I'm hoping someone will help me figure out what I'm sure is pretty basic but has me stumped. I've read the Aperture help system and faqs here but still can't figure it out.
I am using Aperture 3.3.2 on Mountain Lion running on an Air with 8Gb ram and a 512Gb ssd.
I imported my photos into iPhoto first and then upgraded to Aperture and am now very happy with Aperture and will primarily use it from here.
I currently have about 52,000 photos in 250 projects consuming 300Gb of storage in a single library. I've organized the projects into 5 folders.
I'd like to break this library up into smaller library's with most of the photos stored on a network drive but still have access to quality previews on the MacBook Air in both Aperture and iPhoto but have the original files stored in remote librarys. My goal is to reduce the storage required on the laptop to free up drive space.
From what I've read this seems not only possible but is described as an attractive feature of Aperture in the help system.
To test if this was going to work, I exported two of the 5 folders to new library's located on the network drive. That worked great. Except the master library of 300Gb did not shrink so I think I have these two new library's that are copies but all of the original files must now also be still in the original library.
I'm afraid to just delete the folders that I'd exported from the original library on the laptop because I do still want to manage everything from Aperture on the laptop and have previews of all 51,000 photos, projects, etc on the laptop without the big raw and jpeg files. Again the goal is to be able to see all of my pictures on the laptop but with greatly reduced storage. I understand I won't be able to edit them without opening the library that has the original.
I hope this makes sense. If not let me know.
Your help is much appreciated.
Kriss,
You’re on the right track but have made an error in understanding that one very attractive feature, “referenced libraries”.
The way a referenced library works is that the Original files (formerly called Masters) can live outside of the Library, on an external drive or pretty much anywhere you like. The Library itself can also be anywhere you like (almost, keep reading) but the idea is most likely that you’d keep this on the internal drive, so you can view the images via their preview file, even when the Originals are not available (i.e., you don’t have access to the external drive that you’ve moved them to).
So in your case, you exported Folders/Projects as Libraries, which was the wrong thing to do. What you want to do is Relocate Originals, moving the Original files elsewhere. And it’s fine to put those on a network drive, but be aware that you are very likely to see a performance hit when accessing those files. Presumably they are older, rarely accessed photos though, so the speed hit will be a fine trade off for freeing up space on your internal SSD drive.
The reason you haven’t reduce the size of the main Library is that when exporting a project as a new LIbrary, it makes a copy of it, but doesn’t delete the original Project. You certainly can (after verifying that your export is intact), but again that’s not what you want to do.
Finally, as far as putting actual Libraries on networked drives; don’t do it. You can put the ORIGINALS on network drives, but not the complete Library. It’s very risky because of how permissions are handled and it is not a supported configuration by Apple.
@PhotoJoseph
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Joseph,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Your advice has solved my problem. I think I erred initially when importing the photos and did not leave the originals where they were on the server.
Much appreciated. Thanks.
Kriss