Do you lose a large of disk space after using the new Photos app?

[Evren Carven]

After upgrading to the latest 10.10.3, the new Photos app becomes the default app for photo management. When I open the new Photos app, it tells me to choose what photo library, I chose iPhoto library. Then it was importing photos or did something other for a long time to wait. At last, it finished the ready and I can see all my photos in the new Photos app.

All things seem good. But when I go to Finder and find there are two libraries (iPhoto library and Photos library) in the Pictures. Photos library is bigger than iPhoto library. In my case, my iPhoto library is 9GB, the Photos library is about 12GB. That means it costs extra 12GB disk space for my photos? This is unreasonable.

Have you encountered the same problem? How to get out of this situation?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[mgroot]

No, you don't lose diskspace (or not as much as you think anyway)

Check this site for an explanation of how it works
http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/the-hard-link-between-photos-and-iphoto/

 

[kirky29]

After 'upgrading' from Aperture to Photos I lost around 50GB.

Aperture - 370GB
Photos - 420GB

It's pretty much all thumbnails too...

 

[Evren Carven]

No, you don't lose diskspace (or not as much as you think anyway)

Check this site for an explanation of how it works
http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/the-hard-link-between-photos-and-iphoto/

Thank you mgroot.

I read the article for this problem. That means it does not take extra 12GB disk space in my case if I understand it correctly. If so, what about the file if I edit it in the new Photos app. For example, there is a photo named 'DSCN9527.jpg' both in the iPhoto and Photos library, the file is about 5MB. In fact, the file only takes up 5MB in my hard disk not 10MB in the hard disk. If I edit the 'DSCN9527.jpg' file in new Photos app, then what space the file will take up. 5MB or 10MB?