Last year I moved a portion of my Aperture Library to my external HD as the space on my MBP was rapidly shrinking. I created a folder called “Aperture Masters” and relocated all of my photos from 1999-2010 (most of the earlier years were P&S camera shots loaded onto iPhoto). I am now ready to move 2011-2012 since the number of photos (all RAW) I have taken has gone up exponentially! I watched Joseph's Live Training Episode 20 to refresh my memory on the process and realized that my initial transfer was done en masse without my y-m-d file/project breakdown. So all of the photos are lumped into one giant file. So my first and main question is is there a way to re-organize these other than relocating them back onto my MBP (which may not have enough space) and re-relocate them back with the proper format? An alternative would be to create a folder in the “Aperture Master” folder called “Masters 2011-12”, move those pictures there to create space on myHD and then try to re-do my 1999-2010 pictures. One last question, has anyone moved their entire managed Aperture Library to an external HD? Thanks for bearing up with this long post and for your help.
Florian
Florian,
You can reorganize the referenced originals in place just by re-running the Relocate Originals command and changing the folder preset. No need to copy back to the library first. Aperture will move the referenced files into the new structure you specify in their current location.
As for your last question, I keep my managed library on a non-boot drive. Technically it isn’t an external drive since it is one of the 5 inside my Mac Pro, but it is a data only drive separate from the boot drive (an SSD) and separate from my home folder drive. The reason I’m doing this is so I can enable Ignore Ownership on the drive so my wife and I can both access it from different login accounts without encountering permission issues. Works great. A true external drive would work just as well assuming it has a fast enough interface. For example I think USB 2 would be too slow. But USB3, FW400/800 or Thunderbolt would be usable with USB3 and Thunderbolt the best/fastest.
Tom
Thomas
Thomas, Thanks so much. If I understand you correctly, I go into Aperture and select the referenced files by project and then go to File>Relocate Originals, pick my external HD and then select project name on the folder preset and they’ll all re-arrange? Sweet. Can I simplify the process by creating a smart album of all of the referenced files rather than going and selecting each project?
Florian
Florian Cortese
www.fotosbyflorian.com
I haven’t tried it but I’m fairly sure you can use that smart album idea.
Thomas
I’ll give the smart album a try and report back. Thanks again!!
Florian Cortese
www.fotosbyflorian.com
Thomas, It worked. The smart album worked just fine. Once in the selection menu, I chose “project name” for the subfolder format and “version name” for the name format and everything worked. Thought you and anyone else would like to know. :)
Florian
Florian Cortese
www.fotosbyflorian.com