jxyama
macrumors 68040
many of us have written about how iPhoto slows to a crawl when the number of photos increase... there's a good way to deal with this called
iPhoto Library Manager
it's free and works extremely well. it's a program based on scripts to change the default iPhoto library. you can use this program to split up your photo collection into manageable size. i've split mine by year (some years further split into multiple parts...), each library with no more than 200 photos. they all load much quicker than if i had 800 photos in one library.
one caveat is that splitting the existing library (with comments, albums, etc.) is a bit tricky, due to the complicated way iPhoto indexes and stores pictures... i managed to do it by burning a CDR backup of filmrolls/albums and dragging them off CDs into iPhoto as i switched between libraries... took me about half a day to figure it out and actually do it, but it's been certainly worth it.
iPhoto Library Manager
it's free and works extremely well. it's a program based on scripts to change the default iPhoto library. you can use this program to split up your photo collection into manageable size. i've split mine by year (some years further split into multiple parts...), each library with no more than 200 photos. they all load much quicker than if i had 800 photos in one library.
one caveat is that splitting the existing library (with comments, albums, etc.) is a bit tricky, due to the complicated way iPhoto indexes and stores pictures... i managed to do it by burning a CDR backup of filmrolls/albums and dragging them off CDs into iPhoto as i switched between libraries... took me about half a day to figure it out and actually do it, but it's been certainly worth it.