Creating Multiple Libraries in iPhoto

by Chris Foley on February 25, 2009

iPhoto is a most excellent tool, and it’s actually quite amazing that Apple would offer this program free with all new Macs, or for only $79 as part of the iLife suite of creative applications.

The new iPhoto 8 (part of iLife ’09) includes some wonderful new features, some of which I’ll be demonstrating later on this month. Right now, I’m going to show you an older feature, which you likely do not know about.  This trick will work for any users of iPhoto 6, 7, and 8.

There are many reasons you might want to create and use more than one library in iPhoto.

Here’s an example:   Let’s say that you’ve got a couple of thousand photos stored in your iPhoto library. You’ve got kids, so there are vacation photos, and recital photos, holiday photos, soccer photos, etc. You also sell real estate, and so you have lots of property photos, which are starting to blend in with your family photos. In addition to that, you make your own jewelry, which you intend to sell online someday soon, so you’ve also got hundreds of different product photos stuffed into your library, and then there are those photos you had to take of the car after you got into a fender-bender… and suddenly your iPhoto program is getting a little bit out of hand.

If this sounds familiar, you may consider creating new libraries for the purpose of segregating these different categories of images. You can have one library for family, another for your real estate, one for your jewelry, one of your “art” images, etc.
This approach will improve iPhoto’s performance, as well as enabling you to better organize all of your images, based on tasks.

Here’s what to do.

Hold down the OPTION key, and open iPhoto, either from it’s location in your Dock, or from your Applications folder. You will be presented with a window asking you which photo library you’d like to use. Since you only have one library right now, we’re going to click on the “Create New…” button.

Next, we’ll name our new library (I’ve named mine “eBay Photos”) and then we’ll decide where to store this library (I’ve put mine in my Pictures folder with the other ones) and we’ll click on Save.

Now we can add photos to this new library. You can create as many iPhoto libraries as you like, and toggle back and forth between them with ease. Remember to hold down the option key next time you launch iPhoto, and select the library you would like to work with.

Easy.

Culling the Herd.

You are either creating new libraries because it’s a great idea going forward, or you’re creating new libraries because you’re like the hypothetical person I mentioned earlier in this post. Your library is already getting out of hand, and you need to separate your photos. No problem. Here’s how:

Create a New Folder on your desktop: File Menu > New Folder.

Launch iPhoto while holding down the Option key. Select the appropriate iPhoto Library from the list.

Locate the photos in iPhoto that you’d like to migrate to another library.

Highlight them and drag them to your new folder. (You may have to resize iPhoto so that you can view both iPhoto and the new folder on your desktop at the same time.)

Double-click on the new folder to view its contents. Verify that your images have all been copied into the new folder. At this time you can delete them from iPhoto. (Do not empty your trash until you’ve reached the end of this list, just in case!)

Quit iPhoto

Relaunch iPhoto while holding down the option key. Select your new library. If you have not yet created your new library, follow the steps above to create one.

Drag the photos from the folder to your new iPhoto library.

Verify that they have all copied over.

You’re done!

Repeat these steps as necessary to take back your iPhoto.

Resources:
If you have not yet purchased iLife ’09, you can get it HERE. Be careful to view the system requirements before you purchase.

Share and Enjoy:

Tagged as: Digital Photography, iPhoto

ltsu

how do you preserve your albums after you create all your new libraries?
ltsu

how do you preserve your albums after you create all your new libraries?
http://www.foleypod.com/ Chris Foley

Hi Itsu,

For some reason unknown to anyone outside of Apple, iPhoto does not offer the ability to export your Album data to .xml files, the way that iTunes allows for Playlists.

So if you are concerned with preserving your albums, you will need to create a folder on your desktop representing each Album. Then export that Album’s photos into the folder. Repeat for each Album.

After you’ve created your new iPhoto Library, using the method described in the above article, you can drag each folder into the iPhoto sidebar one at a time. This will cause each of the photos to be imported into the new iPhoto Library, while putting them into an Album. The resulting Album will be named after the folder from which it was created, so if you had named the folder when you created it, the Album name will be preserved. If you did not name the folder, the new Album will likely be called “untitled 1″ or something like that, and you’ll need to rename.

Once you’ve verified that all of your photos have come over, you can delete the folder from your desktop, as all of the images COPY into iPhoto on import, and then you can also delete the photos and albums in which they reside from your old iPhoto Library.

Cheers!
Chris
http://www.foleypod.com Chris Foley

Hi Itsu,

For some reason unknown to anyone outside of Apple, iPhoto does not offer the ability to export your Album data to .xml files, the way that iTunes allows for Playlists.

So if you are concerned with preserving your albums, you will need to create a folder on your desktop representing each Album. Then export that Album’s photos into the folder. Repeat for each Album.

After you’ve created your new iPhoto Library, using the method described in the above article, you can drag each folder into the iPhoto sidebar one at a time. This will cause each of the photos to be imported into the new iPhoto Library, while putting them into an Album. The resulting Album will be named after the folder from which it was created, so if you had named the folder when you created it, the Album name will be preserved. If you did not name the folder, the new Album will likely be called “untitled 1″ or something like that, and you’ll need to rename.

Once you’ve verified that all of your photos have come over, you can delete the folder from your desktop, as all of the images COPY into iPhoto on import, and then you can also delete the photos and albums in which they reside from your old iPhoto Library.

Cheers!
Chris
Chris V

This is actually a question: How can metatags and keywords be associated with the original file/pic so it can be seen with another imaging program? An example is when I went to Shutterfly to print some pics, i could not search for my pics using iphoto.
Chris V

This is actually a question: How can metatags and keywords be associated with the original file/pic so it can be seen with another imaging program? An example is when I went to Shutterfly to print some pics, i could not search for my pics using iphoto.
http://www.foleypod.com/ Chris Foley

Hi Chris,
This is a really good question, and is a bit of a poser, since iPhoto really hasn’t supported keywords since iPhoto 6.

Of course, those of us who have been using iPhoto since the beginning, used iPhoto’s keywords because keywords was the best organizational tool Apple had come up with for use in iPhoto.

Well, there is good news. You’ll have to use the Export function, found in the File Menu.

Here’s how it works:

Select a photo, or a bunch of photos, an entire album, etc, go to File, and select Export.

From here, you’ll be presented with this window.

Be sure to check the boxes next to the Include: Title and keywords and Location information options.

Select your desired quality, and export your files.

If you forget to check these Include options, your files will have only the meta data put there by your camera.

Hope this helps!

~ Chris
http://www.foleypod.com Chris Foley

Hi Chris,
This is a really good question, and is a bit of a poser, since iPhoto really hasn’t supported keywords since iPhoto 6.

Of course, those of us who have been using iPhoto since the beginning, used iPhoto’s keywords because keywords was the best organizational tool Apple had come up with for use in iPhoto.

Well, there is good news. You’ll have to use the Export function, found in the File Menu.

Here’s how it works:

Select a photo, or a bunch of photos, an entire album, etc, go to File, and select Export.

From here, you’ll be presented with this window.

Be sure to check the boxes next to the Include: Title and keywords and Location information options.

Select your desired quality, and export your files.

If you forget to check these Include options, your files will have only the meta data put there by your camera.

Hope this helps!

~ Chris