How Large is your "Photos Library"?

[seekersu]

Dear Guys, I brought a new iphone 6S+ and used the "Live photos" function often. Because Lightroom can't support "Live photos" well, so I am going to import all my previous pictures into "Photos" in OSX (10.11). I wonder if I use single Photos Library, will there be any problems if there are too many pictures within? ( crash? or very very lag when viewing or operation?) I had about 1.5 TB photos (maybe 200,000+ over 10 years) which I used to save these them by structured folders (I managed them by Windows OS before). I don't know if I can import all of them into one Photos Library and just backup the Photos library??

PS: Years ago, I ever used iphoto and created separate iphoto libraries (one for each year), but I found it was inconvenient for me if I need to create an album or slide show with pictures from different libraries, so I prefer to use since Photos Library if possible.

 

[fisherking]

i know i should not get involved , but have you considered editing your library? that's about 20,000 photos a year, or about 55 photos a day...every day. maybe do some serious editing, THEN make the move to photos? there's no way you're gonna sync all those photos to your phone. anyway, just a thought...

 

[fiveainone]

I have a separate photos library for my dslr files, so far that .photoslibrary is at 750gb. I don't think there's any lag compared to my iCloud sync library. If anything it's like the larger Lightroom catalog files. Not even that slow to open actually.

Although, these are large individual files, rather than large quantities of smaller files, which might make a difference. You won't be able to sync that to iCloud though, 1tb is the limit no?

 

[MrNomNoms]

The question is, do you need those 'live photos'? live photos are just three photos taken one after each other - delete two of them and you have the original one. You can disable live photos if you want which would save a lot of space.

 

[Max(IT)]

My Photo library is 28 Gb (2800 photos)

 

[fiveainone]

The question is, do you need those 'live photos'? live photos are just three photos taken one after each other - delete two of them and you have the original one. You can disable live photos if you want which would save a lot of space.

They're captured as MOVs for the live portion, not three photos. What you're describing is Burst Mode, where you can choose a favorite shot out of a series of photos to keep and delete. Just to clarify.

 

[MrNomNoms]

They're captured as MOVs for the live portion, not three photos. What you're describing is Burst Mode, where you can choose a favorite shot out of a series of photos to keep and delete. Just to clarify.

Ah cool, I disabled live photo the moment I found out how - didn't see the point in it.

 

[maflynn]

Because Lightroom can't support "Live photos" well, so I am going to import all my previous pictures into "Photos" in OSX (10.11)

Personally, I'd use Lightroom over Photos any day. Apple's track record for its image management software is horrid, and what the features it has, pales in comparison to Lightroom.

As for live photos, perhaps you can use Photos for that and keep everything else in LR, or just don't use live photos, since its more of a gee whiz feature that has very limited appeal, i.e., only Apple compatible products will get to enjoy the live feature.

 

[aarond12]

Just as iPhoto was getting mature, Photos came in and replaced it. Now we have things like "System Library" and things like that. My 90GB library just takes up too much space on my laptop, so I have everything on my Mac Pro. However getting those two computers to use the same library and not step on each other's toes doesn't work so well. I'm now using iCloud for photos but that meant I needed to pay for additional storage. I can't imagine how that would work with OP's 1.5TB library. You gotta run that locally.

 

[seekersu]

Dear Guys:
Thanks for your opinions. I have so many pictures because my wife, as every mother, keeps taking photos of children if she has camera or smartphone in hands. 200-500 pictures per day is just piece of cake.

In recent days, I imported my previous picture gradually, and the .photoslibrary is around 150 Gb. There was no lag at all, but I encountered a terrible accident: One day, I can't open my .photoslibrary anymore and it showed an error message: "The library "XXXX" has inconsistencies that must be repaired." After I clicked "Repair". There was another error message: "The library couldn't be opened. The library "XXXX" could not be recognized." And I can only choose "Open other" or "Quit"

I put the .photoslibrary in external HDD raid, so I used "disk utility" and ran "first aid". There seems nothing wrong with the external HDD itself. I could use with external HDD raid with other programs will without any problem. I used third party software "PowePhotos" to open .photoslibrary and the error message is " The SQLite database file could not be found." Fortunately, I can still retrieve all my pictures from the folder "Masters" in .photoslibrary. (I have real time backup for .photoslibrary and the external HDD is running Raid 1 itself, so I don't think external HDD itself is the issue)

The accident let me re-consider to use Photos to manage all my picture may be not a quite good idea.