Use iPhoto Library Manager For Many Libraries.

I’ve got one iPhoto but many photo collections. How is that possible? iPhoto holds everything, right?

iPhoto can manage more than one iPhoto library. Do it free, the Apple way, or free the professional management way, with iPhoto Library Manager.

Here’s the deal. Apple has provided a little known way to create and manage multiple iPhoto libraries. It’s a simple trick, it’s free, anyone with iPhoto can do it.

Hold down the Option key on your Mac’s keyboard, then open iPhoto. What you get is a pop up dialog box which asks you to Create a Library, or Choose a Library.

This isn’t difficult. Click the Create button and you can create a new iPhoto library and keep the old one. Once you’ve created one or more iPhoto libraries, hold down the Option key and open iPhoto and click the Choose button.

You’ll get another dialog box with a list of the iPhoto libraries you created, including your original iPhoto library. One iPhoto, many iPhoto libraries of photos. It’s a great way to segregate photos; business, family, vacation, children, whatever.

Is there a better way than that to manage multiple iPhoto libraries? Yes, and no. iPhoto Library Manager does the above, and adds a few extra tricks which make it worth the price of admission.

If all you want and need is a couple of extra iPhoto libraries, Apple’s Option key method works fine. If you want features, try iPhoto Library Manager.

For example, if you want to switch from one library to another, click the shortcut file. If you want to see which albums are in which library, click Info at a Glance.

It’s also easy to copy photos from one library to another, and the benefits include retaining titles, comments, keywords, and your personal ratings. iPhoto Library Manager also lets you share your photo libraries with other Mac users on the same Mac. That’s handy for Mac users at home.

You can also synchronize your multiple iPhoto libraries with your iPod. It’s just a couple of clicks to merge multiple iPhoto libraries into a single library. Sometimes the iPhoto library becomes corrupt and needs to be rebuilt. iPhoto Library Manager can rebuild and extract photos from a bad library.

See? All the little features you can think of in one quite affordable Mac utility. iPhoto Library Manager is free, but all the advanced features come with a price tag, $20.

Frankly, I’m impressed. It does exactly as you expect it to, and then a little more. For example, it’s one thing to merge multiple libraries, but if you have, say, 10,000 photos and you want to create five separate libraries, how do you do it?

iPhoto Library Manager does that, too. What about importing new photos into a specific library? It does that, too.

Multiple iPhoto libraries that merge, divide, sync, share, copy, switch, import, and provide instant information and first aid. Cool. iPhoto Library Manager is easy to use and affordable, and a bargain value with try before you buy.

Are you running more than one iPhoto library? Got a big one you’d like to reduce in size? Share your iPhoto experience in the Mac360 Comments section below.