Manage Library Add enterprise keywords. Add enterprise keywords to thumbnail and all pictures view. In the picture library, return to classic SharePoint. Select the pictures in thumbnail view by clicking the check box (it's easy to miss, but selected pictures have a border.) Go up top to the Library tab Quick Edit. Sometimes, an iPhoto library will become corrupted, with missing photos, mysterious iPhoto hangs, or outright crashes. With iPhoto Library Manager, you can rebuild a new library based on your current library, starting with a fresh database free of corruption. You can even scavenge photos from the library that iPhoto may have lost track of. Recently I was trying to access some photo’s from my Mum’s iPhoto library on her time machine backup, but my computer doesn’t have iPhoto, it has Photos App. When I tried to open the iPhoto library with the newer Photos App, it wanted to upgrade the entire iPhoto library. Here’s how to access an individual photo from an old iPhoto library.
With the upgrade to Photos, many Mac users have been left with a duplicate iPhoto library on their Macs. Here’s how to delete iPhoto library and clear out some clutter.
iPhoto used to be the standard photo editor and photo management system on Macs, at least for the average computer user. Like it or not, however, that all changed when Apple first introduced the software, nearly a year ago. If your Mac came from Apple with Photos already installed, you don’t need to worry about old iPhoto libraries.
A Mac that was upgraded to a new version of OS X that added the Photos app, however, can end up with what look like duplicates of their photo libraries. The first time you start up Photos after upgrading, your Mac will copy over your photo library into the new software (if you explicitly set up more than one old iPhoto library, you’ll have to copy them over yourself). It doesn’t go back and delete the old one, though.
Here’s where things get a little bit confusing: you don’t actually have two copies of your photos. Thanks to the way OS X (the software that powers your Mac, like Windows powers a PC) works, your pictures aren’t actually stored in those libraries. Instead, they’re stored somewhere else on your hard drive, and each library has what Apple calls a “hard link” to the pictures. As a result, each library can access the photos, but store separate information about them. You can delete either library safely; only if you were to delete both libraries would you lose access to your pictures.
While having a second copy of your photo library doesn’t take up that much extra space on your computer, it can still be confusing – first of all, each library reports that it’s a certain size, which can make it difficult to figure out how much room is left on your Mac. Additionally, if you need to back things up, it can be hard to figure out where your files are.
Still with us? Let’s recap:
- if you upgrade your Mac from iPhoto to Photos, you’ll get a second photo library
- if you had multiple iPhoto libraries (you would know if you did), you’ll need to copy them into Photos manually
- the libraries each link to a single copy of your photos, rather than storing each photo twice
- it can appear that your libraries are taking up more space than they are, thanks to the way hard links work
- you can safely delete either photo library – only if you delete both of them will you lose access to your photos
How to delete iPhoto library on your Mac
Now that you understand why you might want to delete an old iPhoto library, and why you don’t necessarily have to, let’s talk about how to actually do it.
Before you do anything like this on your Mac – that is, delete something potentially important – you should back up your software with something like Time Machine.
Read: How to Backup Your Mac with Time Machine
That way, if you accidentally delete something important, or something else goes wrong, you can always roll things back to how they were when you started. This is really easy, and there’s nothing to be concerned about; it’s just good practice to back things up (and keep them backed up) before you muck about in your computer.
First, you’ll need to open a Finder window: you can do this by clicking on the Finder icon (it looks like a square face) on the dock, or by clicking on your Mac’s desktop background and hitting ⌘+N (Command + N) on your keyboard.
Next, look at the left-hand column in the new window. You’ll see a list of locations around your Mac; find the one that says Pictures and click on it. You’ll be taken to that directory, which contains libraries for Apple’s image-related apps (Photos, iPhoto, Photo Booth, etc).
In the list of files on the right, scroll down and look for your iPhoto library – it’ll be a little iPhoto icon, and the name will read, unsurprisingly, iPhoto Library. Don’t worry about accidentally deleting your Photo Booth or Photos libraries; you’ll be able to see which one is which.
To actually delete the library, you can do one of three things:
- Click on the iPhoto Library listing, and without letting go of your mouse or trackpad button, drag it until it’s over top the Trash icon on your dock. Once you’re on top of the Trash, let go.
- You can select (click on) the iPhoto Library, then right-click on your mouse or Trackpad (Apple will call this Secondary Click in your Mouse or Trackpad settings). A new menu will pop up; find the entry that says Move to Trash and click on it.
- Finally, you can also delete your iPhoto Library by clicking on it and hitting ⌘+Delete (Command + Delete) on your keyboard.
Read: How to uninstall apps on Mac OS X
Now that you’ve gotten rid of your iPhoto library, it makes sense to completely uninstall iPhoto – that way you won’t accidentally create a new iPhoto Library and have to repeat all these steps. It’s as simple as opening up your Applications folder, and deleting iPhoto (using one of the three steps we just discussed). For a more in-depth look at how to uninstall apps on your Mac, be sure to check out our guide above!
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- Mac OS X v10.6.8 through 10.13.6
(10.14 Mojave or later not supported) - iPhoto v8.1.2 and later
- Mac computer with an Intel
Core 2 Duo processor or better
Registration FAQ
Documentation
iPhoto Library Manager is only provided for older Macs that are still running iPhoto instead of Apple's newer Photos app. If you need to work with Photos libraries, or migrate your iPhoto libraries to Photos, use PowerPhotos instead.
iPhoto Library Manager allows you to organize your photos among multiple iPhoto libraries, rather than having to store all of your photos in one giant library. You can browse the photos in all your libraries directly from iPhoto Library Manager, without having to open each library in iPhoto just to see its photos, and search across all your libraries to help track down a particular photo.
iPLM also gives you the ability to copy your photos from one library to another, while keeping track of photo metadata that is normally lost when exporting from one library and importing into another. Titles, dates, descriptions, keywords, ratings, faces, and place information are all transferred along with the photos, ensuring that you keep all that information you spent hours entering into iPhoto. Event and albums are also reconstructed when copied, and both the edited and original copies of each photo are copied as well. You can split up a large library into multiple smaller libraries, merge entire libraries together into a big one, or rebuild a corrupt library that is causing iPhoto to hang or crash.
Since it can be easy to lose track of what photos are stored in which library, iPhoto Library Manager can analyze your libraries for duplicate photos, showing them to you side by side and letting you get rid of extra copies of photos that you no longer need. This duplicate analysis is also used when merging libraries and copying photos, to help prevent importing multiple copies of a photo into a library in the first place.
Features and screenshots
Create and manage multiple libraries
iPhoto Library Manager lets you create multiple iPhoto libraries, instead of having to keep all your photos in a single iPhoto library. This lets you speed up iPhoto by having smaller libraries, archive old photos that you don't use much, or organize photos in different categories or projects. The possibilities are endless!
Browse and search
Use iPhoto Library Manager's photos browser to quickly view your photos without having to open iPhoto itself. You can also search for photos in a single library, or across all your libraries at once.
Copy photos and their metadata
Update Photos Library On Iphone
If you have an existing library you want to split up into smaller libraries, you can copy photos by drag and drop from one library to another. iPhoto Library Manager will take care of retaining all the photos' metadata, such as keywords, ratings, faces, and so forth.
Update Photos Library On Mac
Find duplicate photos
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.
Merge iPhoto libraries
Got a whole bunch of libraries you want to consolidate into one? iPhoto Library Manager lets you merge libraries while weeding out duplicate photos in the process. You will be shown a preview of what your merged library will look like before any modifications are done, to ensure your merged library looks how you want.
Rebuild corrupted libraries
Sometimes, an iPhoto library will become corrupted, with missing photos, mysterious iPhoto hangs, or outright crashes. With iPhoto Library Manager, you can rebuild a new library based on your current library, starting with a fresh database free of corruption. You can even scavenge photos from the library that iPhoto may have lost track of.