Automatic iPhoto Backup using Dropbox

Have you ever lost your collection of photos because of a problem with your computer or backup hard drive? It’s one of the most frustrating things that can happen to you. All that time spent taking great photos, downloading to your computer, organizing and arranging into albums, tagging with people, places and events… gone. Never to come back.

All those captured memories…. lost.

There are a few online photo cataloging applications, but most of us are using traditional desktop applications such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, Picasa, iPhoto or any other of a thousand applications.

Here, I will show you how you can set up iPhoto to store all your photos in the Cloud AND on your computer. This means you can continue to use iPhoto like you always have while having your photos, and any changes you make to them, safely backed up… all the time.

1. Get a Dropbox Account

The first thing you’ll want to do is get a Dropbox account. If you have only very few photos, you can get the free 2GB account. Otherwise, I’d recommend going with the 50GB account or higher. If you’re not sure how much you need, open Finder and then Pictures. Click on “iPhoto Library” then on the cog, select “Get Info”. It might take a few seconds, but you’ll end up seeing the pop-up below. Look at the “Size” field. This is how much space your photos are taking up. Your Dropbox account has to be bigger than this.

iPhoto Library Size 2. Move iPhoto Library

Once you’ve got Dropbox installed, it’s time to move your iPhoto Library over to it. First, make sure iPhoto is shut down. Then, go back to the Finder window where you had the iPhoto Library. Open your Dropbox folder in a new Finder window (CMD+N). Then, simply drag your iPhoto Library into your Dropbox folder somewhere. I’d recommend putting it inside the Photos folder. As soon as it starts to move, the Dropbox icon in your menu bar will start spinning, indicating that things are either being uploaded or downloaded – in this case, it’s your photos and iPhoto setup that are being uploaded.

3. Launch iPhoto

Finally, simply double-click on the iPhoto Library icon you just moved. This will open iPhoto and it will automatically know and remember where all your photos now live. From then on, you can simply use iPhoto as normal (by launching from the dock or applications folder) and it will use the photos you’ve added to your Dropbox.

Now, when you add new photos to iPhoto, make changes to existing photos, or organize them, it will all be automatically backed up to Dropbox. Dropbox uses Amazon’s S3 storage platform. Basically that means that it’s very safe and very secure. Your precious photos are being stored on one of the biggest providers in the world.

Should you’re computer crash in the future, you simply get a new Mac, install Dropbox and then all your photos (in the iPhoto Library) will magically appear on your computer. Then, just launch iPhoto by double-clicking on the iPhoto Library folder icon (like you did earlier).

Too easy!

And, if you want to do even more with iPhoto, check out this great guide from Michael Grothaus available on Amazon.

  • http://www.facebook.com/martin.j.cowling Martin J Cowling

    THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

  • Joanna_silver

    Hi there,
    your instructions are very helpful for a mac / dropbox novice. Except that when I drag the iphoto library across into Dropbox, it vanishes from my Pictures file which is rather scary. I dragged it back and started again. This time, I copied the iphoto library and pasted it in but got a message that there was not enough space in the folder despite that I have over 40gb left and my iphoto library is only 36gb. It took 30 hours to back up and when I checked it, my iphoto library had not synced. So I did it all again, and the same happened. And now it is telling me that it is indexing the files .. again… Would welcome any help you can give
    many thanks
    Joanna

  • http://www.facebook.com/samueltlogan88 Samuel Logan

    Hi there. I have an iMac, MBP, and iPhone. I want to be able to edit photos on any of these devices and have it show the edited version on the other devices. Both iPhoto libraries are over 40gb so Dropbox is out of the question. I am considering buying a few terabyte external harddrive that is wifi ready.

    Does this make sense: If i combine all photos into one iPhoto, put it on my own cloud, and access it from a remote computer with iPhoto, my photos will show up, up to date?

    • http://www.cloudproductivity.net/ Jeremy Roberts

      Hmm… online storage would be best since your photos would probably sync over the air from your MBP to your iPhone etc. But, you should be able to an external hard drive as the base for your iPhoto library – when you sync your iPhone with iTunes it’ll sync up the albums anyway.

  • http://profiles.google.com/dondegroovily Brian Schend

    Wouldn’t it be way easier to just tell dropbox to make your photos directory part of your dropbox?

  • Whitney

    do you have any recommendations on how to use Dropbox to backup a large photo archive that you cannot fit on your laptop? I have oodles of gigs of photos that can’t live on my laptop hardrive. However, it seems like dropbox doesn’t play nice nice with external hard drives.

    • http://www.cloudproductivity.net/ Jeremy Roberts

      Kind of yeah. You can synchronise the photos to dropbox and then use the “selective sync” feature so that those photos live on dropbox only. That way they won’t sync back down to your computer, but you know they’re safe. Does that help?

      • kirstenmichelle

        Disregard…I figured it out. :O)

        “How does one use “selective sync”?”

        • http://www.cloudproductivity.net/ Jeremy Roberts

          Hi kirstenmichelle

          I’m using a Mac, but should be much the same for Windows. Go to Preferences in Dropbox, then in the Advanced area, click on “Change Settings” under Selective Sync. Then just choose what folders you want to have appear on you computer (ticked). Everything else will live on the Dropbox website.

  • Jordan
    • http://www.cloudproductivity.net/ Jeremy Roberts

      Ahh… ok, so my post above is a way to backup the iPhoto library using Dropbox. The post you’ve linked to explains how to do away with iPhoto altogether and just store photos in Dropbox. Does that make sense?

  • ryano

    Hi, thanks for the tip, works well! Does this allow you to open the same iPhoto Libary from 2 different computers? What if 2 computers access it at the same time? How about 1 PC and 1 Mac? Appreciate that you may not know the answers to this, just checking!

    • http://www.cloudproductivity.net/ Jeremy Roberts

      Hi @disqus_lJum9KOKyY:disqus. I can’t see any reason why you wouldn’t be able to share the iPhoto library with 2 or more Mac’s provided they’re not using it at the same time and that Dropbox finishes sync’ing before iPhoto is opened anywhere else. I can’t see this working across a PC and Mac though – iPhoto isn’t available for PC, is it?

  • Ryano

    Hi me again,

    Just a warning when using this. Your iPhoto library will use lot more space on Dropbox than you expect, because it contains some symlinks. Dropbox makes a new copy of every file under a symlink. The solution is to delete the symlinks in your iPhoto library folder.

    Dropbox Support sent me this link on how to do this:
    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1656836/big_iphoto/Fix_Big_iPhoto.html

    • http://blog.abstractedge.com Scott Paley

      But why does it do this? Are there reasons it would be a bad idea to delete these folders?

      • http://blog.abstractedge.com Scott Paley

        In fact, doing a little more research, it seems like the images themselves are stored in those folders. So why wouldn’t you want/need them synched to Dropbox?

        • http://www.cloudproductivity.net/ Jeremy Roberts

          I agree @spaley:disqus. I think only if space is becoming an issue should you consider deleting these folders.

  • http://www.facebook.com/michael.ritter.5661 Michael Ritter

    So, would this process work with Apple’s Aperture as well?

  • Alejandro

    Hi there, it seems perfect. What I need to know before doing such thing is if I add 2 photos to my library, would dropbox sync again my 40gb library? Or would just update for the the 2 photos i added? I don’t want to upload 40gb to dropbox and find out it syncs the complete 40gb each time i make a modification on my library.
    thanx

    • http://www.cloudproductivity.net/ Jeremy Roberts

      Hi @3bef646ffb639146394cd6bca1d3bfc4:disqus
      Dropbox will only sync what has changed. The library “file” is really just another folder, so only the 2 new photos and any updates to the index files will be synced, not the full 40GB library.

  • Ric Steinberger

    I get this approach, though haven’t applied it yet. I’m wondering if there is a parallel approach that would free up the photo memory space on the iPhone but still provide a Photo-like App that could access the photos stored in Dropbox (and understand the albums and events and other meta data).

  • JMF

    Hi – I’m a bit late to this post but maybe you could answer a question for me… I followed your instructions but it appears as though dropbox only copied 5.6 MB of my photos rather than the entire 1.58GB. Any idea why? Thanks!