Aperture 3: Library upgrading and management
The last few days has seen some real problems with people upgrading their Aperture 2 libraries. As with all of the current Aperture 3 problems they seem to strike different people randomly, there doesn’t seem to be any specific combination or hardware or library that seems to be causing the problems. One suggestion is that this is a memory leak in Aperture 3 but that would seem to hit everyone (at least in my mind) but maybe its linked to a certain amount of memory or memory speed. Some photographers that I have followed online seem to be having some real problems meaning in some cases that they have been unable to upgrade their libraries at all to even use Aperture 3 yet. The one thing that is consistent with all the people that are having problems is that they have very large libraries. The subject of large and/or numbers of libraries is one that I’ve had with lots of people over the last couple of years since Aperture 2. I have never had an Aperture library larger than 150GBs for two reasons, 1) I did notice some performance issues on larger libraries and secondly I’ve never found a need to have that many photos all in one library. Over the years many people have questioned my way of working but it suits me.
My set-up (which evolves and changes) roughly goes like this: WEDDINGS
Each wedding has its own library (typically about 20-40GBs)
Some people like to have all their best or 5 star wedding photos together but for me I look at it from a productivity point of view, I NEVER need to have all of my wedding photos when showing them to a bride and groom, just their own wedding photos. STUDIO PORTRAITS
Quarterly libraries, passport/visa library, commercial library, baby club, specific specials
Sometimes I end up with monthly albums depending if I’ve had very busy months. The same principal applies here where I don’t need to have everything all together. The only hurdle in using this system in Aperture 2 was switching libraries, I had specific folders set-up which contained the libraries and I never open Aperture by clicking on the dock icon I always do it by double clicking on the specific library I want to work with. One other advantage this technique gives me is that it makes my libraries very portable, I can drag a 30/40GB library onto an external drive and work with it on the MBP or on location etc. Aperture 3 has addressed libraries for me in building in the ability to switch and merge libraries, to all the people with one giant library they will wonder what the point of this feature is therefore but I think its the fact that more people must have used multiple libraries like me AND that Apple want you to use multiple libraries (possibly because it does help performance) Unfortunately this doesn’t help those having trouble converting their old large Aperture 2 libraries, what I have suggested is that people take the time in Aperture 2 to go through their libraries and do the following: 1) delete all rejected files; It’s amazing what a difference this can make and save a very large chunk of space.
2) Work out a way to split your very large library into multiple, whether it be on year, client, type of work
3) once you’ve worked out a way to split it export the projects from aperture in batches as per your new structure
4) create a new Aperture 3 library and import the projects. The export and import process of projects (if its all on the same HD) should be very quick.
One final comment on Libraries . The question that I get asked all the time is whether I use managed or referenced. For me there is only one type that works. Managed 100% of the time, I have 3 reasons for this, performance, portability and organisation.
In my opinion to NOT used managed libraries is to not use Aperture to its full potential. I also feel that the performance penalty of previews that is experienced with referenced libraries further makes managed the better choice, finally portability, with a managed library I know I can just grab the single aperture library drag it to an external HD and thats it I can edit on the move, it also means in general I don’t have to worry about where my files are saved or creating folders etc etc.
My set-up (which evolves and changes) roughly goes like this: WEDDINGS
Each wedding has its own library (typically about 20-40GBs)
Some people like to have all their best or 5 star wedding photos together but for me I look at it from a productivity point of view, I NEVER need to have all of my wedding photos when showing them to a bride and groom, just their own wedding photos. STUDIO PORTRAITS
Quarterly libraries, passport/visa library, commercial library, baby club, specific specials
Sometimes I end up with monthly albums depending if I’ve had very busy months. The same principal applies here where I don’t need to have everything all together. The only hurdle in using this system in Aperture 2 was switching libraries, I had specific folders set-up which contained the libraries and I never open Aperture by clicking on the dock icon I always do it by double clicking on the specific library I want to work with. One other advantage this technique gives me is that it makes my libraries very portable, I can drag a 30/40GB library onto an external drive and work with it on the MBP or on location etc. Aperture 3 has addressed libraries for me in building in the ability to switch and merge libraries, to all the people with one giant library they will wonder what the point of this feature is therefore but I think its the fact that more people must have used multiple libraries like me AND that Apple want you to use multiple libraries (possibly because it does help performance) Unfortunately this doesn’t help those having trouble converting their old large Aperture 2 libraries, what I have suggested is that people take the time in Aperture 2 to go through their libraries and do the following: 1) delete all rejected files; It’s amazing what a difference this can make and save a very large chunk of space.
2) Work out a way to split your very large library into multiple, whether it be on year, client, type of work
3) once you’ve worked out a way to split it export the projects from aperture in batches as per your new structure
4) create a new Aperture 3 library and import the projects. The export and import process of projects (if its all on the same HD) should be very quick.
One final comment on Libraries . The question that I get asked all the time is whether I use managed or referenced. For me there is only one type that works. Managed 100% of the time, I have 3 reasons for this, performance, portability and organisation.
In my opinion to NOT used managed libraries is to not use Aperture to its full potential. I also feel that the performance penalty of previews that is experienced with referenced libraries further makes managed the better choice, finally portability, with a managed library I know I can just grab the single aperture library drag it to an external HD and thats it I can edit on the move, it also means in general I don’t have to worry about where my files are saved or creating folders etc etc.
Posted on Wednesday February 17th
About me
Life, the universe and everything....will be skipped to make room for clumisly written waffling about photography, Macs and other bits and pieces.www.mep-photography.co.uk
www.thosepreciousmoments.co.uk
www.aipix.co.uk
www.paulinskipphotography.co.uk
