I have been using Aperture for about 2 years now and have come to enjoy its (ever improving) features. With its use has grown its library. Compared to other users on this site, it is small. While I do not shoot professionally, I shoot soccer games (as an avid away-game fan) and have a toddler who gets a lot of camera time. :-)
My library's specs:
33k photos
80 GB total
60 GB Masters
17 GB Thumbnails
3 GB Database
1 GB Previews
My MacBook Pro's (Nov 2010) specs:
2.8 GHz i7, 8 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB, 15-inch HD (1680 x 1050), 500 GB SATA disk (13 GB free).
My Aperture workflow consists of importing RAW+JPG (RAW as master) as managed files into projects (one per occasion/game/trip). When I am done working with a project, I relocate originals via local network to my Drobo on a 2009 Mac mini (not always connected), where they exist as referenced projects. I spend more time taking photos than processing, so I tend to accrue more new managed projects than I can relocate to referenced projects.
I have read the post
Aperture seems to slow down sporadically, and other times, it's fine. Any hints? and surmised that my lack of free HD space is an issue. Automatic TimeMachine backups are turned off, but Backblaze and DropBox are running. Even when I deactivate these when working with Aperture, the performance is quite slow.
Aside from the tips in the above post and the ones in the Ten Tips to a Clean Aperture Library, would splitting my library up help performance?. I was thinking of having a small library for “current” projects (reject shoots that need to be processed) and moving the projects into the main “archival” library (my current one).
A second related question: What contributes the most to the sluggish performance of a library? Is it the number of assets in the library, the number of managed assets, the number of previews, …?
Question #3: Would dumping the JPGs help? I guess I shoot them that I can quickly take an image off the CF card and give them to someone, but that doesn't mean I need to import them to Aperture (except for having a preview image?)
I have profited from the experience on apertureexpert.com over and over and would appreciate the advice of the experts reading this.
Here’s a couple of thoughts from a hobbiest with ~70+k referenced images in a single A3 library:
> I don’t think the size of my library affects my day to day workflow. But where it does impact is large file operations, like an upgrade (see post http://www.apertureexpert.com/forum-user/post/1868194, “Crikey, this upgrade to A3.3 is proving to be a time-consuming and painful process …”). Or more recently: Just upgraded to latest ver. of A3, and couple of days later wondered why my Carbon Copy and then Time Machine backup were taking so long … Before I remembered I’d upgraded A3.
> JPG+RAW. When I converted over from Windows/ ACDseePro to A3, I was shooting JPG+RAW. In my experiments to adapt to, and learn A3, I quickly dropped the JPG part as I found it added time to my workflow (which image was I looking at, why have the RAW/ JPG when I had the other, load time, library size, camera write speed to card etc). So if you are not “giving to someone” much, IMHO, shoot RAW only … Or at least load only the RAW to A3.
Steve