How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Mac

Posted on by

If you want your Mac's photos to wirelessly sync to all your other iOS devices and computers, you want to set up iCloud Photo Library: Apple's photo sync service lets you back up your images on all your devices, as well as access them — online or offline — on said devices. If you're willing to pay for the extra iCloud storage space, you can store an incredible amount of photos and videos, all accessible at the touch of a button or multi-touch screen.

  1. How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Mac Computer
  2. How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Mac Free
  3. How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Mac Download
  4. How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Machine

Here's how to set it up on your Mac and get everything configured to your liking!

How to set up iCloud Photo Library on your Mac

How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Mac Computer

How to safely move your Mac's iPhoto library onto an external drive. By Stephen Robles Saturday, January 24, 2015, 11:00 pm PT (02:00 am ET) Today's digital cameras and advanced smartphones like. Dec 14, 2017  Does your Mac's Photos library need some organization? Here are David's favorite tricks to organize your pictures. A lot of people put off organizing their Mac's photos library. Dec 06, 2018  Using the Mac Photos app. The Photos app on your Mac is the easiest place to download your photos from iCloud. Open Photos and then follow these steps. 1) Select the Library or Album where the photos you want are located. 2) Click one at a time while pressing Command to select several photos, or click Command + A to select them all.

How
  1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
  2. Select the Photos menu in the upper left corner of your screen.
  3. Go to Preferences.

  4. Click on the iCloud tab.

    Source: iMore

  5. Check 'iCloud Photos.' This will begin uploading any and all images you have stored in the Photos app to iCloud.

    Source: iMore

How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Mac Free

How to optimize your photo and video storage

If you routinely shoot 4K video or high-quality images on your iPhone, iPad, or DSLR, you may run out of storage space fast. (I have a 1TB iMac, but also have almost a terabyte of 4K video stored in iCloud — it gets unwieldy, fast!) This is especially true if you have a Mac laptop with limited hard drive space: It's nice to look at your iPhone's gorgeous Portrait mode photos, but not necessarily always practical to store all of them locally.

How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Mac Download

Thankfully, Apple offers an Optimize Storage option, which lets you store full-resolution photos and videos of only your most recently shot and accessed imagery; all older photos and videos are available to download via iCloud and are stored as low-resolution previews on your device to save space. You can switch between optimizing your Mac's photos storage or storing your full library locally: Here's how!

Note: If you plan on using Optimize Storage, we suggest having at least one device that stores your entire library locally (usually a Mac with a large local or external hard drive), so you have multiple backups of your photographs and video.

  1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
  2. Click Photos in the App menu in the upper left corner of your screen.

  3. Select Preferences from the drop-down menu.

    Source: iMore

  4. Click the iCloud tab.

  5. Click Optimize Mac Storage.

    Source: iMore

Full-resolution versions of your photos and videos will be uploaded to iCloud.

How to share photos with iCloud Photo Library

Apple's photo service doesn't just provide online backups and sync for your images and video: The company also offers a free sharing service that allows you to send shared albums to friends and family (or create a publicly-shared website). Here's how to turn it on for your Mac.

Questions?

Let us know in the comments below.

Updated January 2020: Updated for macOS Catalina. Serenity Caldwell worked on a previous version of this post

iCloud Photo Library: The Ultimate Guide

Main

More Apple TV+ content

Martin Scorsese's next movie might come to Apple TV+ after Paramount walked

Spiraling costs have put Paramount off Scorcese's next gig and Apple TV+ is one potential suitor. Netflix is said to be another potential avenue.

Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.

Before you start, be sure to back up your library.

Prepare your drive

You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).1 Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.

To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.

Move your Photos library to an external storage device

  1. Quit Photos.
  2. In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
  3. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
  4. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.2

  5. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
  6. If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
Computer

Delete original library to save space

After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.

How To Save Photo Library Pics In Your Machine

How to save photo library pics in your mac download

In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disk space.

Open another Photos library

If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:

  1. Quit Photos.
  2. Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
  3. Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.

1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.

2. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.