I can see that I can put the library elsewhere. However, I'd like to keep some photos on my computer. If I would be using iCloud, I could have all my photos out there, and only selected ones synced with my computer (cf.: the second part of my question). Is it possible to do the same with an external drive (USB), or a NAS, or with Time Capsule? It would be like having the main photo repository on an external drive, and have only selected photos on my computer (let's say the photos of the past year). – May 1 '15 at 13:05.

You do it exactly the same way as iPhoto: Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Quit Photos. Copy the Photos Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.

How To Use External And Referenced Libraries With Photos For Mac Pro

Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching Photos. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.

The option in Preferences allowing designation of a System Library refers exclusively to a scenario where a: there is more than one Library and b: one is using iCloud. As only one library can be used with iCloud, that's how you nominate your preferred one. It has no role in moving the Library. The top answers are good, but the completely correct answer is to manually switch between the libraries when necessary by repointing the app to the library you wish to manipulate. This implies you need to manually import your photos from the laptop library when you want to archive them to the external library (photos older than 1 yr per your example). I used apps that were developed for the iPhoto app in the past to do just that. They automated switching libraries and I archived via importing into the 'master' library.

How To Use External And Referenced Libraries With Photos For Mac Mac

How To Use External And Referenced Libraries With Photos For Mac Download

Unless metadata can be lost through an import or some type of issue similar to that which I am not aware of, I don't see anything wrong with this tactic.