Sharing iphoto library on two macs?

Hi Folks,
I have two macs in the house. One a mini linked to a tv and an iMac. The iMac holds my primary iPhoto Library. What I would like to do is share the same library with the mini mac, without having to use the sharing option. Can I place it on an external drive and link both macs to that library? I am running 10.5 if that makes any difference. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew
If you want the other user to have the same access to the library as you: to be able to add, edit, organise, keyword etc. then:
Quit iPhoto in both accounts
Move the iPhoto Library Folder to an external HD set to ignore permissions. You could also use a dmg.
(Some people have had success putting the library in the Users/ Shared folder. If you do this make sure the file permissions are set to allow read/write access to everyone.)
In each account in turn: Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting dialogue, select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new library location. From that point on, this will be the default library location. Both accounts will have full access to the library, in fact, both accounts will 'own' it.
However, there is a catch with this system and it is a significant one. iPhoto is not a multi-user app., it does not have the code to negotiate two users simultaneously writing to the database, and trying will cause db corruption. So only one user at a time, and back up, back up back up.
Regards
TD

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Can I sync iphoto library between two Mac's?

I have two Macs (an iMac and a Macbook Pro) and want to sync the iPhoto (6.0.6) library between the two so whenever I change one the other is updated. I thought about using iDisk but my library is apx 5gb. I am new to Macs- is there a utility built into OSX 10.4.9 or hopefully some freeware or very-cheap ware... preferably automated. Thank you very much.

brettjbyers
No you cannot sync an iPhoto library between two macs. If you do you will corrupt the iPhoto Library file. iPhoto is a consumer level app, and this feature is not supported.
What you can do is share the photos but not the library. Each machine will need to have it's own library file.
The easiest way to do it this is to enable sharing (in the iPhoto Preferences) on both machines (one sharing the library, the other looking for the share). When you do this the shared library will appear in the Source (or left-hand) pane and pics can be dragged from that to the library in the other machine.
Regards
TD

Sharing iPhoto Library between Two User Accounts

Is there any way to fully share a single iPhoto library between two user accounts on one machine (iMac 2.0GHz dual core Intel, 10.5.1, iPhoto '08), without using an external drive (because I don't have one)? By share, I mean each user has full rights and priveledges to the entire library, regardless of who uploaded the pics. Holding down the option key on iPhoto startup does not work because my wife can't access the pics I loaded even though she's pointing to the shared library in a shared folder.

If you want the other user to have the same access to the library as you: to be able to add, edit, organise, keyword etc. then:
Quit iPhoto in both accounts
Move the iPhoto Library Folder to an external HD set to ignore permissions. *You could also use a dmg*.
(Some people have had success putting the library in the Users/ Shared folder. If you do this make sure the file permissions are set to allow read/write access to everyone. But that's unlikely to work on 10.5 because of the way that the permissions have changed with the new OS.)
In each account in turn: Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting dialogue, select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new library location. From that point on, this will be the default library location. Both accounts will have full access to the library, in fact, both accounts will 'own' it.
However, there is a catch with this system and it is a significant one. iPhoto is not a multi-user app., it does not have the code to negotiate two users simultaneously writing to the database, and trying will cause db corruption. So only one user at a time, and back up, back up back up.
Regards
TD

Sharing iPhoto library between two user accounts on the same Mac

My wife and I each have an iPad and we share the same iMac. We each have our own user account on the iMac. She syncs with her account, and I sync with mine. This works fine in general, but we store all our photos within iPhoto on my account. She is therefore unable to sync the photos to her iPad. The same is true with the music that we keep on the iTunes in my user account.
Is there a way for her to sync so that the photos and music sync with her iPad also?

I have used a program called iPhoto Library Manager (http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/) for years and it has worked like a charm. The program handles all of the permission/subfolder aspects transparently. Our iPhoto library is stored in my wife's default location, but I have seamless read-write access to it. When I open iPhoto, I see the same thing she does, and I have complete control.
To answer your question about music, there are a couple of approaches. If you turn on Sharing in iTunes, and your wife's iTunes is set to look for shared libraries, she'll be able to have complete access to play anything in your iTunes library (as long as you have iTunes open). I believe she also has rights to copy files from your iTunes library into hers.
That's great for playback on a Mac, but what you can't do is sync an iPod/iPad/iPhone with someone else's shared library, so here's how I do it:
1) My iTunes library is our "primary" library, located in my Public folder (where other users have read-access).
2) In my wife's iTunes, library, I hit keystroke Apple-O to add content to her library, and navigated over to my iTunes Library in my public folder to select it. Once I did this, her iTunes library looked like mine.
3) The key thing is that under her iTunes Advanced Preferences, I ensure that "Copy content to iTunes library" is deselected. Otherwise, it would make a copy of my entire library on her side, and that would chew up a ton of disk space.
Note that I don't think it's entirely necessary to have the iTunes library in the Public folder. It could stay in the default location as long as you changes your music folder to have read-access by other users. I moved mine before I knew any better.
When I add new content to my library that my wife wants, we hit Apple-O from her side and add it to her library. This setup is kludgy, but a) both users can sync the music to iDevices and b) it doesn't require having two copies of everything. Note that unlike the iPhoto Library Manager solution, this is a static thing. You have to manually update the "satellite" library to keep it up to date with the main one.
I'm not in front of my Mac, so some of my notations may not be completely accurate.
Good Luck!

Sharing iPhoto Library on 2 macs

I have a G5 with my main iPhoto library on it. I also have a Mac Book. Both computers are on my wireless home network. Is there a way I can sync the library on my G5 with my Mac Book?

What do you mean by ‘Sync’?
Syncing can mean two-way copying. That is, changes on the Macbook get copied to the G5 while changes on the G5 get copied to the Macbook. If you attempt this you will corrupt both libraries,
If, however, you’re talking about one way copying: Changes on the G5 are copied to the Macbook (or vice versa), this is perfectly possible. This is simply a back up and can be done with any back up utility such as DejaVu. There are many other options, search on MacUpdate.
Other possibilities: move photos/albums/events between Libraries using iPhoto Library Manager.
Enable iPhoto Sharing in the Preferences for both iPhotos. The two libraries will appear in each other’s Source pane and pics can be dragged between them in the iPhoto Window.
Regards
TD

Sharing iTunes library between two Macs on Time Capsule

Hi there
I've just about persuaded my fiancee to get a MacBook, which would give us a mac-only household. If I got a Time Capsule, could we share an iTunes library? We each have an iPod and it would seem like a pain to have to recreate two entire libraries on the Time Capsule, much of which would be the same music.
I'm also assuming we could both use the TC as wireless Time Machine backup for our Macs - is this correct?
Finally, does anyone have a view on the likely range of TC relative to a standard Linksys 802.11g wireless router? The Linksys doesn't quite reach to the other end of my apartment and I'm wondering if the TC is likely to be better.
Very many thanks in advance.

Hello
You will run into pain. I just tried every found solution on Internet. Whatever you will do, it ends up in a hack. Fact is: iTunes administer your library only local. You CAN share your iTunes library on one Mac by menu settings in a network, BUT the Mac sharing its iTunes library MUST run all the time you want to listen to music from shared iTunes library even if the shared library (music files) is on the Time Capsule. It even wont work turn on "Wake up on LAN activity". The shared library will only be available as long as the Mac sharing its iTunes library is up and iTunes opened. That way it makes no big sense to have the music files in library physically on your Time Capsule. Another problem might come up when you stop listening shared iTunes library: As soon as the sharing Mac goes into StandBy mode (time depending) you can't access its library again. Standby must be stopped.
The other "solution" is also to have the whole library on a shared drive (Time Capsule) and to import it on both Macs. You will run quickly into Sync problems, beside its a pain to administer the song library that way: You have to import further songs twice, on both Macs to hear them on every one.
And of course, there are third pary hacks around nobody really wants to use.
After implementing Time Machine into Lepoard Apple wanted to make money out of it and offered Time Capsule mainly for storing data and backups (what both works great, also WLAN works fine).
I hope Apple will find a way in iTunes not to handle the music libraries so restrictive, so it can be accessed f.e. on Time Capsule while the Mac sharing its library must not run all the time.
Hope I could help.
Message was edited by: Tayger

Sharing iPhoto libraries between two Macs

Hi,
I've got a Mac mini set up in the living room on which I store videos, music and photos.
The photos are organized in iPhoto and arranged in 'Events' with the file name format being "YYYY MM eventname"
My wife would like to access those photos from her MacbookAir.
When sharing the iPhoto library, the photos come up in her iPhoto under 'shared' but all 25000 photos are in one big folder and no longer sorted the way they are on the Macmini.
Is there any way accessing the structure of the Mac Mini's Library via a sharing device?

Make Albums of those Events - which you can do just by dragging the Events to the Album heading in the left pane. Albums don't use any extra disk space.
Regards
TD

Sharing iPhoto library between a Mac and a PC

Anyone have any tips on this one?
My wife and I would like to share the iPhoto library between her PC laptop and my Mac Pro. What's the best way to go about this?
Would it be best to put the library up on the wireless drive attached to the Airport Extreme wireless and share that way. I would format the drive for PC so it would be readable from both computers.
Option 2 is to put the iPhoto library on an external PC formatted drive and and then physically attach it to whatever computer is using the library.
I know there are probably problems that come with these methods and possibly that it wouldn't work at all. Not sure exactly. Thought I'd check in before I opened a huge can-o-worms.
Thanks!

1. iPhoto has no cross-platform capabilities whatsoever.
2. Putting the iPhoto Library on a disk formatted for PC is a frequent cause of problems. Folks report issue with updating the Library, keywords, accessing the pics in other apps and so on.
3. Using iPhoto on a wireless connection is also not recommended. Connection dropouts are a fact of life on wireless (even very brief ones.) If one occurs while iPhoto is writing to the Library then the Library will be corrupted.
4. If you look inside the iPhoto Library Folder you can see how that Library is organised: there are various files, which are the Library itself and some ancillary files. Then you have three core folders
Originals are the photos as they were downloaded from your camera or scanner.
(ii) Modified contains edited pics, shots that you have cropped, rotated or changed in any way.
(iii) Data holds the thumbnails the the app needs to show you the photos in the iPhoto Window.
Remember: iPhoto depends on the structure as well as the contents of this folder. Moving things, renaming things or otherwise making changes will prevent iPhoto from working and could even cause you to damage or lose your photos.
Browsing through the Library folder with another app - for instance, whatever you use to view the pics on the Windows machine - can alter the structure of the Library. Another recipe for disaster.
What you can do:
1. Use an app that has a cross platform capability such as Microsoft’s Expression
2. Run a *Referenced Library*:
Simply go to iPhoto Menu -> Preferences -> Advanced and uncheck 'Copy Files to the iPhoto Library on Import'.
Now iPhoto will not copy the files, but rather simply reference them on your HD. To do this it will create an alias in the Originals Folder that points to your file. It will still create a thumbnail and, if you modify the pics, a Modified version within the iPhoto Library Folder.
However, you need to be aware of a number of potential pitfalls using this system.
1. Import and deleting pics are more complex procedures
2. You cannot move or rename the files on your system or iPhoto will lose track of them on systems prior to 10.5 and iPhoto 08. Even with the later versions issues can still arise if you move the referenced files to new volumes or between volumes.
3. Most importantly, migrating to a new disk or computer can be much more complex.
I don’t recommend it but this will allow you to share the Original files (though not the edited versions.)
Regards
TD

What is the best strategy for sharing iPhoto libraries between two macs?

I have an iMac and a new Airbook. I want to keep my iMac as the"main" iPhoto location, but want to also keep copies of the photos on my Airbook.
I could copy the library from one to the other to get the photos into the Airbook initially, but then how would I get subsequent ones in there? Is there a way to sync these two computers so that the photos flow from one to the other? One-way syncing would be ok...
Thanks.
Oh - and I use MobileMe if that helps.

There is an application that can sync two iPhoto libraries. It's SyncPhotos
Here's how it works:
1 - it compares the databases and/or album.xml files of Libraries A and B.
2 - the files in A that are not in B are imported into B by copying the original files from A into B's Import folder.
3 - it then does the same for B.
4 - metadata is not copied nor are Faces or Places.
It can be used to just copy from A to B and not sync both ways if desired. It will work with 2 libraries that are different versions, i.e. between an iPhoto 08 and iPhoto 09 library.
If you want to copy selected Events or Album from one to the other and keep the metadata, faces and places intact, you can use the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager. You would have to manually select the event/album to copy from A to B and do the same for B to A.
OT

Synchronising iPhoto library across two Macs

I have a MacBook and an iMac both with iPhoto '09 installed on them. When I'm travelling I take the MacBook with me and download any pictures I take from the camera to the MacBook, and when I get home I will copy the pictures across to the iMac.
Is there a way of keeping the iPhoto libraries on the two machines synchronised, so that pictures downloaded to the MacBook are (automatically) copied across to the iMac, and any changes made to pictures on the iMac are then synchronised across to the library on the MacBook?
As my photo library is quite big I don't particularly want to keep the library on my iDisk.

Is there a way of keeping the iPhoto libraries on the two machines synchronised, so that pictures downloaded to the MacBook are (automatically...
No.
What do you mean by "Sync".
The general term "Sync means two Libraries (A and B) are compared and files in Library A are copied to Library B, while files in Library B are also copied to Library A so that both Libraries are identical.
This is bi-directional copying and you cannot do this with automatically with iPhoto. No Syncing software is capable of parsing the iPhoto Library in this manner. One or both of your Libraries will be damaged if you try this.
You can have uni-directional copying - this is essentially backing up.
The nearest you can get to syncing is to use iPhoto Library Manager to move files/ALbums/Events plus assoicated metadata between Libraries. This process cannot be automated.
Regards
TD

Sharing iPhoto Library between Two Accounts

I've read many threads on this topic and have some limited understanding.
My situation is same as many others, I wish to have one person (me) to have full control over the library and like the other accounts on the iMac to have "read" privileges of the "master" iPhoto library only. But I would like them to be able to "copy" photos from the "Master" library to their own library for editing or using in class projects.
At the moment I moved the Library to the Shared Folder and enabled sharing. However I ran into the "Disk is locked" problem and the other accounts can't access the "Master" library in the "Shared Folder".
I looked at the "Media" account suggested by Terence Devlin but I think that means the other accounts will see the shared photos but can't use any of the iPhoto features such as viewing by Event.
Is there a way to setup iPhoto so each account can view both the "Master" library while inside iPhoto, with all the Sorting features working, and have their own local library setup where photos from the Master can be copied over and then manipulated?
Can this be done if setup on external hard drive?
If iPhoto can't do it, is there a third party software that allows this to be done? That is view/copy from Master library into local library?
Message was edited by: iMacaroon

I wish to have one person (me) to have full control over the library and like the other accounts on the iMac to have "read" privileges of the "master" iPhoto library only. But I would like them to be able to "copy" photos from the "Master" library to their own library for editing or using in class projects.
If you want the other user to be able to see the pics, but not add to, change or alter your library, then enable Sharing in your iPhoto (Preferences -> Sharing), leave iPhoto running and use Fast User Switching to open the other account. In that account, enable 'Look For Shared Libraries'. Your Library will appear in the other source pane.
Remember iPhoto must be running in both accounts for this to work. To use a photo in their own account they can simply drag the pic from the shared Library to their own inside the iPhoto Window.
I looked at the "Media" account suggested by Terence Devlin but I think that means the other accounts will see the shared photos but can't use any of the iPhoto features such as viewing by Event.
It doesn’t mean that. Viewers will be able to see the Events, Albums and so on. To use a photo in their own account they can simply drag the pic from the shared Library to their own inside the iPhoto Window.
If the other users have no ability to add or edit the Library there is no point whatever in using the Media Account.
Is there a way to setup iPhoto so each account can view both the "Master" library while inside iPhoto, with all the Sorting features working, and have their own local library setup where photos from the Master can be copied over and then manipulated?
See above.
Can this be done if setup on external hard drive?
This will allow users to manipulate the Library, so you won’t be the sole owner.
There are no third party apps that can share the Library.
Regards
TD

"Sync" iPhoto library between two macs

I have an iMac and a MacBook Pro. The iMac is my my iPhoto central - where I usually import, edit etc. However, I'd like to be able to do some editing, deleting, and general cleaning up of the iphoto library while commuting and using my MacBook Pro. Then I'd like to somehow sync that so that my iphoto library iMac reflects the same changes.
Any suggestions for a strategy/process for this - preferably without using 3rd party applications?
Would this be easier if I used Aperture?

Two possibiities:
1. Use iPhoto Library Manager to create a new Library. Then use it to move Events or albums to the new Library. Then when you've finished the work, merge the two libraries.
2. Or use Aperture to do the same thing. Select the projects in Aperture and export them as a new Library. After working on them import the library back to the main Aperture library.
So there are two ways to do what you want.One uses a 3rd party app, one uses an Apple app that is very much iPhoto's "big brother". It's more expensive and much more powerful. It has a significant learning curve.

Sharing a library between two Macs

Our main photo library is on my MB Pro and I want to share that with our other MB. I haven enabled sharing on mine and "Look for shared" on the MB and my library does show up. However, there are two issues:
1) Only the main folder shows up on the MB, it does not show the sub-folders. All of the pictures are there, but they are all shown under the main folder. Are the sub-folders not supposed to show up?
2) On the MB I want to be able to export the photo to the desktop, but I cannot do that. The Export option on the menu is grayed out and iPhoto will not let me drag the photo to the desktop. Is it possible to export these photos on MB?
Thanks,
Mike

Second Question first
First drag the pics from the Shared Library to the Library on the MB - you can do this in the iPhoto Window. Then you can export it.
First Question:
What do you mean by Folders? Do you mean Events? Events don’t share, Albums do.
Regards
TD

Two iCloud Accounts, one shared iPhoto library

I have a shared iPhoto library for two users, on an external HD. I have two iPhones, each with a separate iCloud accounts. Photos taken on each of the phones sync to the shared iPhoto library, but only the Photostream for the user who took the photo, but not the other user. I would like all photos taken on each phone to automatically sync to the other. I used to do this using the same iCloud account on each phone, but this is now not possible.
I'm using OS X Yosemite and iOS 8.1. Any ideas?

Hi....
What we've done so far is to just use the one account which we set up on the iMac & just disabled the contact sharing. I was having a look on the macrumours website & news from the developers is that you can use two accounts but for some reason certain functions are disabled in the secondary account namely the iPhoto stream.

Sharing iphoto library on network drive

Hello,
I'd like to use the same iPhoto library on two Macs.
Therefore, I intend to use my time capsule as a network drive. I learned from other posts that I can easily move my iPhoto library to the network share. Using two laptop on the same photo library, however, is not that easy. It seems that if both are accessing the library at the same time , unpredictable behavior might result.
Is it possible to avoid that issue or is there another software for photo management that can work with a shared library?
Thanks
Armin

I learned from other posts that I can easily move my iPhoto library to the network share.
True. Drag and drop is easy.
But it will damage your Library and risks data loss. See this article
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168
for more. Note the comment:
“Additionally, storing the iPhoto library on a network rather than locally on your computer can also lead to poor performance or data loss.”
Next:
It seems that if both are accessing the library at the same time , unpredictable behavior might result.
Nothing unpredictable at all. It either won't work or it will corrupt the Library. iPhoto is not a server application. It's a single-user database.
There are server apps, they start at around the $200 mark.
If you want to share the Library between two machines put it onto a portable hard drive, formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and plug it into either machine as necessary.

Sharing iphoto library on two macs?

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