Aperture to Lightroom

I bought and used the app Aperture Exporter for Lr so I can't answer your question specifically. However, whenever you import into Lr you have the option to ADD or COPY. I am assuming you are setting up a single folder for Lr to reference all of your pictures. It is much easier to have all of your photos in one single location, IMO, rather than scattered about. With that said, you could copy the files from your Aperture Library keeping the originals there and place the copies in your single Lr folder. OR, you could just add them to Lr in which case the originals stay in the Aperture Library and you do not have the added space on your HD for a second set of pictures. But what happens if you decide to totally abandonAperture with the next Apple OSX version? Well, you'd have to move them as reference files, most likely to your main Lr photos folder and then relocate them through Lr (really easy to do). Remember, I still don't think the Adobe transfer setup in Lr brings along any adjustments you made to your photos. Those have to be burned separately as JPEGs. Aperture Exporter does that for you so that is why I chose to use it as my transfer vehicle. It will make copies of all of your Aperture photos so you will have more disc space used up. However, if you decide to get rid of Aperture down the line you can free up more space then.

Aperture could do an integrated library where the original images and the edits were all inside the library package. Alternatively Aperture could do a referenced library where the original images are in folders in the file system. LR only does referenced libraries with images in file system folders.

Note that Aperture offered several logical tags (albums, events, projects) that were specific to the Aperture library. LR does logical collections and collection sets. No one can anticipate in advance how a specific Aperture user would like the albums, events, and projects to be migrated into LR collections and collection sets.

conamor said:

Hi,
Quick question;
I tried Photos and I don't like it.

I will now try to move to Lightroom.
I am trying to use the import utility built-in to Lightroom but there is a lot of checkbox and I don't want to break the Aperture Library while doing that.

1- Will it keep the Aperture Library intact even after importing the lib to LR?
2- Will it created copies of the pictures or will they be referenced to the current location in the Aperture Library?

Any recommendations on how to do this would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I used the adobe's Aperture to Lightroom plugin and that worked reasonably well for me. Here's my answers to your questions
1. It will not affect your Aperture library, that remains untouched, though I do recommend as a safety measure to always have a backup

2. I used a managed library and so for me, it copied the images into my Lightroom catalog/setup. That is I had setup a file structure for my lightroom images and it brought those into that. I'm not entirely sure how it would handle a referenced library, though I suspect it would give you an option to copy or leave them.

Not trusting a tool or plugin to do it properly and being a tad obsessed with control over this sort of thing, I did it manually.

Before doing anything I installed Lr and played around with it to understand how Lr handles files compared to Aperture. Then:

- cleaned-up and cleared-out my Aperture managed library by getting rid of over 300 gb of junk
- exported two copies of raw files of all keepers to two back-up drives just in case I want to reprocess a file later (I never change the file name so I can always find the file later based on a jpg file name)
- set-up a folder structure (named the folders "Imported from Aperture - 2013" type thing) for Lr to store my keepers
- exported all of my processed keepers from Aperture to the new Lr folders in best possible jpg
- added the files to Lr and made sure they were all there
- backed-up everything
- deleted my Aperture library

Just remember that you'll be organizing your folders of image files in Lr. Lr will look after your edits in a catalog but the image file structure is up to you. You can make changes to the folder structure at anytime later but do it from within Lr.

Done with Aperture and on to Lr.

I migrated before LR has the exporter. I did each project one by one. It was slow, but there was no rush. New photos went into LR and I only back-filled the stuff already in Aperture.

This game me control to make sure I had my Collections and Collection Sets setup the way I wanted. I defined the parent directory in LR, but otherwise let LR handle the file storage. I only use the Folders section to delete rejected photos from the disk.

I tried the LR exporter/importer with a test catalog and it failed every time. I forget if it stopped with errors or just hung (I had seen both, but don't recall which was more common). It took a few days, but I'm glad I did it my way. It also allowed me to fix some errors with photos being in the wrong year (Dec/Jan timing) and little things like that.

conamor said:

Does LR use a container like Aperture or it is like a file folder tree?

Click to expand...

No, the images reside external to Lightroom on your drive. The catalog holds the details (keywords, editing, etc). Its like Aperture using a referenced library instead of a managed library.

conamor said:

Wow lots of info! Thanks!

I will delete my LR importation that I have done yesterday since no projects name were moved over.

I will do it manually by events/project. Did you Export the Project to the desktop then reimported it in LR?

Does LR use a container like Aperture or it is like a file folder tree?

Thanks again

Click to expand...

That's exactly how I did it, one project at a time.

conamor said:

Wow lots of info! Thanks!

I will delete my LR importation that I have done yesterday since no projects name were moved over.

I will do it manually by events/project. Did you Export the Project to the desktop then reimported it in LR?

Does LR use a container like Aperture or it is like a file folder tree?

Thanks again

Click to expand...

Are you sure there were no projects in LR after the import? You need to be aware that Lr treats them differently than in Aperture.

And I'd recommend you familiarize yourself with Lr's structure first.

In a nutshell, Aperture projects, folders and albums are containers that ONLY exist in Aperture (despite the names). They are analogous to collections and collection sets in Lr.

Aperture can either manage photos (i.e. put them in a semi-inaccessible package you can't see) or reference them (they are out there in the Finder). Lr does ONLY referencing. So the Adobe Aperture to Lr importer has to COPY all your photos OUT of a managed Aperture library into a folder in the Finder, called Lightroom Masters or something. Then THOSE Finder folders show up in Lr under the "Folders" pane. Lr also creates a bunch of virtual containers, called collections, that has things like projects, all imported Aperture photos, etc. See here: http://www.ct-digiphoto.com/import-aperture-libraries-lightroom-5-7/