iphoto question. 36,000+ pics in library

are there any limits about how many photos can be in an iphoto library? are there any negative sides to having this many pics in there?

macgig said:

are there any limits about how many photos can be in an iphoto library? are there any negative sides to having this many pics in there?

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I don't think there is a physical size limit on the database, or if there is, that you're ever likely to hit it. The only question is really about how many your machine can handle at once.

Additionally, unless you're running a portfolio image business, I am not sure why 36,000 photos would ever be necessary. If you have 300 pictures of your dog in the back yard (for example), why not keep 10 really nice photographs, rather than hoard thousands of junk pictures. I always feel so much better when I purge my library.

it's all family photos for a client. archival purposes mostly.

I was just wondering if they should keep most of the photos on dvd and access from there, or keep on the Hard drive. Any thoughts on that? I wondered if at some time, the mac would have speed issues with this many pics.

I would think that storage on DVD or external hard drive would be the safest way to archive these photos. In fact, several backups would be a good idea in case the hard drive should ever fail.

I forgot to mention, they are on an external hard drive, but we are adding to dvd also... just in case.

If they're professional photos that have been archived, then I would not recommend using iPhoto for this. iPhoto creates a database and stores all the images in a single file. I would keep all the images in their original state on archived disks.

I googled this and found info of some saying that iphoto 6 has a limit of 25,000 photos. Any more in that can result in computer slowness, and crashes. ?

I cant find mention of this on apples site as of yet to confirm.

lady at the apple store told us today that iphoto 08 has a 100,000 picture limit...

although I see no mention of that anywhere on the web... she said she looked it up but did not say where.