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iPhoto and over 50k photos

nycaleksey

nycaleksey

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 14, 2009
63
1
Hi,

I have an extensive photo collection, around 50k images, mostly 3-5MB JPGs and around 1k 10MB+ RAWs.

I have once tried to start managing them in iPhoto and attempted to import it on an old MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM. It was about 2 yrs ago on an old version of iLife. The performance was very bad - everything was extremely slow and I abandoned an idea at that time. Now I have MacPro with fast HDD and 10GB RAM and was wondering if I should try this again using iPhoto 09? Doe anyone manage that many images using iPhoto here? How is the experience?

Thank you.
 
My opinion is iPhoto is good for some things, managing 5k in photos isn't one of them. I think it's time for Aperture, Lightroom, etc.
 
On my Aluminum iMac with 2.8 GHz I manage around 17,000 photos in 170 events. No problems whatsoever. iPhoto used to be slow 3 or 4 years ago, but it improved gradually.
 
I probably have more than that it iPhoto at the moment. It is a bit of a nightmare at times to find things, and it does become bogged down a little when doing so too.

Rev 1.1 Macpro 2.66 with 8gb Memory.


Even though I have lightroom, it's the prospect of trying to move them all across and arrange is a bit too much of a daunting prospect that I have and am still procrastinating....
 
Personally I'd move over to Aperture or Lightroom.

I have about 11k worth of images and I cannot imagine using anything other then Lightroom (or Aperture).
 
You might also consider breaking your library down to 2 or more libraries -- perhaps one for photos over 10 years old, and another for newer photos (or whatever makes sense to you).
 
Thanks everyone for the advice, I ended up using Adobe Lightroom. It's not cheap but it can definitely handle 50k photos...
 
Have 31K images

Being managed by iPhoto on a MBP 3.06 GHZ w/ 4 gig of RAM. Almost 1K in RAW the rest in jpeg.
 
rhett7660 said:
How do you like it so far?
Click to expand...

I'm fully satisfied. I can effectively manage all of 50k+ photos and can find the one I need very quickly. There are no performance issues. The importing works fine. I can manipulate the photos and I love the fact that the changes are non-destructive - the originals stay intact and the changes I make are only kept in Lightroom database separately from the CRW/JPG files. Overall I have a very good experience and the software fully meets my needs. Let me know if you have more specific questions.
 
The only reason for iPhoto for nowadays is to setup albums for me to upload to Facebook and transfer to my iPhone. I also use to transfer my final edits in jpeg format to Flickr and/or show to others. I simply don't like the way iPhoto uses Events to organize. It gets wayyy to cluttered after a while. It's great if all you take is family photos and want to organize by events and use faces to find certain people, but I have a wide range of photos.
 
nycaleksey said:
I'm fully satisfied. I can effectively manage all of 50k+ photos and can find the one I need very quickly. There are no performance issues. The importing works fine. I can manipulate the photos and I love the fact that the changes are non-destructive - the originals stay intact and the changes I make are only kept in Lightroom database separately from the CRW/JPG files. Overall I have a very good experience and the software fully meets my needs. Let me know if you have more specific questions.
Click to expand...

I concur, I'm very satisfied with LR as well. Great management tools, awesome editing capabilities (rarely need to go into PS) and I'm satisfied with adobe's printer module. It produces great output. The one thing lacking is the slideshow module. It seems like an add on w/o much use. I thought I'd be able to generate a flash slide show but that doesn't seem to be the case.
 
uumm. Im running on a 1.6GHZ G5 (4gb ram) with iPhoto 09 and I have 93 events with 12,952 photos. The library itself is 59.81GB (mostly shooting in 10 megapixel) and I have no real issues and my machine is ooolldddd.

When I do multitasking, yea iPhoto chokes but then again, so does every app cause of the age of my computer (6 years) but otherwise, I have no problem. Especially with a newer comp, you will have zero problems.
 
Cinematographer said:
On my Aluminum iMac with 2.8 GHz I manage around 17,000 photos in 170 events. No problems whatsoever. iPhoto used to be slow 3 or 4 years ago, but it improved gradually.
Click to expand...
I hear ya - it does seem to improve, but for managing lots of photos, it's important to keep your hardware current, like you have. A 2.8ghz CPU is sure nice for that type of work :).
 
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