welcome back everyone my name is joel feld and today's topic is moving photos libraries
from one location to another maybe it's from your computer to an external hard drive so you need to
free up space or maybe it's from an external hard drive back to your computer to to to fill
your computer up more i don't know but either way let's talk about moving photo libraries let's go
all right everyone so first off we need to know where our photo library lives and there's a couple
different ways to know how to do that number one is if we open up the photo library on your mac you
can go to the preferences of photos and under the preferences you have general and you can click on
this option for library location that says show and finder so if i click show in finder i have
this library here in my pictures folder and that's by default that's where photos is first generating
your your photo library the very first time that you open it so in your picture folder here in your
finder it usually puts it in the pictures folder now you can always move it someplace else if you
want to or if you had on external hard drive and we'll kind of walk through that process
so here is where my photo library lives now there's another method that you can do
is if i click on the desktop here or applications or really anywhere within my finder
if i go on the top right and do a search i can type in dot photos library it's going to search
this entire mac where this library is and if i click once on this i can actually see the path of
where this library lives so it's in my home folder in the pictures folder and this is where it's at
the last option of figuring out where your photos library is at is if i actually quit out of photos
if i hold down option on the keyboard i can click on photos and this is actually going to give me
the option to see all of the libraries that are on my mac and when i have it selected here it'll also
show me the path of where this library lives so in case you have a a few others that were created
by accident this is a good way to find it so this library here is called photos library new icloud
and i actually want to change the name of this in my previous video that talks about merging
two libraries together which i'll link down in the description below that's why my library is
called this but i can actually change the name of the library and it won't affect anything
so i'm just going to click once on it after it's selected and just call it main photos
library and press return on the keyboard and it's as easy as that to rename this library again if i
double click on it it's going to open up the same way that it was it's linked with icloud photos
so i can go to preferences and it's my system library and all of that so none of that changes
so why would you want to move a photos library maybe because you're running out of storage space
you want to move it to a different mac various reasons but the process is still the same on
all of them so let's pretend that i'm running out of storage space on my mac
i want to move it to an external hard drive so i'm going to plug it into my external hard drive
or i'm going to plug my external hard drive into my mac and obviously depending on how big
your library is it could be 100 gigs 10 gigs it's going to take some time to copy it over
and before i move my my library to my external there's there is one thing i want you to
take note of and that's in the photos and the preferences is this copy items to photo library
now what this means is with this option checked that means that every photo that i've imported
imported into photos is self-contained in this nice library which uploads to icloud and it's
all in one nice package this photos library it's all self-contained but if i uncheck this option
it's gonna say hey only items copied to the library will upload to icloud photos so that's
that's uh note one pay attention to that so i'll click ok but what this means is if i import any
photographs into here and then i move this library those photographs are not going to be a part of it
and i'll i'll show you what i mean back under the file menu we have this option that says show
reference file in finder and the consolidate option now the thing that i don't like is even
if you have all of the if i go through here and select all the pictures and go up to file
it still doesn't show me the reference files and photos which is kind of annoying and i know that
i have some in here because if i click on this picture for example notice it's grayed out but if
i go to the next california picture if i go up to file it so it says show referenced file in finder
so what that means is if i click on this it's going to show up where this picture actually lives
within the finder so this is a picture that's actually in this california photo and if i were
to move this library to my external hard drive that means that this picture may not be there
so what i want to do is go up to file and do consolidate and this is going to consolidate
this file into the library so now if i go back up to file it's no longer selected however i have
other files here that are so it only did it for this one picture there's a nice little trick that
will allow us to find all of the photos that are referenced and we're going to use a smart album
so if we go over to the left hand side under my albums we can click the plus sign and do
smart album or we can go to the file menu and choose smart album and i'm going to call this
referenced photos photo files and we're going to leave it at photo we're going to say is
and we're going to change it to referenced now what this is going to do notice it found nine
other items that matched so i'm going to click ok here and so these are the other nine photographs
that have been referenced and what i want to do first then is go back up to file do consolidate
and so now it's going to copy all of these pictures so that they're in the actual library
that way when i move the library to a new location i am 100 confident that they are
all where they need to be in this library with all the other pictures so now we're actually going to
look at what happens when you have photographs that are referenced that you did not consolidate
and how they become unlinked from your photo library so i have some photos uh here on my
desktop these steel wool pictures that i took with my brothers a few weeks back so i'm going
to take these photographs and import them into my photos library by the way really fun steel wool
photography spin it around light it on fire and do a long exposure and you kind of create these
crazy different fun looking pictures don't worry no one got hurt just a coat a little singed here
and there but that's fine i digress because the preferences if i move this now so let's
actually do that so i'm going to open up my hard drive here and i'm going to copy the library to
here so let me close out of photos and i'm going to open up a new finder window i can right click
and do new finder window i'm going to go to my pictures and here is my main photo library i'm
going to drag this over to my external hard drive because maybe i want to free up some space on my
computer here now another thing to note is once you do this if you're using icloud photos we're
going to have to tell it to be the system library again because it now lives on this external hard
drive instead of locally on this computer so we'll look at the options for that as well
this library is you know under two gigabytes so for time purposes and moving them back and forth
it doesn't take long but if you have 500 gigs or 50 gigs it could take quite a bit longer now
that it's copied to my external hard drive i have it right here and if i double click on it
it's going to open it up from the external hard drive not my computer now remember these
steel wool pictures here they're still referencing this folder on the desktop and what's important
about this is if i delete this folder here and i empty this trash can and get rid of those actual
pictures when i'm back inside of photos and open up one of these pictures it's going to say hey
missing file and so they were referenced i never told it to import into the photo library
so it's going to say hey you need to find the original photo and i'm going to say well i have
no idea where these photos at because they could have been somewhere else on the hard
drive something like that so i'm going to choose cancel here and i'm going to bring those photos
back luckily i made a copy on my external i'm going to drag this back to my desktop
and when i open these photos back up they're going to re-link to those pictures now what you would
want to do is you go and select these pictures and you go to the file and you choose consolidate
and what consolidate is going to do is it's going to take all of those referenced photographs
and copy them into the library that way they're all self-contained they can be part of icloud
photos and they're nice and neat in the same location as all of these other photographs
now that that is done i can freely delete this folder and trash it and all of these pictures here
that were referenced are now inside of the library with all of the other ones so i want to make sure
that i then go back to photos choose preferences and make sure that you have copy items to photos
library that way when you're importing new stuff you just don't have to worry about it now this
photo library as i said is back on my external hard drive and all of this is here so what i would
want to do is go to photos choose preferences and tell it to use it as system library and
notice it's going to say hey switching the system library is going to turn off icloud photos and
that's perfectly fine it's going to turn off the other photos library that i had and it's going to
merge it with what's in icloud.com so i'm going to choose ok and then i'm going to turn on icloud
photos i like to have make sure i download the originals to the mac if you have the storage space
and it's going to go through and make this the new library so number one before you do
that i always recommend make sure you you have a physical copy if it's all in icloud
download the originals first by doing the download originals to mac before you merge
or switch to any other library and now if i go out to icloud.com
we'll sign in with the same apple id that i'm using i'll go to photos
and we're going to wait for these those additional photos to upload because pretty much we added
one two three six more photographs so those six photographs should bump up to icloud.com and now
they're essentially merged together now that my library is moved to my external hard drive i could
go back to the picture folder locally on this computer here and i can drag this to the trash
once i know all of this is said and done and completed now again if you're not using icloud
photos at all then it's just a matter of moving the library from one location to another and if
you have multiple photo libraries you can only use one that synchronizes with icloud photos
so if you're not using icloud photos at all don't even worry about this option here don't even
worry about the system library because really it doesn't matter because you're not involving it in
the ecosystem to synchronize to the cloud and in return go to your iphone or ipad or other devices
you don't have to worry about any of that you're just purely moving the library from one location
copying it and going to another location and if you have an iphone that you're using with
icloud it's going to update there and all the other devices once all of that is done
then i would say empty the trash and move that library off of this computer because now it's
safe and sound on external hard drive but also don't just depend on the external hard drive
i would have another backup if you're able to or if you have enough storage on this device
you know make sure that you are downloading the original photograph so that they're all there just
in case something happens funky with the cloud all right so now if we jump back to icloud.com let's
refresh see if those photos are uploaded and here are those six photos they're they're up in icloud
and this library that now lives on the sectional hard drive will continue to sync with all of your
other devices so if i minimize this minimize this now that i feel confident that everything is in
the cloud i can go back to the trash and now i can actually empty this and get rid of that
library empty it because now it fully resides on the external hard drive here and if i open that up
i'm back to where i left so that is how to move one library to another location aside
from just manually dragging it you can also use a third-party application to move libraries
it's up to you it's a little bit extra money it does some additional things for
finding duplicates but it's still an option there's a popular one called power photos by
fat cat i believe yeah so fat cat software power photos it's a third party application designed to
manage your photo libraries merge libraries find duplicates all sorts of stuff so check that out
download a free version i personally don't use it but i know some people that personally do
and reading some of the reviews and and what's out there on the internet it seems like it's a pretty
popular with a good amount of success using it so this could be an option for you also to manage and
move your library so i'm not going to go too much in depth with it purely because i don't use it
that much for moving libraries because i just drag it but that's also an option for you as well oh
one one helpful trick here sometimes if you have an older library you may have issues where it may
not open and or it's not loading properly so you can actually repair a photos library and so if
you quit out of all the photo libraries and hold down option and command on the keyboard and then
click on photos it's going to bring up an option to say hey you are about to repair this library
and you can click on repair and it will go through type in my password to verify it'll go through and
repair that library if it's ever having issues so if you ever get stuck and it's trying to
uh you know you're it's not loading or it's not opening properly try repairing the library and you
might just have some success with that to restore that library and get it back up and running for
you so that's pretty much it for moving your photos libraries from one location to another
i hope you enjoyed this video thank you so much for watching if you did hit that subscribe button
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