How Do I Backup My Photo Library On Mac

How To Backup Photo Library On Mac
Back Up Iphoto
How Do I Backup My Photo Library On Mac Iphone

Jul 12, 2017 Regardless, to create a new System Photo Library, first open the location where your current system library is and drag it to a backup spot if you want to keep it (recommended). Drag it to the Trash if you don’t. Next, open Photos, which will spur the following prompt.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How to Set Virtual and Cool Backgrounds in Zoom

Have you ever had trouble finding a photo and feared the worst — that you accidentally deleted it? Or maybe you’ve heard a friend bemoan of how their hard drive failed and they lost everything from pictures of their firstborn to that once-in-a-lifetime selfie with Michael Jordan?

After taking a moment to realize how fortunate you’ve been to have not lost any pics yourself, you probably think, “I should start backing up my photos.” Well, you’ve found the right article. We’re going to go through a few solutions for backing up your Mac and, more specifically, your photo collection. Because while losing an important piece of work is tragic, it’s usually replaceable. The moments that your pictures represent are fleeting, and there’s no way to recreate them.

Before you back up your photos

There’s truth to the adage garbage in, garbage out. So before you even ask yourself, “How do I back up my photos?” you’ll want to make sure your photo library is cleaned up. Space is precious, so backing up duplicate and almost-duplicate pictures will be a waste. Thankfully, a Mac app like Gemini 2 can help you unclutter your photos before you back them up. And the best part is, you can download it for free to give it a try.

Best ways to back up your photos on Mac

As mentioned earlier, there are a couple ways to go about backing up your photos. The ones we’re going to go over are:

iCloud
Time Machine
Google Photos
External hard drive

After reading this article, you’ll be able to weigh out the cost versus convenience for each of these options and see which one works best for you. At the end of the day, the best way to backup photos is the one that’s easy for you to use on a regular basis.

iCloud for cloud-based photo backup

The first method is the one that comes standard with your Mac and doesn’t require you to install any additional software. iCloud is cloud-based storage made by Apple and available to anyone with an AppleID. Using iCloud to back up photos is easy thanks to automatic backups and syncing, built into both iPhone and Mac. All you have to do is make sure iCloud is turned on on each device, and you’re all set.

The catch, as there always is, is that you only get 5 GB for free. And that includes not only photos, but also anything else you decide to store on your iCloud drive. Additional storage can be purchased and is fairly affordable compared to other cloud storages.

How to back up photos to iCloud

Backing up to iCloud depends on the device you’re using. Since we’re talking about Mac here, this is how you set up iCloud backup in macOS: setting we’re going to go through how to do it on both iPhone and Mac.

Go to System Preferences > iCloud
Click Options next to Photos
Select iCloud Photos

After you turn on iCloud Photos, you’ll get access to other options for syncing and sharing your photos.

This might be helpful: The beginner’s guide to iCloud Photo Sharing

Time Machine to back up your photos and everything else

The next type of backup veers away from the cloud-based model. Time Machine is the built-in Mac application that will automatically backup your Mac to an external hard drive. Which means you will have to buy an external drive or use a network drive, but the bright side is as long as you have the hard drive plugged in your Mac will be backed up.

One of the major benefits to Time Machine is that it’s a differential backup. That means that after the initial backup it will only back up the files that are new and/or changed. So every backup after the first one will be faster because, in theory, it’s backing up fewer files.

Does Time Machine back up my photo library?

How To Backup Photo Library On Mac

There can be some confusion as to what Time Machine backs up once it’s configured. Simply put, it backs up everything, including any photos stored on your Mac.

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

Once you plug an external hard drive into your Mac, you should be automatically prompted to use the drive with Time Machine. iIf you’re not, you can do it manually:

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Time Machine
Click Select Disk
In the Time Machine preferences window, select your external drive from the list of available disks
Then click Use Disk

If the hard drive is not formatted properly to be used with Time Machine, you’ll be prompted to format it. You’ll also notice an option to encrypt the hard drive and your backup, which adds an extra level of security in case you misplace the external drive.

Google Photos for a free photo backup

The next option is another cloud-based backup solution, Google Photos. While not as well-integrated into iPhone and Mac as iCloud, Google Photos offers equally easy setup and ongoing backups.

The biggest difference between Google Photos and iCloud though is that with Google Photos you can store an unlimited amount of pictures — as long as you agree to have those photos compressed. While most people won’t notice the difference between compressed and uncompressed photos, it’s still something worth noting. If you choose to upload your images at full quality, you’ll be using your Google Drive space, of which you get 15GB for free. Additional storage can be purchased.

How to back up photos to Google Photos

Like iCloud, Google handles backups on a per-device basis, but in this case we’ll be covering how to set up a Google Photos backup on Mac:

Download and install the Google Backup and Sync app on your Mac
Sign in with your Google Account
Select whether to back up only photos or videos or all files
Select all folders you want to back up
Under “Photo & video upload size,” select your upload quality
Click Start

This might be helpful: Best photo sharing sites you can use for free

External hard drive: The old school way to back up pictures

This last option will definitely take the most manual labor. On the other hand, using an external hard drive will give you the most control over what you’re backing up, and many prefer to have it the old-fashioned way. Whether you’re using Photos, another photo manager, or just have pictures scattered around your Mac, you’ll be able to back them up. It’ll just take you a little bit of time to do it yourself.

How to back up photos to an external hard drive

Open Finder > Pictures (or wherever your images are)
Select your Photos Library, the folder you want to back up, or individual files
Drag and drop the file onto your external hard drive in the left column.

While this method gives you the most freedom and assurance that you’re backing up exactly what you want, if you make any changes to your Photo Library on Mac, you’ll have to back it up all over again.

Back Up Iphoto

TIP:
As you back up and re-back up photos to an external drive, eventually you might find it riddled with duplicates. Gemini 2, the Mac app we mentioned earlier, can also scan your external HDD for duplicate photos, making it easy to delete them.