Your PhotoStructure library contains your image database, library settings, as well as preview images that make viewing your photos and videos instantaneous.

PhotoStructure’s settings page is pretty simple (by design), and only offers a handful of configuration options. There are more than 60 configurable settings within PhotoStructure, though, including

You’ll want to install PhotoStructure for Desktops on a computer that you can leave powered on for a while, at least during the initial import.

If you have videos, you need to install VLC or FFmpeg. -- VLC or FFmpeg must be installed to support video files.

PhotoStructure for Desktops follows standard installation procedures for each operating system. Please note: you must first install VLC or FFmpeg if you have videos.

So, you’ve got PhotoStructure installed, and it looks like it’s importing every photo and video you’ve got. What should you know now?

If your photos and videos are disorganized, PhotoStructure can help bring some order to your chaos. If your photos and videos are scattered across many different disks and memory cards, you might have duplicate files, you’d really like everything to be organized into one, tidy place, and you have enough free disk space in your library directory, choose “Yes, please copy my photos and videos into my PhotoStructure Library” when you’re setting up PhotoStructure:

TL;DR: Use a large external hard drive for your library or, ideally, a NAS with RAID protection. Your library’s disk space is proportional to the number of photos and videos you have in your library, and whether or not you choose to have PhotoStructure organize your photos and videos by copying them into your library.