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How much bigger is your iPhoto Library than iPhoto lists in iPhoto?

powerbook911

powerbook911

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 15, 2005
4,009
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So if you just click on the general library or events tab in iPhoto, the information box will tell you the size of your library. Mine is 6.4 GB, with over 2500 images.

However, when I go to finder and "get info" on my iphoto library it is 11.45 GB. That is 5 GB more and 40 percent or something. Is that pretty normal? Most of my photos are not altered, except ones that have been rotated, so is it still normal to have the actual library so much bigger than what the iphoto reports the pictures add up to?
 
Mine says it's 3.1GB but is actually 3.79GB. I'm pretty sure that even rotated images get copied into the Modified folder, effectively duplicating them and therefore doubling the size. :)
 
mad jew said:
Mine says it's 3.1GB but is actually 3.79GB. I'm pretty sure that even rotated images get copied into the Modified folder, effectively duplicating them and therefore doubling the size. :)
Click to expand...

Yep you're right on that, which is why I brought them up. Still that is only about 1/8 of my images, the rest are original, so why is mine almost twice as big?

Glad yours isn't much bigger.
 
iPhoto maintains some database files which on my computer total around 200mb. Plus all of the modified files, and I think some sort of thumbnails somewhere too. Mine is 6.7/8.14
 
I had a similar problem and finally found the answer. When you import your photos into iphoto 7 it gives you the option in the advanced tab "copy photos to iphoto library. If you do this it makes a copy of every photo in a slightly diff format that is optimized for iphoto
 
As said before iPhoto keeps the original of every photo you've modified.So if you modify a lot of pictures it will take up more room. You could always delete the original by going by manually going into the iPhoto library folder (iPhoto Library package in iPhoto 7) and deleting the originals.
 
iphoto library bloat

to see how much bloat there is, i recently deleted the iphoto library and added a fresh batch of photos--none had been edited within iphoto.

under advanced options, i had turned off the option to copy photos to the iphoto library.

under my own filing system, the photos took up 260.8MB. but the iphoto library, moments after spawning, grew to 1.02GB!

apple obviously doesn't have its data management together.

i'm going to give apple some feedback--perhaps others can do the same. in the iphoto menu, there's an option to provide feedback, which should open up an apple web page for ranting.
 
Opening up the iPhoto library file to actually show files I see almost 4 GB of mine is iPod photo cache . ? Is that like the smaller images it makes to display on iPod?
 
How do I check the size in iPhoto?

Anyway, my entire library is about 1.61GB. That's because I only have 629 photos, but each one is enhanced.
 
Ack. My iPod Photo Cache folder is almost 6GB too, and I don't even have an iPod anymore!!! The only photos on my iPhone are the ones I take from it.
 
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