Reduce Iphoto Library Size

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How to open iphoto library

Accessing iphoto library on pc

I ran into a problem where one of my 256GB MacBook pro ran out disk space. It turned out the problem was caused by a run away Mac OS/X photo library. I had two photo libraries on the Mac totaling about 200GB (sizes shown in Finder, may not be actual sizes)!

How To Open Iphoto Library

First problem I found was the conversion of iPhoto library to Photos library left behind a 73GB file in /Macintosh HD/user/me/Pictures/. The solution was simple – delete the old photo library. I did not recover a full 73GB after I deleted the file, I got back 10-20GB according to Mac system storage page.

The second problem was new photo library /Macintosh HD/user/me/Pictures/Photos Library.photolibrary had a size of over 120GB. It was way too big for the 30k+ photos I had on the Mac. I did a bunch of clean up hoping that they would shrink the photo library. But to my dismay, the photo library only reduced by about 10%. The steps I took to do the cleanups are:

Reduce iPhone Photo Size via Email. When you are going to share photos via Mail on Photos app, iPhone or iPad will prompt you that you can choose a size for the selected photos or to keep the actual size. Which is an optional way to compress iPhone photos by scaling images. To do this, you can follow the instructions as below: 1. Learn how to resize images in iPhoto. Adjusting the JPEG's quality or sze will adjust the file size or image size, respectively. I've stopped using iPhoto and want to extract my Originals and trash the library itself. After I pulled out my originals, I noticed that they're nowhere near the 8GB iPhoto Library size Finder is reporting. So I checked the package contents, and selecting everything including hidden files, the total size is only 1GB.

Read Apple Iphoto Library Files

  1. Export photos that I did not need on the Mac to an external drive. It took only seconds to export thousands of photos. The steps are:
    • Connect a USB hard disk to a Mac
    • Open Photos
    • Select File | Export | Export Unmodified Original for 10 Photos…
    • Select a location in the USB hard disk
  2. Delete photos that I had exported
  3. Delete photos in Recently Deleted folder in Photos
  4. Run repair on photo library to make sure photo library is problem free. This takes a couple of minutes on a fast MacBook. The steps are:
    • Hold down <Command> + <Option> when opening Photos
    • Select Repair

I spent hours searching the Internet and Apple forum hoping someone had encountered the same problem before me and found a solution. No luck! I also posted a question on Apple forum but did not get any response. May be I was the only one that had come across this problem.

How To Copy Iphoto Library

I noticed on other Macs that photo libraries grew and shrink when I added or deleted photos, but not the photo library on this MacBook Pro. Older version of Apple photo apps iPhoto or Aperture had functions to compact a photo library, however I cannot find the same feature in the new Photos app.

I was pissed! I decided to find a solution myself. Here is what I did:

Import Iphoto Library To Photos

  1. Export all photos in photo library to a USB hard disk (same as above)
  2. Delete photo library /Macintosh HD/user/me/Pictures/Photos Library.photolibrary on my Mac (I did this in Finder)
  3. Create a new photo library. The steps are:
    • Hold down <Option> when opening Photos
    • Select Create New…
  4. Import photos I just exported. The steps are:
    • Open Photos
    • Select File | Import…

After all the agony, my photo library is less than 17GB.

Hope this helps!

Poon
11/25/2016