Iphoto - should I just copy pictures into wife's account?

[CoolHands]

Right this whole sharing thing is pants. One computer, two accounts. I have previously NOT been copying photos from one device (eg my phone) into both accounts as it's a duplication and I'm thinking of the masses of harddrive space wasted by doing so. However it means joint pics eg of our kids isn't seen by one user or the other.

I used to have some kind of sharing thing turned on. But Yosemite has got rid of that. I don't want sharing by icloud or whatever as I don't want to upload and download many GB of pictures it's simply ridiculous.

So I've tried an external hardrive via https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517 so she can see all my pictures but it's stupid as I can't explain to my wife how to hold down option key and select a different iphoto account, (it seems a bit unreliable how to launch the correct one using that method) and anyway it's no good as then she can see my pics but not hers etc.

So final resort - import all those pics on external harddrive into her iphoto account. Is that what I need to do?

(I was holding off doing this hoping that the new 'Photos' replacement would not require all this, but it's still not launched and anyway I donm't know what it will do about sharing).

Really hacked off with it.

[Leithen]

CoolHands said:

So I've tried an external hardrive via https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517 so she can see all my pictures but it's stupid as I can't explain to my wife how to hold down option key and select a different iphoto account, (it seems a bit unreliable how to launch the correct one using that method) and anyway it's no good as then she can see my pics but not hers etc.

This would appear to be the best approach, but you would both have to have the external library as your default library. If your wife wants to have her own separate library, then copying into your own library is unavoidable.

We have large SD cards in our cameras and never delete photos from these devices or our phones without asking each other whether we have downloaded the pictures we want. Much easier in our experience to select via import and avoid duplicates.

The new Photos App is now available with the latest Yosemite update. It appears to be very cloud centric, however the Apple community forums suggest that the shared external library approach may still work.

[CoolHands]

cheers

bloody hell I do't want flipping cloud bks. Who needs to upload and download millions of pictures? WE just want to see them ourselves and they're all sitting right here on the computer!

[Leithen]

CoolHands said:

cheers

bloody hell I do't want flipping cloud bks. Who needs to upload and download millions of pictures? WE just want to see them ourselves and they're all sitting right here on the computer!

Well..... if you are taking most of your photos on iPhones, iCloud does make life very easy - they just "appear" in your photo library without any import hassle. There is also the safety/security aspect of in theory never losing any photographs through loss/damage of phones/computers. It does depend on good internet connection speeds though. No brainer if you have fibre IMO.

The Photos App is now geared toward whole libraries being uploaded and the need to pay for storage space in the cloud. I'm not sure I want to go down that route, but equally, as a backup option, it is probably not that badly positioned price-wise. My problem is the bandwidth in uploading 60+ Gig of photos....

If you are not uploading to the cloud, do make sure that you have a good backup system in place that caters for fire and theft. With photos and their accompanying memories being all digital these day, it's not as if you can keep your negatives in a separate place - you need to keep a backup elsewhere.

[jmorgan]

I have three libraries in iPhoto, sort of based around what camera and what computer I had at the time. Makes sense to me.

Anyhow, create the library and switch between them in "File" "Switch to Library".

Create library by holding "Option" key (Alt key) when opening iPhoto to create a new library. Then import to yours or the Mrs that way.

Now Apple Photo is out, I notice that cloud options are no longer happening in iPhoto (I think). I am back on iPhoto for the time being until I sort another organiser. Apple have gone too far for me.

[CoolHands]

spent about half the day (!) trying to export pics from my acc to her acc but no good - it seems to want to duplicate a pic if she does already happen to have it. Can't seem to identify them as duplicates for some reason. I did find one method that works (if I drag the Masters from my library into her iphoto - but one problem with that is I didn't want to import ALL my stuff into hers only the family pics.

its never easy...

[jmorgan]

I understand that messing around with masters is dodgy and can corrupt the database.

If I want to export photos, I open the library I want, select the events (control click for multiplier events) then "File" "Export" and select the option where it says "Kind" and set to "Original" and set "Sub Folder Format" to "Event Name".

Select the folder you want them to go into.

Then import to the library you want them in.


PS. Hope you have them backed up first.

Edited by jmorgan on Sunday 12th April 20:03

[mojitomax]

Having two accounts on a computer is in effect having two virtual computers running on one machine.

So yes, in the same way as if she had a separate Mac she'd have to import them onto her mac, in this way she still needs to import them into her Mac account.

What I would consider is using iPhoto for each of your personal libraries in each user account.

Then you have two options.


1. Make a separate user account with shared photos. You can switch accounts easily using the status bar and if your Mac has an ssd the user change will be very fast.

2. Put the shared photos in a new library in the new photos app. This wil be separate from iPhoto. Keep that library on a shared folder and point photos to that library.

So you are using iPhoto for personal stuff and photos for shared stuff (or vice versa)

[BERGS2]

I am experiencing similar pain at the moment -

Having just switched my iphoto library into dropbox - which seem to work well (it still pulls the photos on my macbook)

However - now that Dropbox uses Carousel for Photos - my Iphoto library (some 10k pictures) has hugely expanded as (i'm guessing) given that iphoto seemed to saved for one image master, one for each of the faces and the amends - the library is now 135k and still syncing....

does anyone know of a setting/fix to either make dropbox only see the 'master' within iphoto - or am i simply trying to mix oil and water trying to get iphoto to sync with a cloud based seervice that isn't Icloud?

[Bikerjon]

Things were so much easier when iPhoto allowed library sharing on the same network. I'll never understand why that feature got binned. Photostream is useful for sharing an album or two though. Haven't delved too deeply into the new Photos App yet, so not sure if the sharing features have improved or wether everything is iCloud based - I suspect it might be.

[soad]

Wife's photos? Post them here.

[Bikerjon]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I agree, the local shared folder sounds like the right way to go for the OP. Would still need to merge the libraries to get to that point though and the easiest way is via a 3rd party tool (think I've used "library manager" in the past) I'm also not sure if the photostream import works if you share the same library with 2 different accounts, but that may not necessarily be an issue.

[mojitomax]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

This is the easiest way. But it's an all or nothing approach. So the entire library will be shared. Not a problem unless you want to keep some photos only in 'your' library