Huge Library Size!

I just imported my iPhoto library (3.75 GB worth of pictures) into Aperture selecting the option to keep the masters in the original location. In Aperture's preferences, I have the preview size set to the default 5. After importing, my Aperture package file is 2.28 GB! This is quite unacceptable in my book...is this caused solely by Aperture creating previews and thumbnails?
Thanks.

The unanswered questions here are: what are the sizes of your originals and how many do you have? If you have a lot of relatively small (in megapixels) JPEG files in you iPhoto library then you are not going to see a very small Library size. If you look in the Aperture Library package file you will see many housekeeping files are used to keep the necessary information for your images. Aperture does generate large thumbnails which I think are around 1000 pixels at the long dimension. You cannot turn these large thumbnails off. Then Aperture maintains additional files that keep the Keyword and Metadata information. Files are needed to keep track of what project each file is associated with, as well as any albums, etc.
You may see more of a difference with your XTi when you start shooting RAW because the ratio of RAW file size to the thumbnail size will be greater.
Also, just a thought, but have you checked to make sure you don't have any Managed images in your Library? You can check by making a Smart Album:
1) With the top Library highlighted in the Projects Panel, select File>New Smart>Album and name the Smart Album "@Managed". The @ sorts the Smart Album to the top of the Projects List, right underneath the blue Library Albums.
2) In the Smart Settings HUD, click on the "+v" button in the upper right corner and select "File Status". A new line is added that says "File Status Offline".
3) Click on the dropdown box and change the word "Offline" to "Managed".
4) Make sure the "Ignore stack groupings" checkbox is checked.
More interesting info related to your questions can be found on the Bagelturf website, a website chock full of usefull Aperture info:
http://homepage.mac.com/bagelturf/aparticles/library/library.html
http://homepage.mac.com/bagelturf/aparticles/previews/previews.html
-Karen

Similar Messages

Aperture 3 Library size vs iPhoto Library

Hi!
I recently switched from iPhoto to Aperture and am wondering about the library size? In iPhoto the library size was bloated because it made a copy of every photo behind the scenes upon import. I got tired of that and thought that moving to Aperture would solve the problem. But, after importing most of my photos into Aperture, then comparing the size of my Aperture Library package with the size of my Photo folder in Finder that I imported from, I'm finding my Aperture library is over 100 GBs bigger!! Yikes! How did that happen?
I am running a managed library, but I thought Aperture didn't make a copy of every photo behind the scenes but rather just made versions of the master when changes are made.
Frankly, I haven't even done any editing yet, just importing. So, why the huge library size compared to the size of my Photo library in Finder? It's 186 GBs versus 85 GBs. Same photo collection. Crazy.
TIA!

No, from folders in Finder. I always have my photos in Finder too on an EHD, even after I import them to iPhoto or Aperture.

Aperture 2 library size is huge !

Hello,
I am importing my iPhoto library into Aperture and its HUGE ! My iPhoto library is 27,17GByte and the Aperture library has already grown to 37,7 GByte and still growing. Is this normal?

Yes it is normal, but there's a lot you can do to get the size back down.
In iPhoto, when you make an edit (including things like rotation), another full-res duplicate is produced and the original is preserved as invisible. In Aperture, previews are used instead of full-res duplicates. You library is growing because you now not only have the duplicates, but previews for the duplicates too.
If you get rid of the duplicates this will significantly reduce your Aperture library size; it takes a lot of time, you either need to get rid of the originals, or you need to get rid of the edits and accept that you'll have to re-edit them.
That will shrink your library down incredibly, but my best advice is to reference your masters on an external hard-drive, rather than have them stored in the Aperture library itself. I think of my Library as being a place where all the information about how to interpret the images is, not where the actual images themselves are. The only exception to this is when I want to take 1 or 2 particular projects into college with me on my Macbook, then I'll have those files living in the library; but other than they're all referenced.
I hope this is helpful.

IPhoto library size and movie imports - getting HUGE!

In iPhoto 08- (in my primary library) I have 23,000 photos, and about 300 movies (some MPEG) from an older Sony digicam, and now I have a Canon Powershot TX1 which is a flash based still digicam/720P HD camcorder that captures very large AVI's (depending on shot length, they range from 30MB to 400-500MB). I know I can choose on import to not bring them into iPhoto, and just bring in the still shots. However, it does make it easy to bring them into iPhoto along with the still pics, but I am concerned about the growing size of my 45GB library (1 of 3 libraries - I have not been splitting them up in the last couple of years, relying on the fact that iPhoto is stable with very large libraries- and going to enable a Time Capsule w/ Time Machine very soon). Time Capsule would save me here, right? Am I playing with fire here on the library size, and setting myself up for a crash?? There are so many downsides to multiple libraries when it comes to projects, searches, imports, etc. I'd love to know that I can safely stick with one.
Wondering also if I should NOT import the movies into iPhoto, and keep them seperate? The benefit to doing this, is that we can post MULTIPLE movies to the .Mac gallery at the same time, and have them appear as seperate movies...whereas in iMovie 08, if I put a bunch of clips into a project to post to .Mac gallery, it compiles them as a single movie - which is, many times, not what we want.
Any advice here is greatly appreciated!!!

GaryFL1:
You might consider creating a separate library for the movies and see if that will speed up your primary library. If you needed a movie in an album to create a web gallery you could put it in an album in the Movie Library and copy that album to your working library.
A lot of iPhoto's quickness depends on both CPU power, RAM and free space on your boot drive. I would imagine your iMac would be your primary iPhoto machine and it should meet the CPU and memory criteria. How about your free space?
Time Machine is a very good backup device in my experience. Depending on how big your backup drive is and how much you're backing up, you can go back in time a fair amount. I've got a 750 GB TM drive backing up my boot drive and one external. It now goes back 5 1/2 weeks for me.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto (iPhoto.Library for iPhoto 5 and earlier) database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger or later), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 6 and 7 libraries and Tiger and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.≤br>
Note: There now an Automator backup application for iPhoto 5 that will work with Tiger or Leopard.

Too much time to open a huge library

Hi,
I have a huge 60Gig library set on an external SATA hard disk (on a DROBO machine. This is a USB2 connection). All my photos (almost 30 000) are externally referenced.
Aperture works fine, i've removed all the previews to try to reduce the library size (but not that much, on final).
Some things I dislike and don't see how to improve them:
1. Aperture takes almost 2 minutes to open. Why so?
2. When opening Aperture, i see it wants to regenerate all the previews! In the preferences, nothing is checked to ask Aperture to do this. The "Automatically generating previews when importing" is unchecked.
3. I don't see a way to check if every thing is referenced, but to open each project.
4. I don't see a way to create a new Aperture library.
5. Would be fun to be able to split libraries, or merge them.
Any comments and ideas?
Thanks!

First off, which version of Aperture are you using?
2. You probably need to turn it off for the existing Projects as well. Select a project, then click on the cogwheel button at the top of the Projects pane and make sure that 'Maintain Previews' is unchecked.
3. Do a search of your Library. One of the extra searches you can access via the search HUD is the file status, including managed/referenced and online/offline.
4. Open up preferences and point it towards a folder that doesn't have an Aperture Library in it. Not the most intuitive.
5. There's not much to be gained by splitting Libraries, but the way to do it is to export Projects from one Library and import them into the other Library.
Ian

Aperture 3 vs. iPhoto '11 library sizes?

I wanted to switch from iPhoto '11 to Aperture 3, so I imported my iPhoto library to Aperture. It took a little while, but went without a hitch. I was about to delete my iPhoto library, but then I noticed that my iPhoto library is 94.68GB, while my Aperture library is 68.26GB. I've read that there is a discrepancy because of thumbnail sizes, but a 26GB difference seems to be pretty significant.
All my photos and videos seem to have transferred over and when I select random pictures in Aperture, right-click and select "Locate Referenced Files..." I get a pop-up saying "The selection doesn't have any referenced files." which seems to indicate that everything is in Aperture.
I just wanted to get your opinions on what the huge discrepancy might be due to before I deleted the iPhoto library. Thanks in advance!

Ah yes, I forgot about the iPod Photo Cache; I'm resyncing my iPhone and iPad with iTunes right now to sync photos from Aperture, and it's taking forever, since it has to resize over 12,000 photos. I can't imagine that would account for 26GB of data, though I guess those photos take up about 12GB on each device. I'll have to recheck the library sizes after both devices are done syncing.
I didn't specify a preview size. I didn't know you could. What exactly are the previews that one can change the sizes of? The thumbnails that show up in Aperture?

Reducing imovie library size

Hello
Here is my Problem
I have an external hd with 500gb full with only imovie. It has been backed up with time machine to a larger hd together with my imac backup.
I have already deleted unused footage and now have only the minimum footage for watching old projects plus all footage from current projects. But I am still running out of room and would like to delete all the old projects so they are no longer in imovie. I Always make camera archives so if I ever need the original footage i have it.
What i would like to do.
I want export all the finished projects on to my computer. I have done some already but am not sure of the best way. Exporting full quality AIC format I am getting 1gb per minute of video, this is going to take up way to much space on my computer. I have tried to export to itunes in full quality, this gives better results on the file size, but I am worried if a put all my home video in itunes things will start getting slow.
How can I export my video without losing quality and not have the huge file sizes? and where is the best place to store it? itunes or just in files?
Hope I can get some help

i've heard people have been able
to reduce their library size to only 30% of the size
of their referenced files...
When the originals are high-res RAW files or TIFFs, sure.
Even with Previews turned off and deleted, Aperture still contains three or more* small thumbnails for each Version - the smaller ones are what you see in the browser pane and the 1024px one is what you see when laying out books, light tables and the detail pages for web galleries. These thumbnails take up ~400-600Kb each, so 1GB for 1300+ thumbnails (plus extra versions and masters) is about right.
Ian
*If you've made adjustments to an image then you end up with more thumbnails as you can still view the 'master' unadjusted image by hitting 'M'.

IPhoto Library Size What to do.

I really like iPhoto '08. However, I'm going to run into a problem. In the old iPhoto days we would run into the problem of not being able to keep all the photos in the same library because of the number limit on the photos. That is no longer a problem so I put all the photos we own into one library on our MacBook. Now we just bought a new Camera that takes really nice photos but the files are huge. I'm seeing a new problem on the horizon and it will be here quickly. My wife's HD only has about 9 GB left and the new pictures are going to eat that up quickly. We have an external firewire HD just to work with digital content. Does anyone have any ideas about how to manage library size.

My wife's HD only has about 9 GB left
She is past out of space - with less than 10 GB left you are in danger of losing data
Assuming your external drive is formated Mac Extended (journaled) I would recommend moving the iPhoto library to it right away - quit iPhoto, drag the iPhoto library from the pictures folder (default location) to the external drive and launch iPhoto while depressing the option (alt) key and use the select library option - once you have pointed to the external drive and tested your library, drag the library on the internal drive to the trash and test one more time before emptying it
LN

Pre-buying question: Fast scrolling a HUGE library

My intention for Apple TV is actually for music library looking ups - I have got a 100K songs ( yes, about 800GB )HUGE library, I think the TV screen provides much bigger browsing interface comparing to other wireless sharing server ( I'm currently a Roku M1000 user so you know everytime to find an artist is a torture... ), however I don't know if the ATV remote provides the fast scrolling between first character, it will be great to have that function which is offered on latest IPODs. I take a look at the atv remote and found out it is up/down scrolling instead of the wheel design, so guess if there is no first character scrolling then switching from A to Z will become impossible mission!
Please can any pro here help, thanks!

Sorry no fast scrolling in this version.
I don't have the library that you do, I have roughly the same usage of disc space but most is taken by movies, I only have around 10,000 tunes. I can however confirm that whilst the size of my library doesn't actually cause any issues, navigating the artist list is a bit tedious.
Unfortunately if you set up smart playlists for alphabetical groupings the list is displayed as song titles and not artists and so doesn't help.
For your information my artist count is 1401 and it takes the tv 13 seconds to scroll from first to last.

Huge file size reduced by unlocking

I ended up with a 2.7GB file that consisted of 8 locked tracks that had been locked and unlocked lots of times. I knew that was about ten times the real size. The only way to get rid of whatever was causing the huge file size was to unlock the tracks and Save As Archive which reduced the size to 400MB.
Why did this happen?
Also, is there a detailed manual available that tells you all the tricks about GB? Things like: exactly what does locking a track do (Help is not very informative); and how do Save, Save As and Save As Archive differ in their treatment of purple, orange and other regions. I have had problems saving everything when I backup to an external drive, so I'd like to find out exactly how these Saves work.

Christoph,
Yes I just did that. I saved a copy of the song and then trashed the freeze files that should not have been there. The song played fine, no problem. THe file went from 1.6G to 176M.
I have found this situation in a few other files also.
These are my saving habits when I'm working on a song. I work for a while using "Save". Then after a while I start to save many major changes as "Save as Archive". I always end a session this way. Usually I'm not concerned about disc space. I use "Save as archive" all the time because I would rather have a file with everything I'm using contained within that file. Last year I accidently trashed 10,000 loops and I have since found that "save as archive" is a helpful backup when I'm acting stupid around the trash.
I may be one of the few folks who uses "Save as archive " so often and somehow it seems that every once in a while a hiccup occurs and the freeze files do not erase when the tracks are unlocked.
Since this discovery I have gone thru many other files and found this to be the case every now and then. Some of the files didnt hint at being over stuffed but had a few errant freeze files. Normally I would never go and check a files contents but that one file at 1.6G grabbed my attention
Just thought I would post to see if anyone has this problem.

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc.

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc using Cmd I (Eye, not EL—don't we all love sans serif fonts as default) for both info.
Ah, this is readable at faster reading speeds.
Now ( oops the return key killed the font setting).
Now, we'll use run-on paragraphs. OK? ¶ On topic: I need more space to install a newer iOS on my iPhone. ¶ Someone at Apple Store Genius Bar advised deleting the album of pictures originally copied from my computer when I had vast memory space since it is already on the computer. Got 1GB About to say Available was still too low for the new iOS install. ¶ Another Apple Store Genius Bar advised making a good backup using TimeMachine on my computer and deleting all the pictures from my iPhone by the painful method of selecting each collection. ¶ So I thought I'd check how successful the backup was. Cmd I (doesn't look like El, yea!) on the Picture Library was 38 GB on my back up disc and 40 GB on my computer disc. ¶ Desktop folder is 87.1 MB (87,091,206 bytes) in both. How do I get the other 2 GB on the backup?

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc using Cmd I (Eye, not EL—don't we all love sans serif fonts as default) for both info.
Ah, this is readable at faster reading speeds.
Now ( oops the return key killed the font setting).
Now, we'll use run-on paragraphs. OK? ¶ On topic: I need more space to install a newer iOS on my iPhone. ¶ Someone at Apple Store Genius Bar advised deleting the album of pictures originally copied from my computer when I had vast memory space since it is already on the computer. Got 1GB About to say Available was still too low for the new iOS install. ¶ Another Apple Store Genius Bar advised making a good backup using TimeMachine on my computer and deleting all the pictures from my iPhone by the painful method of selecting each collection. ¶ So I thought I'd check how successful the backup was. Cmd I (doesn't look like El, yea!) on the Picture Library was 38 GB on my back up disc and 40 GB on my computer disc. ¶ Desktop folder is 87.1 MB (87,091,206 bytes) in both. How do I get the other 2 GB on the backup?

IPhoto 6 library size-weirdness continues..

I have archived my full library to DVD and deleted all items. Finder still shows the library size at 1.24 GB! Inside I find it is not cache, nor thumbnails that take this space, but rather orinals which I have deleted before. Please see the screenshots showing the library, its size, size of the originals folder.
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/1261/picture16vg.png
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/5755/picture22ql.png
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/9955/picture32bj.png
In other words, deleting photos from library may not always lead to deleting the actual photos from disk, even if the trash in the library is emptied! In my opinion this is a bug and leads to unnecessary orphans and size bloat on disk. What do you think?
Also when burning the archive iPhoto library showed 3.2 GB from within iPhoto, it showed 5.19 GB in finder and when I was burning it on a DVD the size showed 3.9 GB!!
Just wanted to make you aware of this.
Roman

Dear Roman--I have had the same problem with iPhoto 6. I recently discovered that the iPhoto library contained many full-size images and movies which I had earlier trashed via the iPhoto application. In other words, when I discarded an image or movie when running iPhoto, the image or movie was not actually removed from the library (and my hard drive). Over time, the library became approximately 2 GB larger than it should have been. This is a waste of hard drive space which could become significant. To start tracking down the non-deleted movies, first create a smart album in iPhoto which displays all of your movies. Then, leaving the iPhoto application open, use the find command in the Finder to locate all of the movies in the iPhoto library folder. In theory, the number of movies should be the same in both the smart album and the Finder window. I found approximately 40 extra moves via the Finder. One by one, I compared the movies in the Finder window to the movies in the iPhoto smart album. After manually deleting those movies which iPhoto should have deleted long ago, I freed 500 MB of disk space. The process for images will be more tedious, and I hope someone finds a quicker way to perform this function. Good luck. --Tom

Library size incorrect

My iPhoto library for 06 is 21GB. I duplicate it and eliminate photos getting it down to 4.2GB (Jan-Apr 06)to burn to DVD. I duplicate the original again (21GB), delete Jan-Apr and attempt to get May-August down to around 4GB to burn another DVD. No matter how many photos I delete (and I've deleted all but 17 photos in May) the library still lists its size as 10.9BG. And yes, I've emptied the trash.
This has happened before, deleting photos and the library size not reflecting the correct size. What am I doing wrong?

John
Where are you reading the library size?
In the iPhoto Window the size shown is of the library as shown: the mix of Originals and Modified Pics.
In the Finder, the size of the iPhoto Library Folder is the total Originals, totla Modifieds, thumbnails and database files.
Regards
TD

Library size: what's "normal"?

I have around 13,000 images equaling 140 GB. When I first built a library, with normal rendered previews, the library was close to 19 GB.
I then rebuilt the library, I believe without previews, and it reduced its size to under 2 GB. Now, my libary has swelled to around 8 GB, even if I delete the 1:1 previews.
What is "normal" or reasonable when working with LR? How can I keep a balance between speed and reasonable library size? Is a new hard drive looming in my future?
I would appreciate guidance, clarity, and recommendations!
Thanks!
Reid

Hello, Reid. I recall your posting on this some time ago, and since then I concluded for the mix of images I put in, the library plus previews will equal somewhere between 8 and 12% of the overall. Recognizing milegae, of course, but it doesn't seem like you are out of line.

Library Size

Hi,
I was hoping to reduce the size of my library by relocating masters to DVDs.
After some tests here are some numbers I got:
Original Library Size with Consolidated Masters: 100%
After relocating masters it shrunk to: 39%
After deleting previews it shrunk a bit more to: 30%.
Is there some way of reducing that 30% even more ? What is contained in that 30% now that masters are out and previews are deleted ?
Thank you.
MBP 2.0 Mac OS 10.4.9 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

There are still thumbnails stored in the Library, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see anything without the DVDs being in the drive. But from the percentages, it wounds like either your originals are JPEGs (and the thumbnails are therefore relatively large in comparison), or not all of the Previews have been deleted.
Ian

Huge Library Size!

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for