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iPhoto Library much bigger than all Files Combined

Berti10

Berti10

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 24, 2012
393
1,080
Hi everyone,

I want to make my iPhoto library smaller, so when the new iCloud Plans are available, I could put my whole Library in the Cloud for a little Money. While doing that, I noticed something: The Library itself is 240GB in size. When I select all Photos and Videos, it's just 140 GB in Size. All Photostreams are just 5 GB (Trashcan is empty). So what are happened to the 90GB? All just Thumbnails and edited Photos? Can I get Rid of it? And does anybody know, how much space it'll took in iCloud?
 
If you edit the images, they're non destructive and I think iPhoto either creates newer versions or the overhead needed to deal with the non-destructive edits.
 
At some point you may want to move to a referenced library instead if a managed library that contains all the original files plus the edits and previews. Both iPhoto and Aperture can support either a managed or reference library with managed being the default.

Another way to deal with larger managed libraries is to break them into separate libraries by clients, or by year, or by topic. That gives you the flexibility as to which libraries reside on the internal drive and which reside on an external library drive (along with all the music, videos,....etc.).
 
Berti10 said:
Hi everyone,

I want to make my iPhoto library smaller, so when the new iCloud Plans are available, I could put my whole Library in the Cloud for a little Money. While doing that, I noticed something: The Library itself is 240GB in size. When I select all Photos and Videos, it's just 140 GB in Size. All Photostreams are just 5 GB (Trashcan is empty). So what are happened to the 90GB? All just Thumbnails and edited Photos? Can I get Rid of it? And does anybody know, how much space it'll took in iCloud?
Click to expand...

I don't think we know yet how the whole iCloud Photos app/sync business will work yet. What you are seeing is the result of photos you have edited in iPhoto like maflynn mentioned. When you open a photo and edit it then save the edit, iPhoto make another full sized copy of the file with the edits while also saving the original. So for every photo you edit you end up with 2X the storage space.

If you don't care about having those originals to go back to you can export just the current version of all your photos then import that back into a new iPhoto Library.

Just open to events then command-a to select all then go to the Exports selection in the File menu and set it up like this and export to a folder on your Desktop. That will give you exported folder by event name with only one version of each photo.

Then hold the option key as you restart iPhoto and make a new library and drag/drop all those folders at once into iPhoto.

Like I said, the originals will all be gone if you do this, and will also lose any custom albums you setup, but events will still be there.

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