iPhoto Library problems (too big!)

[Dman77]

Are there programs to help you manage a big iPhoto library? It seems that all iPhoto libraries are destined to become too big. Then what.

Things I can imagine needing to do with photos:
- Have a huge archive of photos which may or may not be readily accessible, but it at least needs to be searchable.
- Be able to choose what set of photos on want on my laptop hard drive. I'd like things such as:
-- A particular event or set of events.
-- Most recent pictures
-- Photos found using some search criteria in iPhoto
- I'd like management of laptop hard drive and archive storage to be as seamless as possible, meaning that photos get moved around as needed to that I never run out of space.

Does something like this exist?
Is there a way to approximate this with iPhoto?
Do most people have this problem? Would this be useful to many people?

I love iPhoto with events and faces. But I don't see how its practical managing photos, too dependent on its own internal structure, and it can't handle playing videos in a slideshow mixed in with photos.

Aperture should do everything you need. I tried Aperture and Lightroom but found Lightroom to be a bit too bland, so I stuck with Aperture, despite 80% of the online opinions pointing towards Lightroom.

When my library reaches a certain size of around 20GB, I simply create a 'vault' that archives the photos, then I transfer them to an external drive as well as my Time Capsule. It's perfect for what I need, plus it works well with iPhoto.