Manage iPhoto Libraries

Mac Gem of the Week
Two significant criticisms of iPhoto are frequently heard: poor performance with large photo Libraries, and a lack of easy-to-use support for multiple Libraries (the latter perhaps a necessity due to the former). Brian Webster's $20 iPhoto Library Manager 3.2.3 -- available at http://www.iphotolibrarymanager.com/ -- offers solutions to both issues. By letting you split your photos into multiple iPhoto Libraries, you'll see better performance. And by making it easy to work with those Libraries, it will make you actually want to use multiple Libraries.
When you first launch iPhoto Library Manager, it will display only your current iPhoto Library. If you already have multiple Libraries, click the Add Library button in the toolbar and then navigate to a Library to add it; repeat this process for each existing Library. This is a one-time process; once you've added your existing Libraries, they'll always be listed. If you want to create a new Library, simply click the New Library button, give it a new name, and then choose where to save it.
You can then switch between Libraries by choosing a Library and clicking the Relaunch iPhoto button. iPhoto Library Manager will relaunch iPhoto using the chosen Library. You can also switch between iPhoto Libraries using iPhoto Library Manager's Dock menu, which lists all of your Libraries, or by creating a Shortcut, which creates an icon in the Finder for a particular Library; double-click that icon and iPhoto will launch using that Library. Whichever method you choose, iPhoto Library Manager puts the name of the current Library in iPhoto's window title so you always know exactly which Library you're currently using.
But basic Library-switching is just the tip of iPhoto Library Manager's iceberg of functionality. When you select a Library in the list on the left, all albums and folders in that Library are listed in the middle column. On the right are displayed the current location of the chosen Library, the version of iPhoto it's currently compatible with, and its modification date. Click Calculate Size and iPhoto Library Manager will calculate the size of the Library. By clicking the Options button, you get a number of options for setting permissions on the chosen iPhoto Library. This can be useful if you share a particular Library -- one located outside of your user folder -- with other users of your Mac; you can set up permissions so that other users can modify files in the Library.
iPhoto Library Manager also has a number of advanced features that heavy users of iPhoto will appreciate: a Rebuild Library command for rebuilding a corrupt or damaged Library, an Extract Photos command for rescuing photos from a chosen Library, and an Import Photos command, which lets you import a folder of new photos directly into a particular Library without having to open that Library in iPhoto first. Finally, if you've got a photo-capable iPod, iPhoto Library manager will let you consolidate photos from across multiple iPhoto Libraries into a single folder on your hard drive, which you can then -- via iTunes -- synchronize with your iPod.
iPhoto Library Manager is a must-have utility for those who love iPhoto but whose photo collections have outgrown iPhoto's practical capabilities. It requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later and runs on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs. It is compatible with all versions of iPhoto, although some features work only with iPhoto 4.0.3 or later.