storage tips?
This is one of many ways to regain storage space on your Mac without having to sacrifice losing data. But we know there are lots of others. What are some of your favorite Mac storage tips for recapturing space? We’ve love to hear them in the comments!
Update
A follower on Twitter referenced to me an article written on Six Colors pointing out that the library is actually hard-linked between versions. While this may be true when you first migrate, it seems that if you make any changes to any files and the libraries become different, splicing can and will occur.
To test this theory, I deleted my iPhoto library on my other Mac to see how much storage was freed up. For those wondering, my iPhoto library was 35.99 GB and my Photos library was 41.16 GB. You can see the before and after results on my hard disk space below. I was able to free up over 20 GB of space. So I’m not sure what I think about hard linking or how well it’s actually working between Photos and iPhoto.
Bottom line, if you’re short on storage space and you want to free some up, there’s really not much point in having two photo libraries floating around on your Mac. Hard linking or not, deleting the old library will free up space in almost every case.
Like iPhoto before it, Photos for Mac groups all of your photos in a large library file. In order to break photos out of their database prison to open in another application or upload to the Internet, you will first need to export them or use one of the built-in sharing options. And to add new photos to your library, you will need to import them unless you've enabled iCloud Photo Library and take photos exclusively with your iPhone as opposed to a point-and-shoot camera or dSLR. Let's review the sharing, exporting and importing tools of Photos for Mac.
Sharing
After selecting a photo or video or a group or photos or videos, click the share button in the upper-right corner. A drop-down menu lets you share via iCloud Photo Sharing, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Messages. Vimeo shows up as an option if a video is selected.
If you go the iCloud Photo Sharing route, you'll be able to create an album or add your selected photos and videos to an existing album and invite people to subscribe to that album. The photo and videos you share this way show up as a feed on the Shared view of Photos for Mac, but your invitees don't need Photos for Mac to view your shared photos; they'll be able to view them on a browser at iCloud.com.
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If you use Google's Picasa to share photos, you'll be disappointed to learn it's not listed as an option. There are a few other sharing options, however, that you can enable by clicking the More button at the bottom of the sharing panel.
Exporting
Photos lacks an 'Open In' feature, which would be a convenient way to open a photo in another app such as Photoshop or Lightroom or another more high-powered photo editor. Instead, you must export the photo from Photos before opening it in another application.
To export, select your file or files and go to File > Export. You will see two options: Export X photos or videos (or items if you have a mix of photos and videos) and Export Unmodified Original. Choose the former and for photos you can select a file type, quality, and size and a naming convention. It's a similar menu for videos but you choose a video quality resolution for the exported file.
When exporting or sharing photos, it should be noted that you will need to drill down to the Moments view in Photos for Mac in order to highlight photos. You can't, for example, highlight an entire year's worth of photos in the Years view, for example, to export them. Also, you can't select an entire album by clicking on its thumbnail in the Albums view but must instead open the album and then select all of its photos to share the entire album.
It's also worth noting that when you export a file, Photos exports a copy of it, leaving the original in your library. You can delete it after exporting if you don't want it to remain in your library, which places it in the Recently Deleted folder where it remains for 30 days before being permanently deleted. To see your recently deleted files, go to File > Show Recently Deleted.
Importing
If you have turned on iCloud Photo Library, then your iPhone photos are sucked into Photos automatically. If you also shoot with a dSLR, then you will need to import the photos from your camera. When you connect a camera to your Mac or insert its media card, an Import button gets added to the right of the four main buttons at the top of Photos for Mac. As with iPhoto, there is a button to Import All New Photos and another to Import Selected. Unlike iPhoto, which asked after importing if you'd like to delete the photos from your camera, Photos for Mac makes you decide before importing. Be sure to check the box to Delete items after import before you hit either of the import buttons if you want delete the photos from your camera after moving them to your Mac.
After importing photos, you are taken to the Albums view of your last import. You will need to return to the Import view to eject your camera -- the eject button is located in the upper-left corner. You can also find the eject button on the sidebar. To see the sidebar go to View > Show Sidebar.
Difference Between Photos And Iphoto App For Mac Download
For more, join us on our tour as we explore Photos for Mac.