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Big Stevie

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 20, 2012
1,369
825
UK
Im wanting to move some of my iPhoto pictures off my macbook hard drive to clear some space as it is full.

Ive previously backed up my MacBooks iPhoto library by copying my iPhoto library to an external hard drive. I then deleted some of the photos on my original macbook iPhoto library to create space on my internal hard drive, and then carried on using the original iPhoto library on my macbook for new photos.

My hard drive is now full again and I now want to transfer all of these new photos onto the 'backup iPhoto library' on the external hard drive. How do I do this please?

Ive found the photos location in Finder and then tried to drag & drop to the back up iPhoto library, but this doesn't work. Do I have to create yet another new iPhoto library on the external hard drive? Surely not?

Thanks
 
You should be able to copy an iPhoto library; it should be a package with lots of stuff in it.

But you cannot just copy a library "onto" another library. If your intention is to merge libraries, consider using iPhoto Library Manager. iPhoto libraries are special folders called packages with special rules designed to prevent doing things like copying directly into them.
 
Thanks robgendreau

I actually discovered iPhoto Library Manager yesterday and purchased it from here...

https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/

It has allowed me to merge the newer photos on my MacBooks iPhoto app with the backup iPhoto library that I keep on an external HD (I then copy this onto a second ext HD as an additional backup)

iPhoto Library Manager looks brilliant, and can do more than I can comprehend, I need to spend some time learning everything it does.
 
Another vote for iPhoto Library Manager. I've used it for several years to work with multiple libraries, and it only munged a process once (which was probably my fault).

One (of many) reasons I don't like the new-and-degraded Photos app is that with iPhoto you could actually get at a lot of the information developed and stored by iPhoto by hacking around in the iPhoto package directory. Most information was stored in an XML ASCII-format file which could be parsed in order to extract information and photos from the library using self-built tools. The Photos app stops all that, using Apple-designed binary files (and therefore pretty much opaque to users) for all information. Way to support your user base, Apple.
 
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