Where is my iPhoto library?

If some of you saw my previous question about moving stuff to an external hard drive I have purchased an external hard drive and am now going to start copying stuff over. I started with trying to copy my photos over but for the life of me I cannot find them other than looking at them in the iPhoto app. I have several albums in iPhoto and I would like to move them over by album to keep things organized. I tried to open iPhoto and drag an album over to the hard drive but it does not work. Since I am previous PC user and used an external hard drive before I was expecting to be able to find a file somewhere with all the photos and just drag them over but I cannot find it. From what I read online I should have a iPhoto library somewhere but cannot find it. The only place I see a library is if I go to finder, applications, click on iPhoto and click on show package contents. When that opens I click on contents and then library but the only thing in library is a folder that says icloud but when I click on it nothing comes up.

Do I need to do something else to get my photos/albums into the library?

Thank you in advance!

John

Your library is in that Package, unless you've opted to store it elsewhere, but please don't try to interact with it directly.

The library is in this package to protect it. What I'd suggest doing is select the pictures you're wanting to move while in iPhoto and choose Export. Export using the original size and any other settings you like and choose you external as the destination. This will export the images with any changes you've made etc. This link may help.

Once the export's done, check they are on the external as expected before deleting them from within iPhoto.

I'd suggest making all changes using the iPhoto application rather than trying to deal with the files manually.

I'd also suggest that before doing any deleting type stuff, making sure you have a backup, in the cloud or Time Machine or another backup tool. Sure you do any way, but always worth re-enforcing. Seen too many people start manipulating stuff on their computers (of all types and flavours) without a backup and regretting it later be it human error, hardware failure or divine intervention!

The recognised way would be to highlight the photos in Photos or iPhoto and use File Export. You can highlight an Event or whatever Photos calls them these days. There is a way to get at them through Finder but using the export method ensures you get the latest versions of those you have edited.

Thanks guys that is a huge help! I would like to back everything up with time machine. Would it be best to get a separate hard drive just to do the time machine backup and then use the one I just got for the photos and such?

I totally endorse what mrplow has said. Don't mess with parts of the package.

If you are interested, your iPhoto Library should be in Macintosh HD > Users > 'your name" > Pictures - and should be named iPhoto Library.photolibrary.

If your overall intention is to free up space on your HDD, you could copy the library mentioned above to the External Hard Drive (EHD). The default action of dragging the Library is to Copy it to the destination - in your case the EHD.

But I'm always very cautious about copying crucial data and much prefer to use the Copy/Paste method (Cmd + C/Cmd + V) rather than the drag and drop method. Beware the unsteady hand, you know what I mean.

This Copy/Paste to the EHD of the entire Library could act as an additional backup.

However, if you wanted to Copy the Library to save space; once on the EHD, you can tell iPhoto where it is by holding down the Option key whilst opening the iPhoto app. A window will open allowing you to select your library of choice. You would then navigate to the EHD and the library therein. Once checking that everything is working fine, you could delete the original on the HDD.

Perhaps all this is more than you wanted. I mention these options for general information only.

Ian

I'm a slow typist!!

Just read the other posts. If you're happy with exporting selected images, great. You can disregard all the other stuff I mentioned.

Ian

Great this is all good info. I just wonder if I should just get a separate HD just to use for time machine to keep that separate. That could always be my backup.

It's always advisable to have a backup of some kind, and since Time Machine is included, that would be the simplest option. It works really well. It just constantly backs up in the background without any initiation on your part. It will back up everything exactly as it is, from your files and apps to your system settings, desktop image, etc. After a HD wipe or new HD installation, it will put everything back exactly as it was before. So obviously this would include your iPhoto (now Photos) library.

jrflat said:

Great this is all good info. I just wonder if I should just get a separate HD just to use for time machine to keep that separate. That could always be my backup.

Click to expand...

Yes, definitely. Never keep all your eggs in one basket

A dedicated EHD for Time Machine is a good idea. As it performs incremental updates it will theoretically fill any size drive eventually and start deleting the oldest files. Usually twice the size of your internal HD is fine but for ease of use it is (I found) better not to keep other files on the same drive.


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