iPhoto Library Manager Icon

Introduction


iPhoto Library Manager's job is to enable people to use iPhoto with multiple photo libraries in any location they want on their hard drive, rather than being limited to the default library location. iPhoto Library Manager allows you to set up multiple photo libraries, switch between them easily, and copy photos from one library to another.

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There are three main parts to the main iPhoto Library Manager window:

Library list:
This is a list of the iPhoto libraries that iPhoto Library Manager knows about. You can add existing libraries to this list by clicking the "Add Library" button, or by dragging and dropping a library from the Finder into the library list. You can rename the items in the list by option-clicking a library's name and typing in a new name. By default, changing the name of a library in the list does not change the name of the actual library package on disk that it represents. However, if you want the list name to always match the name on disk, you can check the option to do so in the preferences.

Album list:
This displays the list of albums in the selected library. If you are using iPhoto 6 or later, you can also choose to view the rolls/events in the selected library instead of the albums. You can drag albums from this list and drop them on a row in the library list on the left to copy that album of photos to a different library. If a textual message is displayed in this area instead of your library's albums, that library may have a problem with its AlbumData.xml file. The albums are initially displayed in the order they appear in iPhoto, and rolls/events are displayed in the order they were imported into iPhoto. You can sort the list using the Sort submenu located in the View menu.

Note: if you have hidden photos in iPhoto, those photos will not be reflected in the photo counts in the album list even if you've chosen to temporarily show your hidden photos in iPhoto itself.

Library info:
This pane displays several bits of information about the selected library.

The Options button also lets you configure how you want permissions set on your library, and whether you want to automatically mount a remote volume the library is on when trying to open it. In the lower right hand corner of the window, the version of iPhoto currenly installed on your machine is displayed.

About iPhoto libraries >>