IPhoto's deficiencies: Archiving and streamlining

Question

I feel there are two pressing deficiencies in iPhoto that a future release must address. Both are due to the burgeoning size of my iPhoto library.
1. iPhoto offers to archive photos to CD or DVD, but Apple have clearly indicated Optical media is on its way out.
I could export to individual files, but I fear I would lose valuable metadata created by iPhoto, such as event, face, description or location information.
What I want to do is archive selected photos to an archive format on an external hard drive; a monolithic format that preserves that metadata. iPhoto does not
allow this, and this appears to be a fairly glaring omission in a product that is 10-years mature.
2. It would be great to have a "downsizing" option that allows me to select (for example) photos in RAW format and downsample them in-place to JPGs of a defined quality, resolution or file size. Converting a thousand RAW photos to equivalent JPGs would save 12Gb of HDD space. Not trivial. I could ask iPhoto to export them and then re-import them, but this is cumbersome.
Am I missing something here? How can I archive my older photos without using optical media and keep all my iPhoto metadata?

Answer 1

I'm with Larry on both these points - and I post to amplify what he says.
Multiple Libraries give you the opportunity to archive easily.
For instance:
Use a  drive that is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
Now you have two full versions of the Library.
3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there
Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal
Some Notes:
As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.
You can choose which Library to open: Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using iPhoto Library Manager
As Larry says, remember to back up the archive(s) too. Also, remember to update them too when you update iPhoto.
In regard to this:
could export to individual files, but I fear I would lose valuable metadata created by iPhoto, such as event, face, description or location information.
File -> Export and in the resulting dialogue set the Kind to Jpeg or Tiff. (These two are the only formats that support standard metadata). Check the box at Titles and Keywords and at Location Information and your Photo Titles, Keywords, Description and GPS info will be written to the IPTC and Exif metadata of the Photo. These are industry standard metadata recognised by photo apps on every system.
Then export to folders named for your Events. If you're using iPhoto 11 v9.3 or later this is an option in the export dialogue. On earlier versions apps like iPhoto2Disk or PhotoShare will help you export to a Folder tree matching your Events.
So, with the exception of Faces, you can get any metadata you have added in iPhoto. Why not Faces? Because there is no agreed standard for sharing this information on any system. But you can use it for a keywording system, so all is not lost.
And again, as Larry says, iPhoto is specifically designed to retain the original image at all costs. If you don't want this then - to put it simply - iPhoto is not the app for you.