A few months ago when OS X Yosemite was first shown to the public, Apple demonstrated its new Photos app. This app is meant to simplify photo management for all Mac users by emulating the looks and functions provided by the Photos app on both the iPhone and the iPad. This simplification comes at a cost though: when it finally releases its Photos app, it will replace iPhoto, its legendary photo management app that has been on every Mac by default for years.

This move will definitely be hard on a lot of users, especially those who, like me, got used to working with iPhoto for so many years.

Even worse: for most of us, our photo albums hold a huge number of dear memories, and as with every update, there is always the possibility of something going wrong when the time comes to migrate to the new Photos app.

2020-4-6 The iCloud Photo Library is a great first backup. But as we consistently recommend here at Apple ToolBox, please backup in more than one place. Do not ONLY have an iCloud Photo Library backup of your photos. Note: If you use iCloud Photos and you restore the System Photo Library from a Time Machine backup, any photos you’ve deleted since the last Time Machine backup are restored to your Mac and uploaded to iCloud again.If you chose to optimize Mac storage, Time Machine may not have a backup of your originals. However, the originals are stored in iCloud. 2018-1-21 I am using iCloud photo library and have chosen to download originals to my MacBook Pro because I want to have local copies of all my photos. My SSD is almost full and I will most likely have to switch to optimising mac storage and storing originals only in iCloud. I would like to be able to.

With that considered, here are a couple of short guides on how to back up your iPhoto library both the simple way and the not-so-simple way.

Back Up Your iPhoto Library: The Easy Way

First, the good news (or bad depending on how you see it). In a very Apple way, in order to keep things simple and integrated on OS X, Apple consolidates your photos into a single, giant file that represents your photo library. But this file is not composed of just your photos, it also holds very important meta-data, like your events, photo stream shots and such.

To find your iPhoto library, open any Finder window and click on the Pictures folder. There you should find it.

2020-4-6 Save valuable space by moving your Mac Photos library to an external hard drive. Plus find out how to back up your entire iCloud Photos Library! That being said the easiest way to search for photos and/or restore things from your backup is to ensure you’re using the Photos app on your computer. If you just have random photos scattered throughout your Mac it can be harder to track those down, whereas Photos helps you keep your library organized. How to set up a Time Machine backup.

Photos, by connecting to iCloud, means you can have one synced photos library across all your devices, such as here on our iPad.As we mentioned, by default Photos saves its library in your Pictures folder, which is in your user folder like we did.If you want to know exactly where your library is, you can open Photos and then “Preferences” (“Command +,”), and the “General” tab will show you the location, which you can then open in Finder. We don’t need to have our Photos library on our Dropbox, however, because Photos is hooked into iCloud, so it is automatically backed up and synced to any other devices (iPad, iPhone, other Macs) logged into that iCloud account. We want to move it back to our user folder so Dropbox stops constantly updating.To move our Photos Library, we drag it to its new location, double-click it, and the Photos app will now point to it.So, that was pretty easy. Mac photos has attempted to repair the library. On our system, we see our Photo Library is in our Dropbox, but yours will almost likely show up in your user folder.We click the the “Show in Finder” button and here’s where our “Photos Library” is located.

To back it up manually and without complications, all you have to do is copy the entire file to any destination you want. It can be a USB flash drive or a portable backup disk if you want and that’s it.

Cool Tip: If you want to transfer your iPhoto Library to another Mac just plug your drive to it and copy your iPhoto library backup to the target Mac’s Pictures folder. Be warned though, this will replace your existing iPhoto library. So this tip is mostly targeted at new Mac owners or for those who perform a clean install of OS X.

Back Up Your iPhoto Library: The Less-Easy Way

If you want more control over what to back up from your library, there’s a way to do it that requires some digging around but that is perfect for that purpose.

For this, you have to head to the same iPhoto Library file within your Pictures folder, except this time instead of copying it, right-click on it and then select the Show Package Contents option.

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Then, head to the Masters folders. There you will see several folders categorizing the different years your photos belong to.

When you open each of them, you will find folders for the different events, albums and dates that contain the photos as you organized them in iPhoto. There you will be able to select exactly what you want to back up and the way that you want to back it up.

How To Backup Mac Photos Library To Dropbox

And there you have it. Now you will always be in control of your photo library and most importantly, you will have peace of mind in case things don’t go that well with the new Photos app. Enjoy!

Also See#backup #iphoto

Did You Know

It's estimated that people share more than 700 billion photos per year on Facebook.

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Photos User Guide

How To Backup Photos Library On Mac To External Drive

If you back up your Mac with Time Machine, you can easily restore a photo library to its state when the last backup was performed.

Mac Photos Library

Note: If you use iCloud Photos and you restore the System Photo Library from a Time Machine backup, any photos you’ve deleted since the last Time Machine backup are restored to your Mac and uploaded to iCloud again. If you chose to optimize Mac storage, Time Machine may not have a backup of your originals. However, the originals are stored in iCloud.

Merge Photos Library

If the Photos app on your Mac is open, choose Photos > Quit Photos.
Click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and choose Enter Time Machine, or choose the Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Time Machine.
Time Machine opens and shows your available backups.
Click the date of your last backup, navigate to the backup of your photo library, then click to select it.
Click Restore.
Depending on the size of your library, it may take some time for your library to be restored. When you next open Photos, you should be able to use your Photos library as it was when last backed up.

See alsoCreate additional photo libraries in Photos on MacBack up the library in Photos on MacRepair your library in Photos on MacChange where your files are stored in Photos on Mac

How To Backup Photos Library Mac