This is a quick tip about moving and repairing your iPhoto library. 

Users that want to move their iPhoto library to a different physical hard disk or partition can move the library quite easily. The standard iPhoto library is stored in the following folder: Home folder/ Pictures/ iPhoto Library (see 10 tips of MAC OS X for beginners).

Remove

The ‘iPhoto Library’ can be easily moved or copied to another location with the use of Finder. After everything is moved or copied, double click on the ‘iPhoto Library’ and iPhoto will automatically import the new location. The application will also change all the references directly, which lets iPhoto automatically open this folder every time you launch the application.

After your iPhoto library is moved correctly to a different hard disk or partition, you can remove the old library. Just remove the images folder that is located in your home folder.

If iPhoto will launch with the wrong library, users should press the option⌥ key during shutdown and restart. The application will now give you the possibility to select an alternative library. A very handy feature if you want to make use of multiple iPhoto libraries.

Repair

For those that are experiencing problems when opening the iPhoto library on the original or alternate location then you should boot iPhoto with the following keyboard shortcut: cmd⌘ + option⌥. A window with the following options will now appear:

– Repair the iPhoto library database
– Rebuild the iPhoto library database from automatic backup
– Rebuild the photo’s small thumbnails
– Rebuild all of the photo’s thumbnails
– Recover orphaned photos in the iPhoto library folder
– Examine and repair iPhoto library file permissions

With these options it is almost always possible to restore or repair a corrupt library, without losing photos.