Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.
Combine 2 itunes libraries. Nov 09, 2018 Set a photo library as System Photo Library. Open Photos on your Mac. Click Photos then click on Preferences. Click on the iCloud tab. Choose Download originals to this Mac. Apr 23, 2015 How to import, export and share photos with Photos for Mac. Importing and exporting photos is nearly the same with the new Photos app as it was with iPhoto but there is one change to note when.
Before you start, be sure to back up your library.
- Save valuable space by moving your Mac Photos library to an external hard drive. Plus find out how to back up your entire iCloud Photos Library!
- I noticed that the new Photos.app reduces image size on export. If I drag & drop a photo from the Photos library, the size is reduced by at least 50%. How do I get rid of this behavior and rec.
Prepare your drive
You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).1 Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.
To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.
Move your Photos library to an external storage device
- Quit Photos.
- In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
- In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
- Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.2
- After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
- If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
Delete original library to save space
After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.
In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disk space.
Open another Photos library
If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:
- Quit Photos.
- Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
- Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.
Photos uses this library until you open a different one.
Learn more
If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.
Backup Photo Library Mac
1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.
Mac Photo Library Management
2. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.
OneDrive is a good place to backup photos, videos and important documents online. It allows you to sync and backup your photos from iPhoto library to OneDrive. If you want to sync iPhoto library with OneDrive, then you need to download and install 'OneDrive application' on your Mac. When you install the OneDrive app for Mac, it will create a folder (OneDrive folder) on your Mac to backup photos, videos and files. This OneDrive folder is kept in sync with OneDrive. If you add, change or delete anything like photo, video or file in this OneDrive folder, then the file is added, changed or deleted on the OneDrive website and vice versa.
Here are the steps to Sync iPhoto Library with OneDrive:
- Go to https://onedrive.live.com & sign in to your account. If you don't have an account, then create one.
- Download 'OneDrive Application' on your Mac from the Apple App store & launch it.
- Locate the file for the existing iPhoto library in your Picture folder.
- Go to iPhoto Library and choose 'Quit iPhoto' to make sure that iPhoto is not running.
- Copy your 'iPhoto Library' file into your OneDrive folder.
- Launch iPhoto. To launch iPhoto Library, simply double-click the iPhoto Library icon which you copied in OneDrive folder. It will automatically sync to your OneDrive folder.
- Open the file in iPhoto by holding down the Option key.
- Select the iPhoto Library option that's not the default. Now, iPhoto Library stored inside your OneDrive folder by default.
- Now, when you add new photos to iPhoto Library, make any changes to existing photos or organize them, then it will automatically backed up to OneDrive.
- You have another option to sync iPhoto Library i.e 'Drag-and-drop'. Here you can simply drag your iPhoto Library from the Picture folder directly from your Mac to OneDrive folder.
Mac Cosmetics Photos
Quick Tip to ensure your videos never go missing
Videos are precious memories and all of us never want to ever lose them to hard disk crashes or missing drives. PicBackMan is the easiest and simplest way to keep your videos safely backed up in one or more online accounts. Simply download PicBackMan (it's free!), register your account, connect to your online store and tell PicBackMan where your videos are - PicBackMan does the rest, automatically. It bulk uploads all videos and keeps looking for new ones and uploads those too. You don't have to ever touch it.
Apple Photos
You can install PicBackMan's SkyDrive uploader for Mac from the website and start backing up photos and videos.