I might be late to the game but there hasn’t been a free app in a long time that has rocked my world as much as iPhoto Buddy. It is a Mac OS X application that allows you to easily create, manage, and switch between multiple iPhoto Libraries. The advantages of splitting your One Huge Photo Library into multiple, smaller ones include improved iPhoto performance, increased flexibility in organizing your digital photo collection, and a consistency with most other Mac applications that allow their respective data to be stored in as many documents (in this case, “Libraries”) as you like.
If you happen to download and use iPhotoBuddy, make sure to send a donation!
(thank you sorella!)
am i correct in thinking that iphoto is not a ‘non-destructive’ system – that is, that photos lose some quality when they’re imported into iphoto and subsequently exported?
you’ll forgive the double negative, of course.
Apr 22nd, 2009 / 2:24 pm
oh yeah, I photobuddy is very useful. the author definitely deserves donations.
Apr 22nd, 2009 / 5:00 pm
If you just need to manage multiple libraries, try option + clicking iPhoto, it will ask you if you want to select or create a new library, quite nice.
Apr 22nd, 2009 / 10:17 pm
I’ve been using iPhoto Library Manager http://fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ Does the job.
Will check this out.
Apr 23rd, 2009 / 3:12 am
i switched to aperture recently and will not be going back to iphoto. All of the organization plus all of the editing.
No longer do i need to go to iphoto, edit in external, do it in photoshop, save, etc.
Plus with aperture, everything is modified to your original image and can be removed at any time. Changed your brightness and sharpness, 2 weeks ago, 2 months, 2 years? It’s too much now and looks like crap? Click the box and reset it, Presto.
Best thing since sliced, packaged , toasted and honeyed bread.
Apr 23rd, 2009 / 2:39 pm
Yes, like Marcel said, there doesn’t seem to be anything special that this app does that is not already built in OS X. The “option” trick works for iTunes as well. As soon as you launch either iPhoto or iTunes, hold down the option key and you will be prompted to choose a library or create a new one. This seems much faster than having to launch iPhoto Buddy and then create or add or choose a library there and then launch iPhoto.
May 7th, 2009 / 1:45 pm