Sharing iPhoto library between users

Previously I posted about sharing an iTunes library between users. Unfortunately sharing an iPhoto library between users is not as easy and I just wish Apple did make it easy.

There are many articles about how to do this but I ended up following the “move the folder to a disk image” instructions in this Apple document, iPhoto: Sharing libraries among multiple users. One thing this document failed to mentioned is that the image you create must be readable and writable by all users that will be accessing the iPhoto library.

Another document I discovered later with similar but better instructions is this one, Macworld | One iPhoto, many users. It talks about the one thing that is a drawback of this solution. If you are using fast user switching, then only one user can mount the disk image and only that user can use iPhoto. If another user was using iPhoto that user must unmount his disk image before you can use it. Otherwise you’ll see this lovely warning.

iPhoto library locked