Picture share/sync between two Macs

[cjvitek]

Okay, I have two Apple computers - a MacBook Pro and my wife's iMac.

I use the MacBook Pro at work, but I also have all my photos (or most of my photos) on it. I bring it home occasionally.

My wife would like to be able to have access to all our photos (we have well over 6000) on her iMac. I know Apple doesn't have any easy built in solution for syncing photos so that the same photo library is shared on two computers (or at least there isn't one that I know of).

Does anyone else share photos libraries between two computers? What is the best way to put all the photos on my MacBook onto my wife's iMac? Is there any way to automate the task, so that when I bring the MacBook home, it will automatically copy any pictures over?

Is there anyway to make sure the sync is two ways - so that if my wife somehow has a photo in her library, it will get copied to my MacBook?

Lastly, is there anyway to copy over the "event" data (which is how I primarily organize the pictures on my MacBook). I think you can copy over albums, but I am not sure about events. Is there anyway to automatically convert events into albums (rather than doing it manually)? If I do that, is there a way to see pictures that aren't in any album, so I can put "unfiled" pictures into an album?

Thanks! I am actually going to upgrading to the new iPhoto shortly (right now, I am using iPhoto 09, version 8.1.2.


Chris

 

[Alli]

You're on the same WiFi network at home, right? Can't you just share drives? I'm able to do that even between my Mac and my pc at home.

 

[Fausty82]

Like Alli suggests... I have my pictures on a network drive... and using Picasa on both my MacBook Pro and my wife's Windows machine, we can "add" the files to the Picsaca library on both computers... but the actual photos remain on the shared network drive. Works smooth, like buttah...

 

[kch50428]

Can be done a wired network too - either by shared drive/directory - or, network storage on a home network.

 

[cjvitek]

I could try to set something like that up. Right now, they are all just in the iPhoto library in the MacBook, so I would have to export them to a different drive first. I was hoping for something just Mac to Mac.

 

[Alli]

What I'm doing is just Mac to pc, no shared network drive as interim. I just share the C drive on my pc with my Mac so that I can copy directly from/to it. No need to make it difficult.

 

[cjvitek]

But once it is connected, then you have to manually copy the photos, right?

If so, I was hoping for something more automated. There may simply not be anything.

 

[Fausty82]

But once it is connected, then you have to manually copy the photos, right?

If so, I was hoping for something more automated. There may simply not be anything.

I'm telling you, my setup is totally automatic once it's set up. Stick them on a drive somewhere on the network - a separate drive or a shared C: drive (it doesn't matter what location you choose as long as it's shared/mapped to both/all computers). Install Picasa on both (all) computers and tell the Picasa installs to only search THAT drive for photots... then whenever you add photos to your computer, put them in that drive and voila! - instantly shared photos...

 

[cjvitek]

I'm telling you, my setup is totally automatic once it's set up. Stick them on a drive somewhere on the network - a separate drive or a shared C: drive (it doesn't matter what location you choose as long as it's shared/mapped to both/all computers). Install Picasa on both (all) computers and tell the Picasa installs to only search THAT drive for photots... then whenever you add photos to your computer, put them in that drive and voila! - instantly shared photos...

Can I do that with iPhoto? I would prefer to use iPhoto than Picasa.

Otherwise, sounds good.

Chris

 

[Fausty82]

Can I do that with iPhoto? I would prefer to use iPhoto than Picasa.

Otherwise, sounds good.

Chris

I dunno. iPhoto seemed like such a resource hog and ran sluggishly with my 10K photo library that i dumped it as soon as I found an acceptable alternative.