iPhoto Library = 2.4GB...on iPhone it = 10.4GB???

[jman995x]

Hello,

I have about 26,000 photos in my iPhoto Library.
When I go to the "Originals" folder and do a Cmd + I, it brings back the folder info at 2.43 GB and 26,383 "items".

When I sync all of the folders in iPhoto with my iPhone, it gets about 75% of them on the iPhone and then says that there isn't enough room on the iPhone (16GB version) to hold all of the pictures.

Now, if I only have 2 GB of Music, and 2 GB of Video, that would leave me with about 11GB of free space (given that the iPhone's OS takes away from the 16GB making it just under 15GB total usable size by the end user).

So, if I have 11GB left on my iPhone, and my iPhoto Library...in it's entirety...is only 2.43GB, why then does it balloon to 10GB++ when I try and put it on my iPhone? Am I missing something here?

Thanks,

Justin

 

[eldy]

You don't have all your iPhoto photos in your iPhoto directory. You only have 2.4 gigs of your 10.4 gigs there. When you sync to the iPhone it transfers all the photos over.

 

[jman995x]

You don't have all your iPhoto photos in your iPhoto directory. You only have 2.4 gigs of your 10.4 gigs there. When you sync to the iPhone it transfers all the photos over.

Thanks for the erply, eldy.
I still don't quite understand, though.
I'm assuming that when you sync iPhoto to your iPhone that it only loads the "Originals" folder, correct?

The only other folders under "iPhoto Library" are "Data", "iPod Photo Cache" and "Modified"....which it wouldn't make sense that any of those are loaded onto the iPhone.​

So, when you say that:

You don't have all your iPhoto photos in your iPhoto directory. You only have 2.4 gigs of your 10.4 gigs there. When you sync to the iPhone it transfers all the photos over.

...this leads me to ask:

1. If I don't have all of my iPhoto photos in my iPhoto directory (which I thought I did, but I guess (by what you're saying), I don't)....I only have 2.4GB of my 10.4GB there.....then, where are those extra 8GB of photos being stored / loaded from?
2. Also, on a similar note, you say that when I sync to the iPhone it transfers ALL the photos over. So, if all of my photos within iPhoto are not in the "Originals" folder, where are they being stored that iPhoto knows to include them in the sync to my iPhone?

Any follow-up explanation would be great because I'm still confused about where 8GB of photos are being stored / appearing from.

Thanks,

Justin​

 

[eldy]

It seems like your other 8GB is residing in another, or more than one other, directory on your HD. Do you have an external hard drive? It might be on there...

When you get pictures from your camera or flash card, do you do a direct import into iPhoto? Or do you copy them to a directory on your HD first, then put them into iPhoto?

iPhoto simply indexes your photos. If you don't have the "Copy items to the iPhoto library" option checked, iPhoto will just remember the location of the file on your HD and display it from there. If it is checked, iPhoto will make a copy of that image from your HD into its special folder. That's how you can have pictures appear in iPhoto but not be in the iPhoto folder.

 

[jman995x]

Okay, I get it now.

Yeah, I have a whole bunch of folders on my HD, then created Albums in iPhoto and dragged the photos I wanted from the finder window into the Album within iPhoto. However, I just checked the "Advanced" tab within Preferences and the "Create a copy" box is, in fact, checked.....so now I'm sort of back at square one.

Is there anyway to find out which pictures in my iPhoto Library are actual pictures residing within the iPhoto "Originals" folder, and which are merely referenced from a folder outside of iPhoto? If there is, then my next question would be, is there a way to tell iPhoto to make a copy of those photos that are just referenced and put that copy physically into iPhoto?

Thanks again for all of the help.

Justin

 

[eldy]

I think that you'd have to manually check the location of each photo which would not be reasonable to do.

There might be a program out there that can organize your events/albums for you. I know that there are programs that will do that for iTunes libraries.

A reasonable option, if you haven't tagged or rated many of the photos in your currently library, is to create a new iPhoto library and properly import all your photos back in. Auto-split does a good job of identifying events based on input file metrics.

Whatever you choose to do, you should always use the import function in iPhoto instead of dragging and dropping into its window. Once the albums/events are already in iPhoto, then you can drag and drop from one album/event to another to merge them. Of course, you can also drag and drop from iPhoto into Finder if you want to make copies of your pictures.

Good luck!

 

[jman995x]

I think that you'd have to manually check the location of each photo which would not be reasonable to do.

There might be a program out there that can organize your events/albums for you. I know that there are programs that will do that for iTunes libraries.

A reasonable option, if you haven't tagged or rated many of the photos in your currently library, is to create a new iPhoto library and properly import all your photos back in. Auto-split does a good job of identifying events based on input file metrics.

Whatever you choose to do, you should always use the import function in iPhoto instead of dragging and dropping into its window. Once the albums/events are already in iPhoto, then you can drag and drop from one album/event to another to merge them. Of course, you can also drag and drop from iPhoto into Finder if you want to make copies of your pictures.

Good luck!

Cool. Thanks.

P.S. I'm not familiar with "Auto-split". Can you clue me in?

 

[eldy]

Cool. Thanks.

P.S. I'm not familiar with "Auto-split". Can you clue me in?

When you import pictures into iPhoto it will split them up into events/albums based on their dates instead of putting them all into one new album. So if you were to import lots of pictures from different dates, it'll automatically make new albums/events for each date, which theoretically makes it easier to sort the pictures.