Jim,

Short answer—NO. It’s not supposed to do that every time.

Have you tried the standard “fix everything” routine yet; launch Aperture holding down Command-Option keys, and rebuilding/repairing the database? If not, go through that first.

If that doesn’t solve the problem, you can start Faces all over again and see if that fixes it (although it may not be worth it for you, depending on how much time you’ve invested in customizing Faces).

I offer the following suggestion with a big, fat, warning label.

// THE FOLLOWING SHOULD ONLY BE PERFORMED BY THE WILLING, THE DARING, AND THOSE WITH A REALLY GOOD BACKUP STRATEGY. THIS IS LIKE WORKING ON YOUR CAR ENGINE—WORK BEST LEFT TO THE PROFESSIONAL //

If you have read the above at least three times, and have backed up your library five minutes ago (preferably with a Finder copy, so it’s really easy to go back to instantly), you may want to consider poking around inside the Aperture Library package.

Quite Aperture. Right-click on the Aperture Library, and choose Show Package Contents. Inside the Databases folder, you’ll see a file Faces.db. Delete that, close the Package, and re-launch Aperture.

Your entire Faces database will be gone. You may see some odd UI behavior (I saw a large progress bar in the middle of the first-time-user-of-Faces interface), but leave it alone and let Aperture rebuild the database. Once it’s done, you’ll be looking at a completely new Faces setup; ALL faces will have to be re-identified, re-named, etc. It’ll be like using Faces for the first time.

And because you just backed up, if you find that this was a Bad Idea™, then you can just throw this Library away and go back to your previous one.

// THE ABOVE SHOULD ONLY BE PERFORMED BY THE WILLING, THE MILDLY INSANE, AND THOSE WITH A REALLY GOOD BACKUP STRATEGY. THIS IS LIKE PERFORMING SURGERY ON YOURSELF—WORK BEST DONE BY A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL, OR THE CAST OF LOST //

Jim,

That’s weird… so what happens when you Command-tab to switch applications? Command-Q to Quit? Command-W to Close? Does your Command key not work for anything, anywhere?

Are both Command keys doing this, or just one?

Jim,

That’s very bizarre. I can’t think of how you could remap the command key just for Aperture, especially in such a way that it is activated before it even launches (as evident by the fact that if you launch with command-option held down, you don’t get the rebuild dialog).

The place in the OS where you can configure custom keyboard shortcuts is in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts. Select Application Shortcuts and see if Aperture is listed and anything odd is in there. Also look around in the rest of them I suppose for anything odd.

Let’s solve this problem before looking for a way to force a rebuild. This command key issue is not Aperture-database related, IMHO.

Jim,

Curious indeed. I looked a little deeper and from what I can tell, the Command key isn’t being ignored, so apologies on leading you down that path. Holding down Command-Option on any app launch will hide the other running apps, so that is working correctly. The problem is simply that the rebuild options aren’t being presented.

I checked the AppleScript dictionary, and couldn’t find any hooks in there to trigger a rebuild.

This is a long shot, but try resetting all warnings in Aperture. Click the button at Preferences > General > Reset All Warnings and then relaunch with Command-Option held down, see if that does anything different.

Also, try launching with just Option held down so it brings up the Library Chooser. Then hold down both Command-Option while clicking the Choose button; see if that invokes the repair dialog (it does if things are working normally).

Let’s take it from there.

Jim,

Good to hear you have a backup. However this problem could go back to your backup since it wasn’t necessarily an obvious issue, so that may not help. But it’s good to know we have that option.

I did a little more digging into the package itself. I tested this on a small (really small) library here, and it worked, so I’m gonna suggest you try this. But this absolutely, unequivocally, requires that you work from a copy of your library. Having a Vault or Time Machine backup isn’t enough… I don’t care how big it is, if you have to go out and buy a new drive to make a copy of your library too, do NOT proceed until you have a backup, m’kay?

I figured that since what we’re trying to do is rebuild the library, perhaps we could delete some kind of library file entirely, and let Aperture rebuild it from nothing. Turns out there is such a file. If you open the package, and open the Database folder, you’ll see a file called Library.apdb. Delete that, close the package, and double-click the Library to open it. It will tell you that there’s a problem with the Library, and the only option is to Quit. That’s good… now, double-click again but hold Command-Option. This should give you the rebuild options.

On my tiny test library, this was successful and my test Projects, Albums, etc. were all in place.

Here’s the thing… I have NO idea what kind of lasting effects this might have. There may be some irretrievable data in that Library.apdb file that we’ve just deleted that you won’t discover right away. I really don’t know or have any way of predicting what might happen. So this is a big experiment, but since it’s so easy to work from a backup—I say go for it.

good luck,
-Joseph @ApertureExpert

Jim,

Sounds like things are progressing well. And frankly I’m ashamed that I didn’t consider telling you to drag a project out of Aperture into a new Library, then test the rebuild on that. I’ve actually had to do that before, but for an entirely different reason. Damn, I should have thought of that here!

That said, I’ve had the exact problem you described before with images edited by a plug-in, but hadn’t gotten as far as you did on finding that it was a permissions issue. It was a long time ago (Aperture 2) and I don’t really recall how I fixed it at the time, but it may have been a rebuild. But good to know this can be a permission issue.

MobileMe galleries should just re-populate.

Your Smart Albums should transfer fine as well. If they’re at the top level of the Library, just stick ‘em in a folder and drag that to the Desktop. If they’re attached to a project and you drag that out, it should bring the Smart Album’s with them. You may need to redirect what they are pointing too though if you move them around before transferring. Just open the Smart Album and note at the top what it says it’s filtering.

Fingers crossed!!!

Jim,

Great stuff. For MobileMe, go to the Aperture Preferences and under the Web tab, check the MobileMe “check for new…” settings. I’m guessing it’s at Manually now. Click Check Now, and set an interval if you like. If things work as they used to (and I don’t use MobileMe anymore so I’m not 100% sure), the old Aperture-generated MobileMe galleries should re-populate in the Aperture library.