The current project we are using is a Standard Project, but the file size is becoming too great for the computer as it is copying all the images. I mainly chose this originally to be able to share the project between computers, but it looks like storing both a portable project and images on an external hard drive would allow for more storage and still be shareable. Is there an easy way to switch the project from a standard project to an advanced project so that it will reference the original photo locations instead of duplicating the photos? If not, what would you suggest is the easiest way to move the items (around 15k) to a new advanced project with tags, selections, etc. intact?
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Just to be clear, the standard project and the advanced project take up the same amount of space: the difference is only that the standard project copies all photos into the internal asset folder and does not remove the original file. If you keep the original file around, it takes up more space of course. So the standard project makes sense if you don’t keep the original files around outside of Tropy.
There’s no automated way to convert a standard project to an advanced project, but you can re-configure the project file to essentially turn the standard project into an advanced one. Or alternatively, you can create a new advanced project and just copy all items over from one project to the other – this way you can copy all the information with the exception of lists. To keep the lists, you’d have to re-create the list structure first, then move all the items in each list over to the corresponding list in the new project.
A standard project is basically just a folder that contains the project.tpy file and an assets folder with all the image files. It’s possible to just change the configuration of the project.tpy file so that it doesn’t know about the assets folder: this essentially turns the project.tpy file into an advanced project. It would still find all the photos currently in the assets folder, but when you import additional photos it would keep them where they are. If you’d like to try this approach, let us know and we can guide you through the process (it would also be important to know which operating system you use).
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