I have been frozen for about a year for the reasons explained below and am now ready to get back to working with my photos using Aperture on my MacBook Pro. I am still using Aperture 2.1.4, and running Mac OS X, Version 10.6.8 on a MacBook Pro 2.6 GH z Intel, Core 2 Duo. (I even still have iPhoto 08 library.) Many upgrades are due!
I recently had my dangerously full hard drive replaced with a 750GB internal drive. (I have 488 GB free.) Now that I have plenty of room to work with, I want to do some reorganizing, making sure that I have a good back up system/workflow and make the appropriate software upgrades.
I have a mostly Managed system in Aperture (Vault is 82 GB) and was just starting to import projects as Referenced before I stopped last year. (25 GB on a portable external hard drive.) I was using your excellent 10 Tips on File Management for Aperture 2 to rename and organize my files when starting to import as Referenced. But I still needed to do something about my overloaded hard drive and also never had a good back up system in place once it was no longer all Managed. I also discovered a bug with Aperture suddenly not recognizing my Raw files in the import window, unless they were being imported directly from the photo memory card. Once I copied them onto my desktop or backed them up onto a dvd, they simply failed to show in Aperture import. I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out (Photoshop and iPhoto could recognize but not Aperture!) All this hung me up and made me frustrated and nervous. I got busy with other personal projects and just stopped importing my personal work. Needless to say it has not been a satisfying year photographically speaking and I have a huge back log that I am eager to deal with now.
I would love to get back to a Managed system, at least for now, and want to bring that last iPhoto 08 library into Aperture. (I had imported several older iPhoto libraries when I first made the transition to Aperture. I still find iPhoto handy for an occasional Calendar.) I have iPhoto 09 software, but never installed and I wonder if and when in this process I should upgrade there.
I shoot almost entirely Raw, now mostly shooting with a Canon G11 and sometimes my old Digital Rebel XT, phone etc..
(Should also say that I have been a long time .Mac/MobileMe user, have an iPhone 3G which will be upgraded to the 4s sometime in the next several months and will eventually need to make the transition to iCloud as well. I have been a big user of Galleries and will be sad to see them go.)
SO… could use some guidance as to what to do first and how I should proceed. Should I Consolidate Masters and bring in the old iPhoto library before upgrading to Aperture 3? I know that I will need to upgrade to Lion in order to use iCloud, but other than that, can I put it off awhile and update Aperture first? Will the upgrade to Aperture 3 solve my problem of it not recognizing my Raw files? Seems that it has been a problem for others as well. I apologize for the length of this post. If there is a better way to pose the questions, please let me know.
Susan,
Welcome, and good call asking for advice before proceeding. It’s a lot easier to make changes to the flow now than after you’ve started :)
Here’s the order I would recommend. If I’ve left anything out let me know and I’ll re-do the list.
1. Move to managed for your current Aperture library. This will ensure that all your photos are secure and in one place. Verify that you have no missing masters outside of the Library (doing searches in the Photos view for images by File Status will help there) before proceeding, at which point if you have any loose RAW files in your laptop that you know have already been imported, you can delete them.
2. Backup (copy) this library to another hard drive, label it appropriately, and tuck it away for safekeeping. This is your emergency fallback backup.
3. What to do with your iPhoto library is a tough call. First off, I’d definitely have you import it into a NEW Aperture library to start, then clean it up before merging it with your existing Library. However the question is, do you do that now from iPhoto ‘08 to Aperture 2, or later from iPhoto to Aperture 3. I think there were improvements in the Library import in Aperture 3, but I’m not sure how it would handle the import from iPhoto ‘08 to Aperture 3. Keep in mind the current iPhoto is ‘11, not ‘09, so you’re two versions old.
I think what I would do is import the iPhoto ‘08 Library into a new Aperture 2 Library, as a safety. Then once update to Aperture 3, try again to import the same iPhoto ‘08 Library. If it works, great, throw away the Aperture 2 (from iPhoto ‘08) Library. If it won’t import because the versions are too far apart, then you can upgrade your Aperture 2 (from iPhoto ‘08) Library to Aperture 3.
4. This would be a good time to do a full system backup. Either by Time Machine, or if your’e not using that, use Carbon Copy Cloner (google it). It’ll require another drive to back up to, but you can have a full recoverable backup. You don’t have to keep it around forever, just long enough to ensure nothing blew up in the next steps, which will be a big transition.
5. Install Lion and Aperture 3. Honestly, Lion is one of those updates that Apple really wants you to do because they are shutting down compatibility with older OS in their current software. Even the most recent Aperture update, to 3.2, is all about Lion and iOS5 compatibility. I’d just go for it and do it all at once.
6. Updating your Libraries to Aperture 3, and finish up where you left off with the iPhoto update. Once your iPhoto to Aperture migration is complete, and you’ve cleaned, organized, whatever your files in that Library, then and only then, merge it with your Primary library. Keeping it separate while you mess around with it and the folder/project structure will be helpful I think.
Also…
You mentioned that you liked using iPhoto for things like Calendars. You can access your Aperture Library from within iPhoto, precisely for that reason. So no need to maintain separate libraries.
And as far as the bug of files not being readable, that has cropped up a few times in Aperture’s history, and is usually addressed in the next update (but can be temporarily fixed by either restarting Aperture, or at worse, reimporting the photos).
Does that cover it all?
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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