Sharing a photo library between two computers?

[atari1356]

I plan on buying a new iMac or Mac Pro within the next couple of months - and have been thinking about using Aperture to manage my photo library.

I'll be giving the 1.5GHZ G4 Powerbook that I'm using now to my wife... who will also want access to the photos (so she can print them out for sending to family/scrapbooking/etc.)

Is there any easy way to share a photo library?

I guess I could periodically export new photos from Aperture to an external hard drive - then import them to iPhoto on her computer. It seems like there should be an easier way though...

 

[apfhex]

Is there any easy way to share a photo library?

iPhoto -> Preferences -> Sharing -> "Share my photos"

On the other computer make sure "Look for shared photos" is on.

That's it. Bonjour takes care of the networking automagically.

 

[atari1356]

iPhoto -> Preferences -> Sharing -> "Share my photos"

On the other computer make sure "Look for shared photos" is on.

That's it. Bonjour takes care of the networking automagically.

I didn't know you could do that... looking at the iPhoto help though, it seems like you can't really do anything with the shared photos, just view them:

"When you view shared photos, they're streamed over the network to your computer. You can view them, but you can't add them to your library, albums, slideshows, books, calendars, and cards, or burn them to a CD or DVD."

So, that's probably not an option unfortunately.

 

[allisonv7]

Did you ever find a solution? I'm interested in the same type of thing.



allison.

 

[buffalo]

I was also just about to ask the easiest way to transfer my iPhoto library from my iMac to my new MacBook.

 

[BanjoBanker]

Transfering

The best way to transfer an iPhoto library from an old Mac to a new one is the migration wizard. Worked fabulously moving my 3500+ photos and my iTunes library from my trusty, but tired 12" PowerBook to my new C2D MacBook.

 

[compuwar]

I plan on buying a new iMac or Mac Pro within the next couple of months - and have been thinking about using Aperture to manage my photo library.

I'll be giving the 1.5GHZ G4 Powerbook that I'm using now to my wife... who will also want access to the photos (so she can print them out for sending to family/scrapbooking/etc.)

Is there any easy way to share a photo library?

I guess I could periodically export new photos from Aperture to an external hard drive - then import them to iPhoto on her computer. It seems like there should be an easier way though...

Share out the directory they live in?

 

[The Past]

The way I do this (share Aperture library) is by placing the library on a network drive. Then you tell Aperture on each computer where the library is. That is all. Each computer now accesses the same library.

But make sure that only one of you is working on any give pic at a time unless you have some system to check-in and check-out pictures.

With the new Airport Extreme, any external drive can tun into a network drive. So you are looking at an additional $250 outlay (about 180 for Airport and the rest for an external drive on sale) and you get to share Aperture, get a new wireless router, and a shared network drive for your new setup.

 

[compuwar]

With the new Airport Extreme, any external drive can tun into a network drive.

The built-in copy of Samba on OSX will share any directory, no need for an Airport.

 

[Butters]

I use Synk every now and again to sync my iPhoto library folder between computers.

the same would work with aperture, it's not the most convinient solution and can cause problems if u both edit photos.

...but it is cheap

 

[apb3]

The built-in copy of Samba on OSX will share any directory, no need for an Airport.

yup.

just make sure both computers are on the network (wired, wireless, whatever), make sure the second computer connects to the specific drive or dir - whichever you want (I have one external FW drive for itunes, video and iphoto on my main desktop so I just have the other computers in my house connect at startup to that drive) and use iPhoto's (or iTunes', etc ) prefs to tell each app where to look...

 

[Texas04]

Or you could create an Automator action/ workflow to do this. Just a thought, she could run one app and get a bunch of new photos with one click

 

[apb3]

Or you could create an Automator action/ workflow to do this. Just a thought, she could run one app and get a bunch of new photos with one click

If I'm understanding you correctly, this is the type of thing I originally tried and found unworkable. Making sure all libs on each machine were sync'ed up after each edit session was a first-rate cluster-F. Lost some cool shots from Iraq as a result and I've never been able to figure out exactly why. Some were still on memory cards, some not...

Sharing the library ensures any edits made on any of my machines are instantly available on any other sharing machine.

 

[atari1356]

Thanks for all the advice. After thinking about it more (and having tried the Aperture trial), I'm definitely going to be using Aperture... but my wife will just be using iPhoto.

So, what I'll end up doing is editing the photos on my computer, then exporting them at full res. Then I'll probably just do a firewire target disk mode and import the photos on her computer into iPhoto.

It's better that way, as I'd rather not be sharing the same exact photo library with her - and risk her editing a photo that I don't want touched. She doesn't really want to edit them anyways (at least not yet)... she just wants good versions to print out/use in scrapbooks.

Also, I've decided on a 24" iMac... to get the Mac Pro configured the way I'd want it would cost over $1000 more than the iMac. I've tried both, and the speed difference didn't seem that great. It will take twice as long to process previews and certain other tasks on the iMac - but when I tried that, the iMac was still very responsive, and I never felt like I was waiting on it. Plus, that screen is very nice...

Thanks again for the tips. Now I just have to decide when to buy.

 

[compuwar]

It's better that way, as I'd rather not be sharing the same exact photo library with her - and risk her editing a photo that I don't want touched.

If you share out your folder, you could just give her read-only access and have rsync running on her system to sync the files to a writable directory.

Alternately, you could enable SSH access, and run rsync over SSH with her account on the other system only given read-only access to the repository.

I'd probably do the second version with SSH keys and a cron job.

 

[superted666]

I didn't know you could do that... looking at the iPhoto help though, it seems like you can't really do anything with the shared photos, just view them:

"When you view shared photos, they're streamed over the network to your computer. You can view them, but you can't add them to your library, albums, slideshows, books, calendars, and cards, or burn them to a CD or DVD."

So, that's probably not an option unfortunately.

Wierd
Sharing them in iphoto now with a mate from work, allows you to drag and drop them between the two shares just fine, no restriction at all?

 

[purelithium]

For Aperture:

Simple. Store the Library on an external drive.

 

[ChrisA]

If I'm understanding you correctly, this is the type of thing I originally tried and found unworkable. Making sure all libs on each machine were sync'ed up after each edit session was a first-rate cluster-F. Lost some cool shots from Iraq as a result and I've never been able to figure out exactly why. Some were still on memory cards, some not...

Sharing the library ensures any edits made on any of my machines are instantly available on any other sharing machine.

The ONLY reason to sync two computers is if you indent to physically move one of the computers off the local network. As long as the two machine share a communications path it's just plain silly, time consumming and wasteful to duplicate the data. Leave the files on the Mac Pro. Access the Aperture library over the network.

If the notebook is to be used off the network then export the few files that are needed uising Apertures export function.

You want ONE library.

Another way to maintain ONE library is to use VNC (aka "remote desktop) and she can run Aperture on the Mac Pro with the diosplay send over the notebook. This simply eliminates the problem The Mac iPro is happy to let two people be logged in at the same same time the notbook would simply be providing a seconmd monitor/keyboard foer the Mac Pro. This works well and VNC is free

 

[AstrosFan]

I do it the "old-fashioned" way, by downloading the library from the iMac to an external hard drive & then uploading that to my PowerBook. Depending on how often your wife wants to access the absolute latest pictures, you may only need to do this every month or so.

The only real benefit I can see of that methodology is that I take the external hard drive off-site, so that if something happened to our home, we would still have a backup copy of all of our digital photos.

Alternatively, if you used a web-based backup system (like .mac), you would have your photos stored there.

Just my 2 cents - good luck!