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Aperture 2 - Questions

H

harcosparky

macrumors 68020
Original poster
OK so I fired up the 30 day demo to try it out and I have a question.

I told it to import my iPhoto library - and it did - took a while as the library has over 10,500 images. I noticed it is was a CPU intensive process.

Using an iMac 2.4 Ghz / 3 Gig Ram

First Question: What does Aperture do/creat with each iPhoto image it imports?

I have an iPhoto Library in the neighborhood of 53 Gigs.

I checked the size of the Aperture Library and it was around 136 Gig. 😱

What clued me in to this was the amount of Free Space on my main HDD and my Time Machine drive.

Second Question: If I decide to adopt Aperture and use all the iPhoto Library file would there be any reason to keep iPhoto and its; library? (thinking about disk space wasted )

Just curious.

Thanks
Sparky
 
I would keep all of those images in iPhoto. I don't know what kind of set up you have, but for my point and shoot camera I use iPhoto and for my RAW images I use aperture.
 
You can create an Aperture Library with referenced images. This means that all files will remain in iPhoto and the Aperture library won't be that big. To give you an idea how big your Aperture library will be in that case, my iPhoto Library is 28GB and my Aperture 7,5GB. This space is used for all previews, metadata, project info, etc that Aperture needs. One thing you should know is that if you edit the pictures in Aperture, the originals will never change. Aperture saves all changes in the Aperture library.
One disadvantage of Aperture is the lack of proper Time Machine support. iPhoto works great with Time Machine.

In the end I decided not to keep the iPhoto Library and import everything in Aperture. My library was not bigger than then iPhoto one. If I ever need iPhoto I can always import a project from Aperture into it and work with iPhoto (for calendars for example)
 
Here is something I noticed .....

iPhoto Library - 10,000+ Images
Aperture Library - 20,000+ Images


All I did was import iPhoto Library on initial run of Aperture.

????????????????
 
harcosparky said:
Here is something I noticed .....

iPhoto Library - 10,000+ Images
Aperture Library - 20,000+ Images


All I did was import iPhoto Library on initial run of Aperture.

????????????????
Click to expand...

I believe aperture creates a "version" from the "master". You can do what you want to the "version" without destroying the "master". zero-damage editing.

It's all brackground stuff, so you don't need to worry about breaking your master images. Say you change some settings on a RAW pic, like exposure, or levels or whatever, it's making the changes to the "version" not the "master". You'll always have that raw master right out of your camera.
 
It looks as if Aperture made a copy of every image it imported.

Funny thing is with the EOS 10D images it made a copy of each file.

For the 30D images where I used the option to shoot a RAW image and JPEG image at the same time it brought one copy of each image, 1 RAW, and 1 JPEG


Somehow from iPhoto it brought in the ORGINAL and MODIFIED for each image.

I am gonna have to delete the Aperture Library, and maybe the program ... do a reinstall and get it to only import the ORIGINALS from the iPhoto Library.
 
harcosparky said:
OK so I fired up the 30 day demo to try it out and I have a question.
Click to expand...

Look closely. On the "import from iPhoto" dialog box there is an option to either copy all the images or to leave them in iPhoto and just reference them. Looks like you choose "copy". If you used "reference then there would be only one copy of each photo on your disk

What does Aperture do with all the CPU cycles. Builds "preview" images that can be as large as 1/2 size and it builds a database for all the metadata

Yu CAN use both iPhoto and Aperture if you go the reference route. Notice the iPhoto can also read the Aperture library. This works even if Aperture is referencing the iPhoto library. So it works full circle.
 
harcosparky said:
I am gonna have to delete the Aperture Library, and maybe the program ... do a reinstall and get it to only import the ORIGINALS from the iPhoto Library.
Click to expand...

No, Tell Aperture to reference your iPhoto library and not copy it.

Yes you do want to edited versions. Why would you want to loose your edits?

In aperture the origonals and edits are made into "stacks" with the edit being a version of the master. Aperture does a good job of tracking your edits.
 
harcosparky said:
Here is something I noticed .....

iPhoto Library - 10,000+ Images
Aperture Library - 20,000+ Images
Click to expand...

iPhoto is not being truthful. iPhoto keeps a copy of the original image so that you can revert the changes. It makes a copy and does not tell you about it. Aperture is letting you see those copies and counts them.
 
Presumably if you do NOT want to keep originals but only latest modified version you would export 'current' from iPhoto and then import to Aperture?
(I can't check because I understand Aperture 2 will not run on a G4 iBook, but I'm considering upgrading.)
 
ChrisA said:
iPhoto is not being truthful. iPhoto keeps a copy of the original image so that you can revert the changes. It makes a copy and does not tell you about it. Aperture is letting you see those copies and counts them.
Click to expand...

Thanks...

I figured that out when I looked at the contents of two folders in the iPhoto package.

10,500+ - Originals
5,300+ - Modified

I think I will be buying Aperture and when I redo the install ( I will remove the demo and its' library ) I will use the Reference option mentioned above.

I was scary at first though seeing all that disk space get gobbled up! 😱

I was thinking .. OH NO ..... now I need a 2TB drive for Time Machine and a 1.5 TB Drive for the libraries!!!!! 😱
 
ChrisA said:
No, Tell Aperture to reference your iPhoto library and not copy it.

Yes you do want to edited versions. Why would you want to loose your edits?

In aperture the origonals and edits are made into "stacks" with the edit being a version of the master. Aperture does a good job of tracking your edits.
Click to expand...

I want Edits and Originals .... but not in two places.

I figure having the Originals in iPhoto and backed up by Time Machine is sufficient.

How/Where do I tell APERTURE to " reference ' iPhoto Library?

I looked in Preferences and on the " startup " pane.


EDIT: in the IMPORT iPhoto Library there is an option to ...... Store Files: In their current location ( <--- is this the option to REFERENCE them ? it seems to me it might be )

Thanks
 
harcosparky said:
EDIT: in the IMPORT iPhoto Library there is an option to ...... Store Files: In their current location ( <--- is this the option to REFERENCE them ? it seems to me it might be )

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes that is it. If you do this Aperture will only keep preview JPG images and a metadata index. The total should be about 1/3rd the size of your iPhoto library.

But doing this answers the question about if you should keep iPhoto. You will have to keep it.

My feeling about disk space is "Why care?" I paid $150 for a 750GB drive a few weeks ago. That's $0.20 per GB. So you entire 100GB library takes up $20 worth of space
 
ChrisA said:
Yes that is it. If you do this Aperture will only keep preview JPG images and a metadata index. The total should be about 1/3rd the size of your iPhoto library.

But doing this answers the question about if you should keep iPhoto. You will have to keep it.

My feeling about disk space is "Why care?" I paid $150 for a 750GB drive a few weeks ago. That's $0.20 per GB. So you entire 100GB library takes up $20 worth of space
Click to expand...

hahah ... care about disk space .... well nomally I don't, in fact we just upgraded to increase space.

It's just that after I install any new program, I check to see what affect if any it had.

So we cleared the deck so to speak .... got rid of that humongous library and did the reference thing. Now the Aperture Library is only ....

31 + Gig at the moment ... ( for now )

Right now in the bottom of the Browser pain it says...... Previews ( with the spinning pinwheel to the left )

I guess it is creating previews and these are in the Aperture Library - still 31 gig seem large for 'Previews".

Oh well we will wait and see.

By the way, I went out for a few hours and left Aperture open so that it could do Preview ..... came home to that " Unexpected Close " message! 😕
 
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