Can I Use My Imac As "the Cloud"?

[LifeLines]

Here's what I'm hoping I can use BTS for:

• I have an old, slow iMac desktop that has a large hard drive. This is my backup Mac, and I'd also like to use it as my main storage for photo and video files.

• The device I do most of my daily work on is a faster MacBookPro laptop with a smaller hard drive. If I'm working on, say, a newsletter on my MBP, I want to be able to access the photos that are stored on my iMac. I don't want to sync all the photos because that will fill up my MBP. I just want to be able to look through the image library that is stored on the iMac, select the photos I want to use for the project, and then copy those few photos to my MBP.

• I use Apple's Photos app to organize and store my photos. I have two separate .photoslibrary files—one for personal photos and one for project photos. Both these library files are currently stored on a removable drive that I plug in to my laptop when I'm working on a project. Essentially I'm hoping I can use BTS to eliminate the need to drag this drive around the house when I decide to work on something.

 

So...

• I've downloaded the Sync app to my iMac.

• At the moment I am copying one of my .photoslibrary files from the removable drive to a folder on my iMac desktop. (It's a large file and a slow computer, so it will take some time.)

• Once that file has finished copying, that's the folder I will choose in the "Add folder" step.

 

Will that then allow me to:

1. Access that photo library from my MBP? That is, can I open up that library in the Photos app on my laptop, find the photos I want, and export them to my laptop hard drive?

2. Upload photos I've taken with my iPhone into the albums I've set up in that photo library?

 

Again, I don't want to sync all three devices. I want the iMac to serve as the main repository that can receive new files from the iPhone and the MBP, and export specific files to the iPhone and the MBP.

 

Does that make sense? Is that the kind of thing BitTorrent Sync is intended for?

[Moe]

This is not ideal for Sync and would not work.

If you would have your pictures in a folder structure like say ~/Users/LifeLines/Pictues/Project/ (on your backup iMac) and you add that folder to Sync and then run Sync on your MacBook Pro and add that Project folder as Selective Sync folder you would be able to selectivly download pictures on your MacBook Pro.

 

Right now Selective Sync does not support Thumbnail preview. So you won't see what the images are until you actually download them.

 

I, speaking for myself, don't know of any good way to achieve your needs and to be honest I don't know if it is possible.

Since the structue of the .photoslibrary file is just more than a folder. There are a lot of databases in the background managing the files etc. You can easily corrupt that database if you're not carefull.

 

But, if you had a copy of the .photoslibrary on your MacBook Pro and your iMac you can the Picture folder to BitTorrent Sync and have it fully sync the whole thing. Then if you add a folder you can have your library in sync wherever you open it. But that means that you need to have the disk capacity.

 

Maybe someone else has an idea how to tackle that issue..

You definitely, before playing around with that, make sure to have a backup of your .photoslibrary! That is essential.

[LifeLines]

Thanks Moe. I've been playing around with this, and I think it's actually working! I had to spend some time updating the desktop OS, so that I was running the same version of Photos on both computers. After doing that, I opened up my .photoslibrary file on the desktop. It took a few minutes to upgrade the library to the new version of Photos, but it worked, and all my photos were in their correct albums when the file fully opened.

 

I had emailed myself a link, and I clicked that link from my MBP. It took a few seconds, but Sync opens a window with the folder I created, "Image Libraries." That name is a link, and when I click on it, another window opens up, and I can see the Photos file, "ProjectResource.photoslibrary." When I double-click on that, Photos opens on my MBP, and I can see all the albums in that library. I can choose a photo and export it to my MBP, where I can open it in Photoshop or drag it to the folder of the project I'm working on.

 

I do want to be careful not to corrupt this library file, so I will probably only upload new photos and create new albums on the desktop. I'll also maintain a backup on the removable drive that used to be my main library file, and of course I have Time Machine running.

 

But I'm excited about the possibilities!

[Moe]

Amazing! Glad it does work!

 

And it did not download the WHOLE library to your MacBook Pro? Just the single picture that you wanted? And that inside of the Photos.app ?

[LifeLines]

Ok, now I'm not sure. I opened the link a couple of times, and that opened the Photos app on my MBP. From there I was exporting images to the desktop of my MBP. But I noticed that my available disk space was getting smaller, so I looked around and found a Photos library file in a BitTorrent Sync folder under my username. Apparently BTS was in fact copying the whole library to my laptop. 

 

But, I thought, maybe that's ok. I thought I could just delete the library file from my laptop after I'm done using it each time, and I could just use the link I had emailed myself whenever I wanted to access the library again. So I deleted the library from my laptop, but then the link doesn't work. So it looks like I'll have to go back to my desktop and re-send a new link.

 

Now I'm wondering if there's a way I can just use Apple's File Sharing preference to do what I want to do. I'll have to look into that.

 

Thanks for helping me think through this!

[Alphaman]

If you're going to continue in this vein, then you should be very careful to ensure that only one machine at a time is connected to your Photos library; having multiple systems running simultaneously, even when sync'd like this will cause data corruption.

I think that what you are describing sounds exactly like the functionality of iCloud Photo Library. You can set your MBP to only download thumbnails until you actually want the full sized photo downloaded, but set the iMac to host the full res images. Your MBP would be able to browse the database and view the thumbnails, but as soon as you tried to manipulate an image, it would download the full-size version stored on your iMac/iCloud. This is done in Photos' Preferences, under the iCloud pane (Optimize Mac Storage). Only thing is, you've probably got well over the 5GB free space they offer, and may have to pony up the 99¢ for 50GB in the cloud.

I don't know of any way to just copy the meta data plus thumbnails, but not the actual images (and I used to use rsync/Chronosync for backing up my photos for many years, until it got to the point where the data corruption and loss was too egregious, that I finally gave up and use the Apple-proscribed method.) I think you'll find that syncing the library will only copy the full db and photos, filling up your MBP.

[LifeLines]

I actually did end up using Apple File Sharing to accomplish what I wanted. I copied my Photo libraries from the external disk I had been using to the slow iMac with the large drive. I'm able to access that drive from my MBP and open the libraries. I can view all my albums and export individual photos right to my MBP desktop. I can also add photos from my MBP to the library. 

The Photos program won't let me have a library open on both computers simultaneously, so that prevents me from corrupting the data.

So far it's working really well! It seems so obvious now, I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of it earlier!