How to Get iPhoto to Store Your Photos Inside or Outside of the iPhoto Library (Managed vs. Referenced)

Hi Stefano. I’m not sure I understand your question. Can you restate it for me in another way?

I would love to hear your answer to this question, too! I transferred my whole iPhoto library to an external hard drive, and need to free up space on my Mac. Can I simply delete the current iPhoto library from my desktop computer, or must I go into iPhoto and delete all the images? About 8 years’ worth of images…so I’m nervous to delete!

Bert, I haven’t had a version of Elements installed on my computer for a long time, mainly because all this time, I’ve been trying to focus on non-destructive image managers and helping people who want to use them. I’m starting to branch out a little bit though as I’m getting a feel for what everyone wants to use.

But, I don’t believe that Elements stores photos in managed libraries. I believe this is something I’ve only seen with Apple-written software (Aperture, iPhoto and Photos). I’m a bit confused about where you are saving your photos. Seems a bit “strange” to me. If you import photos into Elements on a Mac, it’s my understanding that it puts them in a folder inside of your pictures folder in your user account. An Adobe help PDF I just looked at says this:

When you import photos from iphoto into Elements Organizer, a copy of each photo is placed in /Users/[Your User Name]/Pictures/Adobe/Organizer/[Catalog Name].

If that’s the case, then it looks as if you’ve used Elements possibly to import photos from an iPhoto library, and Elements has created a folder and subfolders with this name “iPhoto Library.photolibrary Media>Masters>other photos.” Is that possible?

Anyone more familiar with Elements, please chime in here and set me straight if you know more what’s happened here.

In any case, I am quite positive that Adobe Elements is still accessing your photos in a referenced manner — not managed. Managed really means that it’s challenging to get to your master images without “breaking into” the library file or using a third party program that has access to photos in your library file. If you can manually just drop photos into a folder and then Elements can access them, then this is “referenced.”

Gighen, yeah the library files that Photos (and iPhoto or Aperture) uses will get bigger no matter if you have the box checked or not, because as you suspected, the apps create thumbnail and preview versions so the program can run quicker. If if had to load up 2MB or larger often photos to represent the thumbnails and full-screen versions as you scroll them thousands of photos, the program would be “crawling” on most people’s computer.

There isn’t a way to use Photos (or the other apps) as just a viewer. That’s pretty much what Preview and icon view in Finder was made to do. Photos (and iPhoto and Aperture) were created to be cataloguing applications for organizing, labeling and sharing.

There is the “Optimize Mac Storage” options with iCloud, so that originals aren’t stored on your computer if there isn’t room, but if you don’t have enough room on your SSD for thumbnails and preview images, you certainly wouldn’t have room for even smaller compressed originals.

You could try:

A) Obvious option — free up some storage space on your SSD by deleting other things less important than your photo collection. Maybe you have some program caches or backups that you can delete or move off of it. (I know for example, iPhone and iPad backups can be huge if your keep them on your internal SSD).
B) Buying a memory card for your SD slot such as the SanDisk Ultra Mini Drive 64GB. This won’t be AS fast fast your internal SSD of course, but putting your library file on here would definitely give you some extra room.
C) Using a small portable USB drive and putting your library file there. Maybe even one of the wireless ones that runs on batteries if you want to keep your Air free and more easily portable. Would still be better to have your library file internally, and move other items that require less speed and importance be moved to this portable drive.

Hi Maya, sorry for taking so long to get back to you here.

Yes, you want to uncheck the box in iPhoto, BEFORE you import your photos. Because, this box you check or uncheck, doesn’t go back and make changes to photos you previously imported. It’s only reflective of photos you import from this moment on.

So, with the box unchecked, now import your photos from your external drive. The photos will not copy anywhere, they will stay exactly where they are. iPhoto will then make thumbnail versions of all of your master images on your external drive, but will store them inside the iPhoto library file where ever you have that stored. They are very small though, and won’t take up nearly as much space as your masters will.

Having the thumbnail versions inside of your library file means that you can load your collection and do simple browsing of them without having your external drive turned on and connected to your Mac. But, if you ever need to zoom in close and do edits to your photos, then iPhoto will need to load the master images from your external drive, so it will then need to be connected and turned on.

Does this help you Maya?

Then again, I could be completely wrong about that speedy reply part, I guess.

Hi Rose, sorry for the delay getting back to you. Thank you for the video compliments. I appreciate that! :coffee:

So iPhoto is sort of smart, but not that smart. You can have as many iPhoto Library Files as you would like, but iPhoto can only load one at a time. So you can have one on your main storage drive in your computer, and one on your external drive where there is more room.

Now, when you launch the iPhoto application, it will load into it whichever library file you had loaded in it the last time you used the application. So, if it loads the library file you don’t wish to use at that time, all you have to do is go up to File at the top of the menu bar and choose “Switch to Library.” Then it will open a window and from there you just want to choose your other library file from the list. If it’s not listed, you may have to help it by clicking on “Other Library” and then look for it and select it. From then on, as long as that drive is attached and turned on, it should remember it and add it to the list each time.

So now that you are in the correct library file you want to be in, now you can import your iPhone photos into it. So, what you just need to keep in mind is that you can import your iPhone photos into whichever library file you would like, you just need to make sure that particular library file is loaded at the time you do your import into the iPhoto application.

Does this help you Rose? 🙂

Hi “P.” It appears that AAE files are new. Apple is using them with the relatively new Photos app in iOS 8 to save adjustment metadata. Those using “Image Capture” (for example) to bring photos from their iPhone to their Mac’s are seeing these “sidecar” files accompanying each of their photos.

So, you most certainly can delete these files if you would like. From what I’ve read, it seems as if the only downside would be if you ever wanted this metadata to be accessed later by another Apple application (or possibly a third-party one) to “re-create” your adjustments (e.g. crops, color filters, straightenings etc).

How Could They Be Used?
Presumably, Photos for Mac that’s about to come out will read and write this information as well. So for those that aren’t using iCloud Photo Library to sync their photos from iPhones to the Mac to carry all of these adjustments over (automatically), this could (should) be a way you can also get all of the adjustments into Photos for Mac as well.

Excellent! That’s so great to hear. Thank you! :coffee:

Thank you Reamy. I really appreciate that! :coffee:

You’re so welcome P. My day job is as a documentary video editor — I edit the “making of” features you will find on bluray and DVD’s about how the movie was made. But, in whatever free time I get, I am trying to build out this website to help people with their photo collections. And hopefully some day, this WILL be my day job. But, right now it’s just a labor of love. 🙂

I’m sorry if some of the information came off as too basic. I’m sure you already knew some of the information I put in this video coming from being a Windows user. But just in case you didn’t know little things here and there, and for anyone else that happens to stumble on this thread and watches the video, I thought I would cover as much as possible covering all bases.

One thing I left out was that the Finder “Sidebar” on the left is made up of your favorites. It’s a default set of folders at the top there, but you can drag and drop additional folders of your choosing that you access frequently (for example). So you could add your main Photo collection folder there on the favorites in Sidebar, to make it easy to find each time without having to click through all of the other folders to get to it.

Additionally I forgot to mention that great little trick of hitting spacebar on top of a file when it’s selected to do a quick preview of it on your screen without having to load it up in another program like Preview. (You just hit spacebar again and the quick preview goes away) I use this daily and saves me a lot of time.

Yes, let me know what comes up as you go through it in the weeks ahead. :coffee:

Hi P,

I was finally able to make you a thorough little screen capture video for you that will demonstrate all of the ins and outs of the Finder application and how you could use it to create the folder structure of your choosing.

So check it out, and let me know what I may have left out. :coffee:

Cheers!

http://youtu.be/sQr7EJJyowk

P,

Since you are in the lucky situation of being at the beginning of the process, starting your collection in a new application like iPhoto, I think it’s in your best interest to start out the way you really want to, and don’t settle.

I think you are still best off, learning Finder really well, to organize your photos the way you want, and then import them into iPhoto “referenced” just in case you like the ability to edit and group favorites in “albums” if you so choose to email to people etc. right out of iPhoto. Also, by starting our with your photos in folders, you can always abandon iPhoto at any time and still be able to access all of your masters in any other program you like, like Lightroom or Picasa etc.

Let’s start off now by telling me in a couple sentences or three, what you want to do in Finder, and so I can write out or make you a quick video to show you how you can do it easily. I want to prove to you, that Finder is just as easy as Windows Explorer. I think you just might be missing one step, or a setting etc.. that will make it easy for you. Also tell me what version of OSX you are running. 10.9, 10.10 etc.

I’m not saying your workflow you just posted won’t work, just that I think you might be settling on your wishes just because you can’t make a couple things work out for you just yet.

So let me help you a bit more first to see if we can get this working. 🙂

Hi P,

Coming from someone on Windows since nearly the beginning, and then switching to Mac full time, I can assure you that Macs aren’t that hard to learn — but you must accept the fact there is going to be a little learning curve as your mind and mouse hand adapts to what’s different. It’s cliché to say, but I insist Macs are in fact easier for most people, and I seriously doubt there is anything you did on a Windows computer that you can’t do on a Mac.

Just try not to assume there is only one way to do something on a Mac. For example, because iPhoto comes free with OSX, some people think this is then the only way you can handle and organize photos on a Mac. And this simply isn’t true. iPhoto is just an application you can choose to use, like Windows Photo Gallery or something like it is found in a Windows computer when you first boot it up.

I’m not exactly sure how you are used to organizing your photos on your PC. Most people from PC’s are familiar with the “Windows Explorer” application found on Windows XP and 7 I believe, to view and organize their files on their hard drive. Macs have the same type of application and it’s called “Finder” — looks like a smiley face for an icon. You can change the views of this application to match how you were used to seeing files listed in Windows Explorer — list view, multi-columns view etc.

So if manually storing your images in a folder structure of your own on your hard drive is what you are used to, then maybe you should start out doing the same in the same exact way using Finder so that you aren’t having to learn everything all at once. Then if you find iPhoto or Aperture, or later Photos (for Mac) to be something you want to jump into, then try it out with a small amount of your photo collection first.

TRICK: If you are just wanting to quickly view a photo stored on your hard drive, is you click on the file, then hit the space bar. OSX will generate a quick preview of the image. You can cursor around and other files in your folder will now view in this same window that’s up. Hit space bar again or close the window with the “x” and the window fades away. This trick keeps you from having to load a separate photo viewing/editing application like Preview or Photoshop etc just to get a quick glance at a photo on your HD.

So, feeling “deflated” getting used to a whole new operating system is very normal, but I wouldn’t get it in your mind that you will now have limitations now that you are on a Mac, because I really don’t find that to be the case. There’s either a Mac version of an application you’re used to using on your PC that you could download (Adobe’s Lightroom, Google’s Picasa etc.), or a whole new one in the easy to use Mac App store (application) that can do the same thing.

And sure P, you are more than welcome to ask followup questions. 🙂

Hi P,

Let me try and answer your question(s) inline, a little bit at a time using your quotes.

Photostream – automatically and instantly shows pictures taken with iPhone by putting it on the Photostream and viewable on the Mac and other devices.

Yes, correct. The last 1000 photos you took with any Apple product using that AppleID is added to your Photostream.

Not to confuse you here already, but Photostream may not be as important anymore as we all move to Apple’s new Yosemite, iOS8 and iCloud Drive mechanism where all of our photos are stored in iCloud and accessible to all devices and computers. If you use this setup, having a Photostream of just the last 1000 photos may not important or even useful anymore. Photostream may go away if it hasn’t already for people updating to this new “always synced on all devices” model.

When a photo is in the photo stream and I am looking at it on the Mac, is it automatically saved into the hard drive OR is it just a photo floating in photo stream space?

It won’t automatically be saved to your hard drive, but in iPhoto, you can set it so that they automatically are added to an event — your pictures… not videos. (They aren’t in Photostream). As I mentioned above, this whole new “Photos” syncing where all photos sync may make automatically copying to your hard drive possible though. And videos sync as well as photos with this new setup.

If “Copy photos into iphoto library” box is checked- it means that any picture that has been moved onto the Mac, either by connecting iPhone to the computer OR automatically photo streamed in, it is saved onto my harddrive and automatically sorted and saved into daily “event files” Right?

It means any photo that you IMPORT into iPhoto is saved to your hard drive, BUT only inside of your iPhoto library file that you had open when you imported them. (You can have multiple iPhoto library files if you want) And yes, it’s saved into one or more event files, in the method of your choosing. You do have some choice as to all being in 1 event, or split up into daily etc. Look in “Preferences” and then the general tab to change the split options.

iPhoto brings EVERY photo in from the iPhone even DELETED photos? (as it has been in my case)

I’m not familiar with it bringing in deleted photos. You can however delete a photo from your Camera Roll, and it will still in your Photostream. Maybe that’s what you’ve been importing that you had deleted — from the Photostream. Though, you can also now delete photos from the Photostream as well.

I personally have thought of Photostream as a nice convenience because my last 1000 photos have been everywhere on all my devices, but I don’t use it to import my iPhone photos. I instead import directly from my Camera Roll and then delete them there after I’m sure they have imported correctly. Photostream then fills in when I want to show family photos I’ve already deleted from my iPhone because I’ve imported them into Aperture (and then deleted them from my iPhone).

Time Capsule- is a router and back up recovery unit. Not a functional/working external hard drive?

Correct, sort of. The hard drive inside of this router device is meant to be used only for backing up using the application Time Machine (written into OSX), but you can also use it to store files manually if you want. It’s not really meant for this, like a Network Attached Storage device (NAS) is.

When you have pics in iPhoto and Time Capsule is regularly and automatically backing-up my Mac, the pics in Time Capsule ONLY reflect the Master copy. No editing, labeling, filing or deletions are reflected in the Time Capsule copy. In addition, you cannot open any iPhoto file and view or use any of these photos individually. In fact, the only purpose of the iPhoto pics in the Time Capsule is essentially if you had a catastrophic Mac failure and it would completely restore ALL iPhoto pictures in its original MASTER form back on to your computer. Correct?

Time Capsule using the Application Time Machine is backing up every hour, the entire contents of your computer (unless you have manually told it to exclude items — by default it’s everything). So this means your iPhoto library file inner contents is also being backed up which is where all of your edits, databases, thumbnails is being stored. So no, Time Capsule’s backup contains everything, NOT just your master images. It’s backing up everything so you could restore everything if need be. It’s only limit is storage space — the more you have on your Time Capsule hard drive the better.

So, yes, you can’t access the contents of your Time Machine backup like a normal hard disk to get at something quickly. You have to go into Time Machine, select the file(s) you want to restore, and restore them BACK to your main hard drive before you can use them. Or, like you mentioned, in a catastrophe, you could restore the entire drive and it would copy the entire thing. Time Machine is cool that it also saves versions of a file — not just 1 copy of it. So a version of a school paper a child started a month ago could be restored just as easily as the last version of it saved last night.

Hence, in my mind if all my assumptions are correct, in my situation it would make sense to: Use photo stream solely as a multimedia tool, i.e. be able to take a iPhone pic and view on larger screen on Mac. (Is it really possible to stop iphoto from making a harddrive copy?)

I think in the current state of iCloud and Photostream, you need iPhoto to import the photos from Photostream and save a copy of it in the library files, JUST to be able to view the photo(s) in iPhoto. (I could be wrong — I don’t use photostream in iPhoto enough to remember) And as I said above a couple times, with iCloud DRIVE, the new version of iCloud now being able to sync all photos on all devices, this Photostream thing will become a bit moot I believe. Apple’s putting out “Photos” for Mac that will replace iPhoto and will be able to view all of your photos… so this may be a way you can view and NOT save to your computer… using this new Photos application coming out early next year.

Apple did a big 2 hour keynote presentation, and they showed off “Photos for Mac” a little bit. I encourage you to watch this video if you want to see what it will look like. I set it to queue up right when that part starts in the presentation (so you don’t have to watch the entire thing). They start out talking about iOS 8’s new Photo app features that just came out recently, and then near the end of this 6 minute section, they go through how photos will then sync up to this new “Photos for Mac” application. If this 6-minute section doesn’t come up for you, just fast forward to 1 hour, 13 minutes into the video and that’s where it is. 🙂

http://youtu.be/w87fOAG8fjk?t=1h13m19s

Uncheck box, so photo stream “streams” pics, but does NOT copy/save any pic onto the hard drive and organize via iPhoto library. This seems to be a big space waster if it is automatically making duplicate copies of everything, even though I understand they are trying to protect the original copy.

You uncheck the “copy items to library” when you want to save a copy of a photo on your hard drive outside of the library file, but ACCESS it, organize and edit it inside of iPhoto. This won’t work for Photostream, because it isn’t a “stable” everlasting environment to access the master images because. (Apple wouldn’t allow it. They also don’t allow you to “reference” images on camera card media for the same reason)

The way you do it then is you have to first copy it to your computers hard drive and then import it with the box unchecked so that iPhoto knows the master photo is safe on your hard drive where it can aways access it. Most people don’t use iPhoto with copies inside it AND stored elsewhere on their computer. It’s usually one or the other — stored in just one place. Pros usually “reference” their photos, beginners usual prefer the default setup and let their application “manage” them for them inside the library file.

• Instead of iPhoto, connect my iPhone to my Mac and use Image Capture to load all my pictures manually (not to mention load my iphone videos which iphoto does not see and can not import)
• Organize into folder trees (as I did in Windows: Year, Month, Event) in the “Picture file” under Finder where I told Image Capture to direct all my iphone photos to import to.
o Will I then be able to individually label or batch label photos in this organizational format? I like for my pictures to have individual labels, so they can be identified outside of a group. This does not seem possible in iphoto.

Yup.. the 3 steps above you can do if you have the “advanced goals” and think you can handle storing them on your own in a folder structure of your choosing. Beginners to computers have a harder time with this because it’s a lot of file management and additionally, it’s a lot easier to accidentally move or delete a file — which iPhoto then won’t be able to find the photo for you. You are on your own to not move it and protect it. But the advantages of keeping them outside of iPhoto is now you can load them up into another program and access them there as well. Quite a nice addition.

If you really want a lot of control, to easily label and reference photos and rename them inside your image manager but ALSO have it rename the master image file, you should look into using Aperture instead. (Though, Aperture AND iPhoto are going away for this new “Photos for Mac” that I’ve been talking about. They will continue to work as long as you run Yosemite 10.10 or before.. but Apple isn’t going to develop updates to either iPhoto or Aperture anymore. Photos for Mac will replace it early next year.)

Backup to Time Capsule in this Folder tree system so that I can view and use each and/or all my photos because they live outside of iPhoto. All edits, deletions, filing and labeling will remain with each photo or group of photos bc they are not connected to iPhoto.

Yup, Time Machine using your TC will back up your entire referenced tree system. But remember, you aren’t going to easily access the backed up files without “restoring” them from Time Machine first BACK to your hard drive.

o If I need to edit, can I bring into iphoto and then put it back in my folder outside of iPhoto? Or in doing so, is it now stuck in the iPhoto vortex.

Very complicated question if you don’t understand how iPhoto works, but the gist of your answer is, an edit in iPhoto will stay in iPhoto because your edits are really digital instructions that only iPhoto understands. Now, you CAN get around that by exporting out this new version of your photo and THAT can be saved anywhere you would like on your hard drive. But, now, like using any photo editor, you have 2 copies of your photo — 1 edited and one not. In Photoshop, you could do these edits with “layers” and still maintain only 1 copy. But, most people find using layers as a way of making non-destructive edits to be a lot more difficult than using something simpler like iPhoto or Aperture etc. (I’m sure that’s why non-destructive image managers were created… to avoid making people use layers)

If my proposed alternative to iphoto is accurate, how do you delete pics that have already been copied into the iphoto library? Following suit with system defaults in the new computer and not changing anything until I learn how it all works, the photostream is now ON and the copy to iphoto library is CHECKED. I am wanting to start with a blank slate and would like to clear that iphoto library so I am not wasting any memory housing photos that I will be organizing and using thru my folder tree system outside of iphoto.

You can delete photos by simply selecting one or more and then going up to “Photos” at top menu and then selecting “Move to trash.” Additionally, you can delete lots of photos at a time by highlighting an event and then doing the same.

Downfall to not using iphoto?: The only major downfall I see thus far for not using iphoto is the lack of “protection” by losing out on having a MASTER indestructible copy existing somewhere on my Mac and in my Time Capsule, (however, where they are both individually inaccessible and unusable).

iPhoto or Aperture’s main additional draw is begin able to make edits and have these edits live with one copy of the image — your master image. If you were just to have your photos on your computer, in folders, and you want to make one black and white, you would need to load up an editor, desaturate it, and then save out another copy of it OR overwrite your original. This is huge for most people. Additionally, once you know either application, organizing inside of iPhoto or Aperture is so much easier than trying to do it solely in Finder using thumbnail view (or hitting space bar on it to view a preview of it)

But with the Image Capture and Picture file route, my pictures would still be backed up to the Time Capsule, just the duplications would not be there.

If you managed ALL of your photos in iPhoto (box unchecked), and then Time Machine backed it up to your Time Capsule, you would have 1 copy of your entire library file on your main drive, and then another copy of your entire photo library file on your Time Capsule. If you used Image Capture in stored photos in folders, you would have one copy of them on your hard drive, and then another copy of them on your Time Capsule. So it’s the same after Time Machine ran.

The only way you would have duplicates really is if you used Image Capture to put them in folders on your hard drive, then you imported them into iPhoto with the box checked (so that it ALSO made copies inside of you library file as well) where your photos were being “managed.”

Sorry this is so long. I have little 3 kids and the volume of pictures is large and accumulates quickly. I just want to start with a good, efficient and reliable system in figuring everything out on the Mac. Thanks so much!

Whew! That was long. I felt like I was back in high school taking a test or something! 😉

Yes, I bet having three kids WOULD produce a lot of photos wouldn’t it! 😉 I’m so glad to hear you want to start out with a great system. You will be so much better off later if you’ve wrapped your head around it now instead of later. Smart thinking. :coffee:

Hope some of what I wrote made sense. It really IS very confusing in a way, and this new Photos application for the Mac coming out next year is just making the matter more confusing right now for people. But, I think once that application comes out, and people have upgraded to iCloud Drive.. things will get a lot easier.

If you were wondering, the theory we all have is that our iPhoto and Aperture collections will be able to be imported into this new Photos program next year, and it will work just like iPhoto in many ways. Advanced features Aperture users are used to may come a bit later — possibly. Or, they may come by way of 3rd party plugins. (This is my theory)

Cheers P!

Hi Suzanne.

I suspect you have some things in your 75 GB “Pictures” folder (in your user folder) that is taking up a lot of space. It happens. Maybe you’ve saved more high-res photos (possibly even raw ones) than you thought. Maybe there are some videos as well you shot and forgot you had. Or is it possible there are other folders of stuff in there from other applications? I have some applications on my Mac that by default, saves to my Pictures folder.

One thing I like to do when I am trying to figure out what is taking so much room is to turn on a setting that will make sure I see file sizes for all things in a folder. Make sure you are in a Finder window with your Pictures folder (for example) and set it to the second of the 4 views at the top — the one that has an icon that looks like 4 horizontal stacked lines. This will let you see just the Picture folder in a list. Then go up to “View” and select “Show View Options” (Command-J) and put a check next to “Calculate All Sizes.” You can even select “Use as default” at bottom and all folders will default to this feature. (This can slow down a really old Mac, but a fairly new ones won’t be taxed much at all for the convenience of this information)

Now you can look at all of the folders in your Pictures folder and start to see where the bulk of all of your 75 GB’s is being stored inside there. Do some detective work and maybe it will start to make more sense. But, to answer your statement earlier, yes it seems very strange you would have 45 GB’s in iPhoto screenshots. Well it’s possible, but then you would have even more “self-diagnosed” OCD than I do! 😉

Just based on your workflow you mentioned, it is very possible you are correct to assume that your 28.5 GB iPhoto collection is included in your 75 GB’s of your Pictures folder. But, it would be careless of me to have you assume that’s 100% true. But, that would mean every single time a photo was imported into iPhoto, it was always originally located in your pictures folder, or was also saved there as well. In a couple years time, you could have imported things into iPhoto that you forgot you imported that didn’t make it to your Pictures folder. Or maybe some things in your pictures folder got accidentally moved or deleted out of there and by deleting the entire iPhoto library, you may lose photos you didn’t know you didn’t have in your Pictures folder.

What I would do, if you are really getting tight on space, is to pick up an external hard drive, and copy all 100 GB’s of photos to it as a backup of all of them from today. Then possibly delete your iPhoto library from your main computer (if you are SURE your backup copied and they are all there — I would even load them directly from your external drive just to be sure) to free up space if you are quite sure all of your iPhoto library is made up of duplicates of your pictures folder. This way you always have that copy of your iPhoto on that external drive if you ever find something you are missing in your pictures folder.

I’m a bit confused about your screenshot importing issue though. I’ve never had a problem importing my iPhone screenshots into Aperture (brother app to iPhoto). So, I just loaded up iPhoto (Current version today — 9.5.1) and imported a screenshot from my Camera Roll I just made on my iPhone and it worked just fine. I don’t know if you have/had an older version of iPhoto that maybe didn’t recognize the .PNG file screenshots or what. Not really sure about that one. But, just listing this information for you here in case you ever want to revisit importing iPhone screenshots again with iPhoto.

Though, using Preview is probably just as good for you to import from your iPhone. I actually often use the free “Image Capture” program that comes on all Mac’s (in application folder). It seems to be the very same “engine” and UI that’s in Preview. I use Image Capture to bring in a lot of photos from my iPhone and then use the green checkmark to easily delete the ones I’ve already imported then from my iPhone. Aperture/iPhoto beings up that scary message “Do you want to delete imported photos from iPhone?” after you import into those apps, and I’m always afraid to do that for fear that the import went bad and then they are no longer on my iPhone.

See if any of this information helps you Suzanne and we’ll go from there. :coffee:

Hi Chris, off the top of my head, since I can’t see all the steps you are doing on your end, something that comes to mind is possibly you are trying to import images as “referenced” from “temporary” sources. Is that possible?

For example, if you connect an iPhone to iPhoto, and uncheck the box so that you are “referencing” future imported files, and then try and import photos from your iPhone, it’s going to copy your images from your phone and will store them inside of your iPhoto library. It ignores your wishes to reference them because it knows that you aren’t going to have your iPhone attached to your computer all the time — or often — and it also knows that you will be deleting those images from your phone soon if not fairly soon. So, believing your iPhone isn’t a suitable place to archive them for the long haul, it takes it upon itself to store a copy inside the library for safety.

So, those that want to reference their digital camera photos need to use something like OSX’s free “Image Capture” to import their photos from their camera or other devices and save them into nice folders on the hard drive. Get your photos where you want them to live forever, and THEN import them as referenced into iPhoto.

Could this be your situation Chris?

Snefro, glad to hear the word on the internet is I give out “fast replies.” I worry I take too long most of the time because I write too much. Maybe I should start charging some money based on quality and speed. :beer:

So iPhoto won’t let you import photos and “reference” them, the method where it doesn’t make a copy of the entire master image file and place it inside of your library file, IF you are importing them straight off of a digital camera or smart phone. Even if you have that box unchecked, it will still copy the full-sized image into your library file regardless because it’s clever and it knows your cameras and smartphones are temporary storage places. But, IF you have your masters already on a permanent storage like an internal or external hard or solid state drive, then it will trust it enough to let you reference them.

(If you want to reference images from your iPhone or camera, you can use the free “Image Capture” utility that comes with OSX to copy them to your hard drive first before importing into iPhoto or Aperture)

I know you disagree with the above, but what I am wondering is if you are confusing the “preview” images with the full-sized “master” (or sometimes called “originals”) images.

Whenever you import photos into iPhoto (or Aperture), whether they are being managed or referenced (either way that setting is checked), both applications will take your full sized image and create a small compressed “preview” image and it stores this inside of your library file.

It does this mainly for speed. You can’t expect to drag through a wall of thousands of thumbnail images made with 2-100 MB sized master image files. And both applications will sometimes use this preview image even to view them very large on your screen. BUT, when you go to edit them, zoom in on them and use the brushes to remove blemishes etc, things like this require the full-sized master image file. Then you will see the “!” point in iPhoto if it can’t find your master images that are referenced on a drive somewhere.

Another benefit to “referencing” is now you can detach your external drive with all of your masters, but still do lots of organizing of all of your photos — just using the preview images in your library file. It keeps the library file lean, so you can be mobile and still get some work down even when you leave the master images at home.

So, if you are sure your “referenced” certain images, and moving the master images on your computer still allow you to “read them,” try going in with iPhoto and see if you can go into “Quick Fixes” and “Retouch” and try and repair some blemishes after you have moved the master image to say — another folder, another drive, or even the trash.

I just wrote a lot more this week about the workflow of managed vs referenced and how to do it in this Q&A post here:

Q&A: Should I Store My Photo Collection in iPhoto or Elsewhere on My Computer? Or Should I Use Lightroom?

Hi Cwiat. There is a way you can both pull from the same collection of photos, but there isn’t a way that I know of that you can sync them. iPhoto (Apple) and Lightroom (Adobe) don’t share the same database system. So, if you were to import a new batch of photos into iPhoto, they wouldn’t already be in Lightroom — and vice versa. You would have to manually import the photos in iPhoto as well. So, the only advantage you will have is that you can put all of your master images on one drive and share them without having a duplicate set.

However, the caveat is that with iPhoto, BEFORE you import ANY of the photos you want to share, you have to make sure iPhoto is setup to “reference” all of the images on your drive that Lightroom will be referencing. iPhoto by default is setup to “manage” all photos — and this means making a copy of every image you add to it and storing it inside the library file with your databases. So if you want to share a set of photos, make sure you uncheck the advanced setting in preferences for “copy images to the iPhoto library.” This setting only works if it’s set before the import. It’s not retroactive to previously imported photos. Check out this video I made that explains how this setting works:

https://www.scanyourentirelife.com/iphoto-imported-photos-iphoto-library-managed-referenced/

Your best solution, if you really want everything to sync — your work and hers — is to share one library (database) file. That way if you crop a photo and add a caption to it, then when your wife loads up iPhoto, the same image has the same crop and the same caption added as well. And for this to work, you either both need to use iPhoto, which I know is now what you would prefer, or for you to use Aperture (Apple).

Aperture is Apple’s professional photo application, and the cool thing is that the latest (recent) versions can load up an iPhoto library, and iPhoto can load an Aperture library. Because they both use the same library file, Apple now just simply calls the libraries “photo libraries” instead of “iPhoto library” files and “aperture library” files.

Hi Rachel. Thank you! Glad you liked the video. 😉 So lemme see if I can help you with this one.

So, if you were to now ‘uncheck’ this box that is talked about in this video, the only thing that would happen would be anytime you imported a photo from now on, a copy of the photo would no longer be made and stored inside of your iPhoto library file (unless you were importing photos off a camera or camera card, then it would still be stored inside). Instead, iPhoto would reference your images — load your images from wherever on your computer they were saved the second you imported them.

Which means, checking or unchecking the box has little to do with duplicates, unless you were to start importing more photos that happened to be duplicates with ones you already have inside of your library.
But, regardless of how this box is checked, getting rid of duplicates isn’t something iPhoto is equipped to handle once photos are already imported. (You could open your library library file up in Apple’s Aperture software if you have a copy of it. From there you could sort photos using filename columns and look for duplicates that way.)

The easier solutions require third party software. Most aren’t that expensive. Some are free. And like all things, in this situation, you probably still get (quality) for what you pay for. Additionally, I wouldn’t use any of these without having a safe backup of your library file (preferably on another hard drive). Anything that’s helping you delete and automatically delete things leaves room for the possibility that it could delete things you aren’t aware of. So, it’s better safe than sorry so make a backup.

The one I hear about the most is iPhoto library Manager. So, I would probably feel safest using this one. At least try it first. The software feature reads:

“It can be easy to have multiple copies of the same photo creep into your iPhoto libraries. iPhoto Library Manager lets you search for duplicates in one or more libraries, view them side by side, and take actions on them, such as moving duplicates to the trash, tagging them with keywords, and more.”

And here are some other applications that could be amazing as well, I am just less/not familiar with them:

Duplicate Cleaner
Duplicate Annihilator
PhotoSweeper

Hi Diana.

I think it’s fair to say, many of us are looking to head towards a direction for our photo collections that you are asking about. We want to be mobile and often platform agnostic. Problem is, there are lots of companies fighting to get us aboard their ecosystem and they make it tough sometimes (often) to break free of it so that it will work well with others.

I don’t own a WD My Cloud drive (yet). I love WD drives — they are my favorite. So, I’ve read about these drives quite a bit. But, I don’t have firsthand knowledge of using the software. But, it sounds like if their software works as promised, you should be able to do all of this.

So in order for the photos to be stored on your My Cloud, AND also in iPhoto, your photos would have to be stored outside of the iPhoto library file (referenced), which is what I talk about in the last part of the video in this article. So, if you have already imported all of your photos inside of iPhoto as “managed” (stored inside the library file), then this isn’t going to work. Once they are imported as managed, you can’t make them referenced using (just) iPhoto.

There is a way, and it’s fairly easy, and that is you could use Apple’s more advanced photo manager Aperture ($80) to load your iPhoto library and then “reference” the images by selecting all of the photos and telling Aperture to move them out of the library file and put them on your My Drive. Now, since I’ve never used My Cloud, I’m not sure if iPhoto will read referenced images from My Cloud. But, theoretically it sounds like it could/should work.

If you don’t mind having two copies of each photo, the other option is to export out all of your photos (File > Export) to the My Cloud. Make sure you do it with “Titles and Descriptions” if you have any of those typed in already in iPhoto, otherwise your exports will default to a filename that the photos had before you imported them into iPhoto.

Read this for more info: https://www.scanyourentirelife.com/how-get-photos-out-export-iphoto-titles-descriptions/

But, of course these second versions are no longer controlled by iPhoto – they are a second set. So it gets really messy this way if you want both sets to stay in sync.

If you’ve rearranged the display order of photos in iPhoto, maintaining that order once they are outside of iPhoto is tough. Without the managing capabilities of iPhoto, maintaining an order is best done by 1) having the filenames sort by using numbers at the front or sometimes end of a filename (e.g. 1-photo.jpg, 2-photo.jpg or camping-dad-mom-1.jpg, camping-dad-mom-2.jpg.) or 2) using software that can sort by using the metadata inside of photos, namely the “date taken” when the photo was taken. But, system level file viewing applications like Windows Explorer and Finder (on a Mac) doesn’t read this metadata information to sort it in a column, so I doubt My Cloud does either with files sitting there on the drive. So, you are better off making sure all of your images have a number at the beginning or end so that they sort in the order you wish. You can use batch renaming programs like “Better Rename 9,” or you can use the “Prefix for Sequential” setting in iPhoto when you export to generate a number after each photo.

Once in My Cloud, it looks as if their iOS software is all that you will be able to use to view the photos. So, hopefully their app works well and is easy and fun to use. You’ll have to let me know how it works out. I would be interested in knowing so I could/should try it myself some day if I get a My Cloud myself.

Sarah you are SO welcome! Always glad when I can help out someone’s marriage. :beer:

Hi Suzanna! Thank you so much for the wonderful compliment — I appreciate that. 😉

You know, there are a lot of variables involved with bringing photos into iPhoto, so I cam merely speculate as to what could have happened. If you already had photos in Finder, and you drug them into iPhoto, or simply imported them from there, then you would have duplicate images — one copy in finder and one in iPhoto. This happens because with that box checked, you are telling iPhoto that no matter what, you want to store a copy inside of iPhoto and that will become your master image.

Now, if you are importing all of your photos from in iPhone or another camera card, then once you delete the images from the cameras, then there should only be one copy of the images — in iPhoto.

So if all of your photos came from cameras, then that is a bit strange that you would have multiple copies, and I’m not sure I have an easy answer for you without doing some investigation on your computer.

I’m not familiar with a an application called ‘duplicate clearer.’ Does this application work with files inside a managed iPhoto library? Most of the ones I’ve seen don’t — they just work with files in the Finder level.

Duplicate files get really messy really fast. So, be careful with importing a lot of photos which you know to be possibly duplicates. If there aren’t that many, maybe even consider searching for each one inside of iPhoto and only manually importing the ones you are sure aren’t already in there. I know it’s a lot more work, but it could save you frustration later if the duplicate finding software doesn’t work adequately, or you accidentally delete the wrong duplicate — say the one with edits or captions typed into it.

Hey David! Thank you… glad you liked the video. 🙂

I was almost positive you couldn’t pull those photos into iPhoto that are referenced, but I decided to try it again and look for new options that might have shown up in the latest version of iPhoto. Sad to say, it still appears that iPhoto is limited and won’t allow you to change “referenced” images in to “managed” ones.

The good news is that Apple WILL let you do it. Now that iPhoto libraries are now called “photo libraries,” you are now allowed to open up your iPhoto library in Aperture (The latest versions). Once in Aperture, select your referenced files you want to now “manage” in your collection, and then click FILE>CONSOLIDATE ORIGINAL. You will be given an option of moving or copying. Copying will leave the image on your computer where it is but also copy a duplicate into your library and manage it. Moving will move the image into your library and not leave a copy on your hard drive.

So this is excellent news for you, but it could cost you $79 from the Mac App store if you don’t already have it. Otherwise, yes you will have to re-import the image in iPhoto as a managed file and then you will have 2 copies. Worse, if you did any edits to your referenced copy, those changes won’t be reflected to the new managed copy. It could get really messy.

Aperture is amazing, so if you had to buy it, don’t feel like you are getting a bad deal. Aperture is where I keep all of my photos and use it almost daily. I can’t wait to see what Apple does with the next versions… 4 or X… whatever they decide to call it. Cheers! :beer:

Mandy, unfortunately with iPhoto, I believe the answer is yes — you would have to export all of the photos out and then re-import them with the box checked so that they would then be managed in iPhoto. The only thing is, if you did any edits to the photo like cropping or effects etc, you will either have to remove them and then export them out as the originals, or you will have to export them out with the changes you made to them and then reimport them. And if you do this, you will no longer be able to remove those effects because they are now “baked” into the original file you just re-imported. Plus, now you will have to delete the old version that is being referenced, or deal with 2 separate copies. It gets very messy quickly.

My best advice would be to purchase Aperture ($79) as soon as you can afford to if you don’t already have it. In the versions that came out recently, you can now load up a photo library that was originally created in iPhoto. Once in Aperture, you can actually select all photos and videos that are being referenced and tell it to now make them “managed.” It’s pretty simple and will save you all the headaches with the above option. Also, you won’t lose the ability to revert back to your original master image without effects being “baked” in.

Once you’ve done the changes in Aperture, you can either continue using Aperture or you can go back to iPhoto and use it again. You can use whichever one you want, whenever you want. It’s very slick. :thumbs:

Hi Paula. You’ve come to the right place. You’re on the right website for this information, just a different post. I actually wrote a post that gives you just what you want — a line by line explanation of this. Check out the post right here:

Hope this helps! 🙂

Hi Elvin. That’s a great question. I actually wrote about that not too long ago. Check out this article called All “My Pictures in iPhoto Disappeared! How to Safely Get Them Back” and in this section called “What Are the iPhoto Library Package Contents?” I show you where iPhoto stores them by default.

Hey Trevor! You get the prize today for asking the shortest question that requires the longest answer! 🙂

Yeah, It’s hard to give you a simple answer because I almost exclusively use Aperture instead of iPhoto because of all of the extended features that it can do. But, when I do use iPhoto, I almost always use it with the box checked. And that’s because I’m just using it for “extra” and less important iPhoto libraries. (Like ones where I am testing something for this website)

But, that being said, I think MOST people that use iPhoto exclusively SHOULD keep the box checked and let iPhoto manage their photos. Why? Because it’s safer. It’s WAY more difficult to delete, lose or mess up a photo that’s stored inside the library file that iPhoto is managing. But, if you know how this feature works, and you are confident, there are lots of advantages to importing photos without the box checked — as referenced images.

I reference most of my scanned photos in Aperture (basically the same process, just a little different). The best reason is because if I ever want to open my collection up in another program like Lightroom, I can. Lightroom will read all of my “referenced” photo folders just like Aperture is. I couldn’t tell Lightroom to go rummaging through the Aperture/iPhoto library file — it just doesn’t work that way.

Also, if I am editing video, and I want to grab a photo from my collection to do a nice “push in” move on it in the video, I don’t have to go into Aperture and then “Export” it out just to get access to it. I can just tell it where on my hard drive (in what particular folder it’s stored) and the software can access it as well.

So, if the question is do you “manage” or “reference” your images, the answer is I usually “reference” my images because I am confident I know what I am doing, and I take precautions to protect and back them up. But again, I would still suggest most people store them inside of iPhoto or Aperture for that added protection.

Thanks for the question Trevor. 🙂