12.3. Managing Photo LibrariesiPhoto can comfortably manage as many as 25,000 photos in a single collection, give or take a few thousand, depending on your Mac model and how much memory it has. But for some people, 25,000 pictures isn't a very distant threshold. As your collection of digital photos grows into the tens of thousands (and if you have a digital camera, this will happen sooner than you think), iPhoto eventually starts slowing down as it sifts through more and more data to find and display your pictures. At that point, scrolling the photos in the main Photo Library becomes an exercise in patience that would drive a Zen master crazy. When your Photo Library becomes too large to manage comfortably, you can always do what people used to do way back in iPhoto 2, when the limit was only 2,000 pictures: Archive some of the photos to CD or DVD using the Burn command described earlier, and then delete the archived photos from your library to shrink it down in size . For example, you might choose to archive older photos, or albums you rarely use. Note: Remember, archiving photos to CD using the Burn command doesn't automatically remove them from iPhoto; you have to do that part yourself. If you don't, your Photo Library won't get any smaller. Just make sure that the CD you've burned works properly before deleting your original photos from iPhoto. 12.3.1. Multiple iPhoto LibrariesHere's a fantastic way to keep your Photo Library from becoming impossibly bloated without transferring part of it to a CD: Start a new one, right there on your hard drive. Here's what splitting your photo collection into smaller libraries gains you:
12.3.1.1. Creating new librariesFor the first time ever, iPhoto provides a built-in tool for retiring one Photo Library and starting a fresh one. You can use this trick both to create new libraries and, thereafter, to switch back and forth between several of them:
Using this technique, you can spawn as many new Photo Libraries as you need. You can archive the old libraries on CD or DVD, move them to another Mac, or just keep them somewhere on your hard drive so that you can swap any one of them back in whenever you need it, as shown in Figure 12-4. As for how you swap them back in you have two options: Apple's way, and an easier way. 12.3.1.2. Swapping libraries (Apple's method)Once you've built yourself at least two iPhoto Library folders, you can use the same Option-key trick (see step 2 above) to switch among them. When the dialog box in Figure 12-3 appears, click Choose Library, and then find and open the library folder that you want to open.
When iPhoto finishes reopening, you'll find the new set of photos in place. 12.3.1.3. Swapping libraries (automatic method)If that Option-key business sounds a little disorienting, you're not alone. Brian Webster, a self-proclaimed computer nerd, thought the same thingbut he decided to do something about it. He wrote iPhoto Library Manager, a free program that streamlines the creation and swapping of iPhoto libraries. Waste no time in downloading it from the "Missing CD" page at www.missingmanuals.com or Brian's own site at http://homepage.mac.com/bwebster. The beauty of this program is that it offers a tidy list of all your Library folders; you can switch among them with two quick clicks. Here are a few pointers for using iPhoto Library Manager:
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