How do I transfer iphoto to an external drive?

Hi Apple support communities,
I know there are plenty of discussions out there but I am still confused.
My start up disk is almost full so I need to transfer my photos into an external drive. I copied iphoto library to my hard drive and deleted all photos in my mac air's iphoto. But when I wanted to test if the transfer was done correctly, I had to relanch iphoto on my mac air ( restoring all photos into my mac air).
So I am now worried that if I just transfer the current most updated iphoto library to my hard drive and empty my mac air's iphoto, in the future i will have new photos in my mac air, but when I want to revisit my older photos from my external hard drive I would have to relaunch the old version of iphoto which will wipe out the newer stuff. What should I do?
Cheers

I'm not sure I understand you but this is how to move an iPhoto Library:
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
You do not have to move the images back to your computer to view them. Note step 3.
Regards
TD

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