Too big iPhoto library

Hi,
I have folder with 79GB of photos. I am also using Lightroom and these data files has 1,4GB. The same folder (79GB) inported to iPhoto has library with 19GB. I found that Previews folder has 17GB.
Why is iphoto library so large? It is ok?
Thank you in advance.

Yes it's okay.
The difference is the Previews.
Your camera has an Auto-Rotate feature. However, the camera does not actually rotate any pixels in the file, but instead flags it with an instruction: "Display me this way". This is a tag in the Exif metadata.
When you import a file with this tag iPhoto creates a Preview version. It does this because most of the apps that integrate with it -  email clients, word processors etc - simply don't understand this Exif tag. So if you used the shot in a word processing doc, uploaded it to many Web site etc, the shot would come out sideways.
If you then try to Revert to Original, iPhoto will remove the edited version. However, when it then looks at the Original file again, it sees the flag, and creates a new rotated version. This loop will run as long as you Revert to the Original.
The solution is to either a: turn off the Auto-Rotate feature on your camera or b: rotate the photos prior to importing them to iPhoto.
Two bigger and more important questions: Why use iPhoto if you have Ligthroom? and Are you aware of the pitfalls of running a Referenced Libraries in iPhoto? See this for more.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3062728?tstart=0
Regards
TD

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