Forecasting My Photo Library’s Future

I use Apple Photos to manage my photo library and for most of my editing needs as well. It Just Works™ and at this point I’ve been using it and various incarnations for nearly 20 years. ¹

I’m aware of all the other solutions and variables available to me to manage to my library and have more robust editing features at my fingertips. All require some sort of subscription and invariably a learning curve. I’m not against subscriptions! Part of the reason I’m writing this blog post is to talk about my subscription to Apple’s iCloud, but the learning curve is more than I’m interested in taking on at the moment.

Not to mention, and this is a big “not to mention”, I really enjoy the integration Apple Photos has in my computing experience. My library is there on all my devices; laptop, phone, tablet, and even TV! Fully, not just a part of it. It’s full-featured enough (adjustments, cropping, keywords, smart albums…kinda). My wife and I can co-manage a single library instead of squirting photos to one another ad-hoc. And again, it works 99% of the time.² I do have Pixelmator Pro and a handful of other specialty apps I use when needed, but for the majority of my needs, it’s great. 

I’ve been taking a lot more photos recently. Due in part by my chronic GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) affecting me with another camera this year, but more largely due to the passing of my father and the desire to do something with my hands and mind that isn’t sitting in front of a screen. Even though the camera has a screen and I edit on a large monitor…well, you know what I’m saying. Instead of sitting in front of a screen and passively consuming. Which I still do plenty of if my Playstation, Nintendo, and Netflix profiles are to be believed. Fifty hours playing that‽³

Recently though – again, new camera this year and more photos taken than normal as a result – I’ve noticed that we were creeping up against the 2 TB capacity of our current iCloud storage option. We’re all in, subscribing to Apple One, which gives us 2 TB for everything – photos, messages, files, backups, etc. But this begged the question of what to do.

Do I cull duplicate photos from my library? A tiresome and monotonous experience. Do I remove all large video files from my photo library and shunt them into a never-seen-again folder on my Synology NAS? Do I finally delete the old Messages? Never!

I decided to solve this problem in the most direct way possible. I spent more money. At the encouragement of my loving wife, I’ve added an additional 2 TB of cloud storage to our subscription; at a rate of an additional $9.99 a month. This gives us (really me, I’m the problem) plenty of headroom and space to stretch out. 

Side note: Here’s to hoping in the near future that Apple figures out some ML tool that shrinks RAW files losslessly or suggests which nearly identical photo from a set of five can be deleted. Maybe something for blurry photos or all white/all black accidental shots. Or else I’m going to regret not culling the library now rather than in 10 years. 

Thinking about all of this gave me an idea.

With Apple Photos I can create smart albums based upon criteria to determine how many photos I take every year on average and how large those yearly additions are. I can then use this data to make a rough estimate of how many photos I’ll accumulate over the next decade or so and how much storage space that will take up. 

The first step is to create a handful of smart albums with two rules. Photos captured within a year timeframe and excluding videos.

The second bit is to export, by hand, that data into a spreadsheet and create a chart. 

The result is that I can estimate that by 2034, ten years from now, I’ll have a library of photos that is nearly 1.4 terabytes in size. We’ll see if I use up more of the 4 TB of storage I now have – with photos or other stuff. 1.4 terabytes is a little less than the current size of my Photos library, which includes 1,721 video files as well. So I’ll probably be above the estimate, but I think within 4 TB. 

I can also estimate how many photos that will be. Not to be too precise, but right now I have 66,420 photos. If I add the average of 3,063 images a year to my library – which includes all sorts of images⁴, this report doesn’t separate out iPhone photos vs “camera” photos nor does it sort out screenshots, photos for documentation (receipts), or duplicates – I’ll have amassed nearly a hundred thousand photos by 2034. A nice round number.

Of note, this is all calculating starting from 2004. I could go back further than 2004, but that seemed like a good date to pick (20 years) and metadata gets less reliable. Older cameras forgot the date and time more frequently back in the day. 

So, like all predictions of the future, I doubt I have this right. I surmise I’ll probably exceed these estimates. Will I use up more than 4TB in ten years? I doubt it, but I also feel like I might be bumping up against that in a decade. But also, who knows‽ Maybe I tire of photography (doubtful!), maybe storage goes quantum and we measure things in petabytes. Maybe Apple increases the storage for the price. ಠ_ಠ

I will say that instead of worrying about managing my library it was far easier – and yes I’m aware of the privilege – to expand beyond the default 2 TB option I had been paying for and give myself some space, and grace.

1. RIP Aperture. Or maybe Long live Aperture?
2. Don’t worry, I do make regular backups of my photo library!
3. Yes! Indubitably one of the best games I’ve played.
4. Broadly, the more I travel the more photos I take. I guess that makes me a travel photographer, but so many of my trips are with family!