Hosting iPhoto Images on a Network
After years of collecting photos and organizing them in iPhoto, I realized that not only was it taking up a large portion of my hard drive (30%), but that they were difficult to share. Also, I would feel better if they weren’t stored directly on my MacBook in case it was lost or stolen.
In this article:
- How to set up a network share for iPhoto
- How to set up iPhoto for network storage
- Limitations and benefits of this setup
Difficulty: Nuanced Novice
(You don’t need a degree, but you have to be familiar with the lingo)
Step 1: The Hardware
The Big Picture
Conceptually you need a central location on your LAN that you and other users will access for photos. I chose the WD MyBook World Edition 1 TB network drive. For $150, it’s more than enough room. Because I’m paranoid about hardware failure, I bought another 1TB drive so that I can mirror them in case one fails. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this step! You don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket and have it break. I have both drives set up on my Power Mac G5 with a backup application set to mirror the drive every night.
Regardless of the hardware choice, set up folders and shares as desired and make sure the appropriate users have Read/Write privileges for the folders as needed.
Once completed, move all of your images (preferably in an organized fashion) into the desired shared folder(s). Once this is done, go to Step 2.
Other Options
Another way to do this is to get a Firewire or USB drive and share it on your network. The G5 I have is almost 7 years old, but it has more than enough juice to do the work I need it to do for this project. If you don’t have a computer to attach these drive to, the best option is to make sure both drives have network connections (Ethernet) and set up the backup cycle on your primary. You’d have to remember to let the computer run and not Sleep or Shut Down overnight which the mirror process complete. For my G5 with 600GB of data to mirror, it takes about 1-5 hours depending on how much data has changed between sync events.
Step 2: The Software
Fresh Setup
This is the easy part. In iPhoto, browse to the following menu item:
iPhoto>Preferences>Advanced
Uncheck “Copy items to the iPhoto Library”
What this means: Typically, iPhoto will copy the image to its own directory (on your hard drive) and store the image, all of its meta data and edited versions there. By unchecking this, you are telling iPhoto to keep the image where it is. However all of the meta data will be kept on your local machine still.
Once you have done this, import your photos from the network drive:
Browse to the network folder and select the photo folder you wish to import. If you have more than about 5,000 images, this could take quite a bit of time. I have over 15,000 and it took a few hours.
Transitioning
If you already have iPhoto set up with the events, faces, and places you like, you may have to start from scratch. Although it’s not tough, you will have to move you library to the shared network location and re-import your images. Then, you’d have to re-tag them as necessary. This may be a big step for some. I have yet to test moving an existing library, importing the files, and see if the meta data sticks. I’ll have more on this later.
Step 3: Benefits and Limitations
The most obvious benefit is that you can have multiple users accessing the same image files. This is helpful in keeping your source files clean and organized. I have done the same with videos and files that I need to share. I can use the external drive as a central location from which to share everything between multiple machines and operating systems.
Before you jump into this head first, keep in mind a few limitations. Since all of your images are stored on a separate drive, you will not have access to them if you are outside your local network. You can take that drive with you, and you would have access to them, or you can set up a VPN that would allow you to access you local network when you are remote. Since I do most of my editing in my office, this is an acceptable limitation. I will set up a VPN, however, just in case I need to get to the files in a pinch.
If you are attempting this and need some help, don’t hesitate to contact me. Use the link on the right.