Aperture 3 files are offline? HELP!

[HE15MAN]

In the past, my editing process was: I import photos to Aperture, choose which I want to make changes to, make a duplicate copy of the original in Aperture, and then edit the duplicate. They are named version 2, 3, etc.

The Version 2's, 3's etc are now my "masters" that i use and have exported to jpg and use to print.

Ok well I have upgraded my hard drives and reinstalled Aperture 3. Now all my images are showing as being offline. Again I am using referenced files.

Do I really have to go back in and show it where each and every file is?

Am I better off starting all over and reimporting every album?

If I do this, will I lose all my "masters" I have made. Remember, I made duplicate copies of my images in which I edited and am using "Version 2" as my actual edited image that I am selling.

 

[steve-p]

Once you show it where one picture in an album is, it matches up the rest in that album automatically. Or at least, it did for me when I replaced my HD and restored from Time Machine. It took a while because I had to do each album individually, but it all worked fine. This seems to be a flaw in using referenced images because if the physical disk is changed (and therefore has a different ID), then it breaks all the links to referenced images, even if you called the volume exactly the same name.

 

[HE15MAN]

Thanks for the response. I did like you said, kept everything the same, but it is making me relocate the files one at a time for some reason. Am I missing a step?

 

[steve-p]

I can't remember exactly what I did now but I think I just selected all images in an album, selected locate referenced files, located the first image in the list and then pressed Reconnect All or something like that.

 

[HE15MAN]

got it working ! Thank you sir.

I have another question if you dont mind.

I shoot bird and wildlife images. I currently make an album for each day and name it Name XX/XX/XXXX and date. I was wanting to move all the images from each location into one project.

So I then can have just a few projects for each location, but every photo i take in that location I dump there. How much of a mess would that be?

 

[steve-p]

I don't make use of complex projects, folders etc that much as I mainly shoot travel photography which amounts to about 100 projects I guess, but I only add new projects every couple of months. All my pictures from one trip go into a new project each time so it's simple. That's often 500 pictures in a project, but it's not unmanageable.

However from what you are saying it sounds like you could create a project per location, and still have a new album or folder for each date within that. Then you can see all the photos at a location if you click on the project, but still see the ones for a date if you click on one of the albums (or folders or whatever they are called) within the location project.

Alternatively maybe you could dump all pictures from each location into a single project, and create some smart folders to see each date. However someone who knows a bit more about Aperture organisation than I do may be along soon to advise. I would be inclined to just use a project per location though and not worry too much about dates, unless you want to.