Photos, Aperture, iCloud - photo management

[utopianbl]

I am struggling to wrap my head around this new photo management setup apple wants me to have.

Here is my summary of current setup

- a macbook pro - 250GB limit
- iCloud - that I am paying for per month - 200GB
- time capsule - 2TB

Photo allocation
- macbook is running now with 10GB of free space, because I have 130GB Migrated Aperture Library, 12GB of Photos Library
- My iCloud is 134GB full of photos
- Time capsule is backing up my entire photo collection on macbook nightly

My Objective - I need more space to download the latest photos off my DLSR - worth almost 50GB and macbook photos is not doing it cause I don't have space.

Any suggestions on what I can do?

Here are some of the things I've picked up off the net (please correct me if I am wrongly interpreting something)

- The Migrated Aperture Library is just a hard link to photos, and because I have iCloud storage optimized for my macbook, all my high res photos actually reside on the net?

- I can delete these Migrated Aperture Library, and save on 130GB of space?

- I can then download my 50GB of new pics and videos, iCloud and photos will optimize my mac storage and place all of the files on the stream and iCloud?

Have I got this right?

...ps any help asap will be appreciated, 50GB photos include many new snaps of my 1 month baby - and my wife is killing me here to get it "online" somehow. She wants 'em all...

 

[maflynn]

I don't use iCloud, so I can't help you there, but if you're running low on space, why not get an external drive (I actually recommend 2 of them) to hold your images. I recommend two because you'll want to back those up as well.

Technically you can delete the Aperture library when you're happy that all the images are in the photos library but personally I'd not do that because stuff happens and there's enough reports of issues with Photos, its good to have a fall back plan.

 

[andyp350]

Because your photos are in iCloud you could either set Photos on the Macbook Pro to optimise Mac storage (full resolution originals will be kept in iCloud) or alternatively move your photo library onto and external drive (or move just the older photos you may not view so often as referenced files).
Both of these methods will free up space on your Macbook hard drive.

 

[MCAsan]

Move on to a serious photo workflow using a full featured digital asset manager (DAM) like Lightroom or Capture One Pro. Using those tools you can do loads of non-destructive edits and very importantly...invoke and use pluggins. Try to find or use a Photos plugin app.

Leave Photos to the causal snapshot taker who wants to share a jpg image via social media.

In Lightroom is it easy to make a Collection of the best baby shots, export them as jpg images to a folder and then have iTunes synch that folder to your iPhone(s) and iPad(s). In Lightroom you can use the web module to create a gallery website and post the photos you want the world to see. Naturally you can also export to the social media sites.

 

[Traverse]

Not to hijack the thread, but I hate to start a new one on such a related note.

When you import large RAW files into Photos will it sync those large files to iOS devices via the cable or will automatically since smaller jpegs. It seems like you'd need two libraries.

 

[andyp350]

Not to hijack the thread, but I hate to start a new one on such a related note.

When you import large RAW files into Photos will it sync those large files to iOS devices via the cable or will automatically since smaller jpegs. It seems like you'd need two libraries.

I believe that RAW files are stored in full in iCloud Photos library, if you are using that, but it seems that iOS devices get a JPG.
I had a quick scan of this article to find this out as I haven't imported and RAW photos into Photos yet.
http://camvergence.com/workflows/icloud-photo-library-questions-and-answers/

 

[LV426]

- macbook is running now with 10GB of free space, because I have 130GB Migrated Aperture Library, 12GB of Photos Library

What do you see when you click Apple Symbol | About This Mac | Storage ?

Specifically, in the section marked "Backups". I notice you are running Time Machine, which will eventually use most of your local disk for local backups (in case you don't have access to your Time Machine device). Whilst these backups consume space, OS X will get rid of them if you start to run out.

FYI, I recently did a Time Machine restore, and was surprised that my computer suddenly had a lot more disk space free. It didn't really; it's just that the restore operation cleaned out all local Time Machine backups.

 

[utopianbl]

Thanks for the replies folks

But can I delete the migrated aperture library?