Christoph Stork’s photo libraries are overflowing. He owns a MacBook Pro with a 750GB drive, but has an iPhoto library that weighs in at 190GB and a Photos library that takes up 250GB. His drive is almost full and he’s not sure how to proceed.
If you have a large photo library on your Mac, transferring the photos to an external drive can save you valuable storage space. We advise you to get a reasonably fast external storage device. Leo Kostizen wants to migrate from Aperture to Photos and use iCloud Photo Library. And they’re moved back to the main library. You can also immediately delete items if you’re trying to. In a normal setup you can delete the iPhoto library, although since you don't have doubles of your master images, it may not save that much space. You can use Migration Assistant now, but you run the risk of permissions issues. See pondini.org for an explanation. You might be better off seeing if you can delete the iPhotos library. Once you are certain you are happy with Photos, & you are certain the Library has migrated successfully, you can delete the old iPhoto app & iPhoto Library if you wish. The Library, as you mentioned, is 'virtual' as both are hard linked to the same files. Deleting either Library will not delete the pictures, only deleting both Libraries will do.
How can I know whether the pictures in the iPhoto library are also in the Photos library? How can I move a portion of the older images away while keeping the last few years on the laptop?
Photos doesn’t copy the iPhoto images, but it uses a special kind of link that lets the same file exist in two places, avoiding increasing your storage requirements. Switch to Google Photos.
If you followed the steps to import your iPhoto library into Photos whenever you started using Photos, all of the library’s full-resolution images weren’t duplicated. Instead, Apple chose to use “hard linking,” which Jason Snell explained back in April 2015. Instead of creating a copy of the iPhoto media, hard links just allow the same file to be linked in two or more places. Unlike an alias, which has a special icon and just points to another file, the hard link reference looks and acts exactly like it is a file.
This means that, in this case, the 190GB and 250GB iPhoto and Photos library likely contain a whole lot of overlap. Thumbnails, modified images, and other internal data structures aren’t duplicated from iPhoto, and take up separate space in each library. New images imported into Photos would explain its larger size.
My suggestion for proceeding in this and similar cases is to get an external 1TB (or larger) USB 3.0 drive, which are relatively cheap. Copy the iPhoto library there before deleting it. (Deleting a file that’s hard linked in other places only deletes a reference; the original file remains in place for its other uses, so don’t worry about that.)
For as long as older versions of iPhoto continue to work, you can open any library on a mounted volume by holding down Option at launch, and then navigating to the library and selecting it. The same is true for Photos, although Photos continues to be updated, and should work across many, many future macOS releases.
If you want to archive part of your Photos library, get PowerPhotos ($30), a third-party app that has a lot of features missing in Photos. It will let you create a new library and copy images over, rather than using an awkward export method.
To find just older images, I suggest creating a Smart Album with the criteria for the date range you want, and then selecting all the images in the Smart Album and creating a regular album from it. You can then use PowerPhotos to create a new Photos library, copy that regular album and all its contents to the new library, and delete the album and associated media from your main Photos library.
PowerPhotos includes a license for iPhoto Library Manager, which has similar features. Both apps can identify duplicates within a library to reduce a library’s size if you have many images that were imported multiple times or duplicated internally.
I highly recommend making more than one backup of the photos and libraries you migrate off your main drive. It can be cheap to store data you don’t plan to modify at Amazon S3, or you can use Google Drive, iCloud Drive, or other options.
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To combine Photos libraries, open the source library and export the photos and videos that you want to keep. Then open the destination library (the one that you want to use as your main library) and import the photos and videos.
Choose a photo library
Here's how to open one of the multiple photo libraries that you might have on your Mac or on a connected external drive:
- Press and hold the Option key as you open the Photos app.
- Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.
Photos uses this library until you open a different one using the same steps.
Export photos and videos from the source library
Can I Delete Iphoto Migrated Photo Library
Open the source library, then decide whether you want to export your files as unmodified originals or edited versions:
Edited versions
Can I Delete Migrated Photo Library Mac Pro
Edited versions retain their edits when you import them. The advantage is that you don't have to recreate any edits; however, these files become the destination library's originals. This means that you can't revert to their earliest pre-import version.
Unmodified originals
Unmodified originals don't show any edits that you made when they were in the source library. This gives you flexibility for later editing, but recreating your edits might take substantial work.
How to export edited versions
- In the Photos app, select the photos and videos that you want to export. To select multiple items, press and hold the Command key while you click. To select a group of items in order, click the first one, then press and hold the Shift key while you click the last one. This selects all of the items between the two that you clicked. To select all of the items in your library, go to the Library tab > All Photos, select an item, then click Command-A.
- Choose File > Export > Export [number].
- An export dialog appears.
- In the Photos section, set Photo Kind to JPEG, TIFF, or PNG. JPEG recompresses your photos, which may result in smaller file sizes. TIFF and PNG files are higher fidelity and may result in larger file sizes.
- In the Videos section, choose a Movie Quality setting. This section appears only if your selected items include videos.
- In the Info section, select the checkboxes if you want to preserve metadata and location data in the exported files.
- In the File Naming section, set File Name to Use File Name and set Subfolder Format to either Moment Name or None. Moment Name creates a subfolder for each Moment that's represented in your selected items. This is useful if you'd like to create an Album in the destination library for each Moment. The None option exports all of the files directly into the destination folder.
- Click Export. A Finder dialog appears.
- Navigate to the location where you want to save the files, such as the Desktop or an external drive. Click New Folder if you create a new folder for your exported items.
- Click Export.
How to export unmodified originals
- In the Photos app, then select the photos and videos that you want to export. To select multiple items, press and hold the Command key while you click. To select a group of items in order, click the first one, then press and hold the Shift key while you click the last one. This selects all of the items between the two that you clicked. To select all of the items in your library, go to the Library tab > All Photos, select an item, then click Command-A.
- Choose File > Export > Export Unmodified Original.
- An export dialog appears.
- If your photos include IPTC metadata (such as titles or keywords) that you want to keep, select the Export IPTC as XMP checkbox.
- Leave the File Name setting on Use File Name.
- Next to Subfolder Format, choose Moment Name or None. Moment Name creates a subfolder for each Moment that's represented in your selected items. This is useful if you'd like to create an Album in the destination library for each Moment. The None option exports all of the files directly into the destination folder.
- Click Export. A Finder dialog appears.
- Navigate to the location where you want to save the files, such as the Desktop or an external drive. Click New Folder if you create a new folder for your exported items.
- Click Export Originals.
How to export your edited photos
You can create a Smart Album to quickly identify your edited photos and export them.
To create a Smart Album for edited images:
- Choose File > New Smart Album.
- Choose Photo is [edited] from the Smart Album Criteria. The new Smart Album will appear at the top of the Albums list.
- Open the album and press the Command key-A to select all, then choose File > Export.
How to import photos and videos into the destination library
- In the Photos app, open the destination library and choose File > Import.
- In the Import window, navigate to the Finder folder that contains the photos and videos that you want to import.
- Select the photos and videos to import, then choose Review for Import.
- Click Import All New Photos.
The photos in the folder are sorted based on their creation dates and locations. The videos are sorted based on the date you exported them from the source library.
Iphoto Migrated Library
If you created subfolders when you exported the items and you want to create an Album for each subfolder, follow these steps:
- In the Import window, select the folders you want to import as albums.
- Select the checkbox labeled 'Keep Folder Organization' in the upper right hand corner. The top level folder will be imported as a folder in Photos, and subfolders will be imported as albums.
Save space by deleting the source library
If you're sure that you've exported all of the photos and videos that you want to keep from the source library, you can delete it to save disk space on your Mac.
First, open the Finder and find the source library that you want to delete. By default, photo libraries are stored in your Pictures folder. If you can't find the library, follow the steps to choose a library; the path to the selected library's location appears in the Choose Library window.
Next, move the source library to the Trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to permanently delete the files.