Taming 30gig iPhoto library

[akm3]

Hey, I take a lot of pictures, 15,000+ so far. They have all happily dumped into iPhoto, and everything is working fine.

But, my iPhoto library has grown to 30gigs, which on a laptop is a very significant chunk of very limited space. I take Large 'basic' jpg's, but each file is 4mb, and then there are the duplicates when I edit them, etc, etc.

What can I do to manage this ever growing beast?

Ideally, I'd like a way to designate some of the photo events to be moved to an external hard drive, but still 'exist' in my iPhoto library for when I want to make photo books or iMovies or something.

Help? I think I might have outgrown iPhoto.

 

[John Doe 57]

You can make sub libraries with this app:

http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/

 

[Roquefort]

You could also move your entire iPhoto library to an external disk.

See Moving your iPhoto Library folder to a new location.

 

[akm3]

Would migrating to Aperture be a potential solution?

 

[John Doe 57]

Would migrating to Aperture be a potential solution?

Aperture is WAY better than iPhoto. But the library will still be big. I have a small library for Aperture and a large library for iPhoto.

 

[akm3]

Aperture is WAY better than iPhoto. But the library will still be big. I have a small library for Aperture and a large library for iPhoto.

How do you manage bouncing items between the two? Do you store your iPhoto stuff off primary disk?

 

[John Doe 57]

How do you manage bouncing items between the two? Do you store your iPhoto stuff off primary disk?

My Aperture Library is on my MacBook Pro while the 10 iPhoto Libraries are on an external HD. When I'm in a rush, I will import the photos into Aperture. I don't use Aperture nearly enough as I should. Its a great program.

If you haven't seen it:
http://www.apple.com/aperture/

 

[akm3]

Ohhh, the timeliness.

So, now iPhoto crashes if my library is open more than ~15 seconds. I boot iphoto, I can perform maybe one operation (say, click into an event and maybe open a photo) and then iPhoto goes unresponsive, and I have to force quit it.

I've rebooted, etc. I created a new iphoto library that works fine. But if I go into my old one, it's toasty.

Is my iPhoto library corrupt? Any tips?

 

[John Doe 57]

Perhaps its too big?

You'll probably have to make sub-libraries of the 30GB library. Once you have all your photos into new libraries, delete the 30GB one.