Ryan Estrellado

A common problem that emerges for digital shutter bugs is photo organization and data management.  Bringing home 3,000 photos from a family trip and wanting to have them stored and accessible on multiple computers can lead to a lack of control over the media and even some risk of data loss as you move files back and forth.

Specifically, my own problem was not having a way to manage two Macs with active iPhoto libraries and 8,000 photos.  To complicate things, the 8,000 photos were spread across the two Macs with each computer sharing an unknown quantity of duplicates and some degree of tagging and editing.  My goal was to move all of the photos to my desktop computer, reduce or eliminate duplicates, and retain all of the metadata.

Fat Cat Software’s iPhoto Library Manager has generated some buzz over it’s effectiveness to wrangle unruly photos across multiple library files, so I took it for a spin.

Here’s the set up I used to try this out:

• Dual G5 Power Mac
• Intel Core Duo Macbook
• Mac OS X 10.5.2
• iPhoto Library Manager 3.4 (purchased version - $19.95)

I purchased and installed the software on my Power Mac.  Once it was set up, the application was able to find both my Power Mac’s iPhoto library as well as my Macbook’s over my home network.  From there I was able to bring all of the photos from my Macbook’s library over to my Power Mac’s library with all the metadata intact.  As it imported the 3,000 photos from my laptop, it identified potential duplicates and prompted me to make a decision about whether or not to import.

As I reviewed my freshly imported photos on my Power Mac, I noticed that there were some duplicates that were missed by the application, but I found myself unable to complain considering that I thought the job at hand would be far more frustrating than it actually was.

This is only the tip of the iceberg for what iPhoto Library Manager is able to do.  Other features include splitting large libraries into smaller ones, syncing photos from multiple libraries with your iPod, and the ability to allow multiple users of a computer to share the same library on one machine.  Feel free to comment here on your experience using any of the other features.

You can read more about the features of both the free and purchased version at Fat Cat Software’s website:

Fat Cat Software

You can read other reviews of this application here:

Macworld Review

Apple Matters Review