Aperture 3 newbie

[adonisadonis]

Hope you're all doing well,


Please can somebody shed light to my queries regarding aperture 3 as I have never use it before. I've search the internet but some of it are confusing and unclear. Basically I want to use store my growing photos in an external hard drive as a working library when editing photos in aperture, my questions are:

1. Will the changes made in the photo (history of edits) save in the external HD? or will it be somewhere in the main Hard drive of the computer?

2. If I use different mac computer with the external HD attached, Will I see the edited files and revert to original photo if I need to?

3. And finally, if I use carbon copy cloner to back up the external aperture library will aperture be able to access it as if it is the working external library?

many thanks.

 

[viggen61]

Hope you're all doing well,


Please can somebody shed light to my queries regarding aperture 3 as I have never use it before. I've search the internet but some of it are confusing and unclear. Basically I want to use store my growing photos in an external hard drive as a working library when editing photos in aperture, my questions are:

1. Will the changes made in the photo (history of edits) save in the external HD? or will it be somewhere in the main Hard drive of the computer?

It all depends on where you create the Aperture Library. The Library can be one of two types:

A "Referenced" library" stores your edits in the Library Database and references to your photos (the image file location in your computer's drive hierarchy) . So, the Library database can be on a different drive from where your photos are stored.

A "Managed" library stores everything in one place. The Library Database and the image files are stored in a special kind of folder on the MacOS drive. It looks like one huge file, but it can be opened, and images copied from it, though it is NOT recommended.

I have all my libraries on an external hard drive, and I use Managed libraries.

2. If I use different mac computer with the external HD attached, Will I see the edited files and revert to original photo if I need to?

As long as everything is on the external drive (which it always is in a Managed library), yes, you should be fine. But, if you use a "referenced" system, and the library is on a different drive from your photos, you'll need to have BOTH drives.

3. And finally, if I use carbon copy cloner to back up the external aperture library will aperture be able to access it as if it is the working external library?

You can do that, and it shouldn't cause a problem, although you probably want to be out of Aperture, or at least that library when you run CCC.

Storage is cheap, so I end up making multiple copies of things.

When I import my RAW files from my 7D, I copy them into a managed library. Then, Aperture automatically makes "archive" copies of the images as part of the import process. I NEVER touch those images. They are purely for backup in case all the other things go bad.

After import, I have several "vaults" set up in Aperture on three other hard drives, one of which is "off site". A "vault" is a copy of your Library. It includes all your edits, etc. And if you have a managed library, it includes your photos as well. You manually start the vault process with Aperture. Unfortunately, you can't continue to work in Aperture while the vault copy is in process.

In total, I have either 4 or 5 copies of my images at any given time...

Picking a library/archive/backup strategy is an important thing to do. The best plan is reliable, redundant, and easy to do.

 

[ChrisA]

..
1. Will the changes made in the photo (history of edits) save in the external HD? or will it be somewhere in the main Hard drive of the computer?

You can set this up to be either say. The Aperture never modifies an original file. the edits you make are saved to an edit file and then played back as required. In a managed library all the files are there together.

2. If I use different mac computer with the external HD attached, Will I see the edited files and revert to original photo if I need to?

You REALLY need to set up Aperture with "managed" images. That means all the data inside the Aperture library. If you do this then the photos ail look the same on either computer.

You can also set up an Aperture library on both computers and move "projects" betwen the two. In Aperture a "project" is the smallest self contained unit. It has all the files and edits and metadata

3. And finally, if I use carbon copy cloner to back up the external aperture library will aperture be able to access it as if it is the working external library?

CCC make an exact copy, so yes. But try also letting Time machine make some backups. These get done every hour and once set up it is totally automatic. TM is good but has some limitations

Use CCC is addition to CCC. It's problem is this scenario:
(1) Day one your aperture library is in good order, You copy it using CCC, all is well.
(2) day two the software screws up an corrupts the library but you don't notice, after all who looks at each of their many photo every day, but 1/10 of your images are now garbage. Now you use CCC and write this garbage all over your only good copy of the library.

See what happened? CCC over write the older backup and can possible write bad data over good

Tm Machine does NOT over write old data. It saves all the old versions of every file. So if you or Aperture or Mac OS X or other random bad things happen you can always pull ou the months old version that was the last good version saved

TM's problem is that it must always be plugged in. So if the reason for data loss was lightening striking the utility pole and frying your computer, your TM backup is fried also but the CCC backup in the fire safe in the other room is OK. Same if the data loss was because of theft of the equipment, likely the TM backup goes too. Best option is to also have a copy of the data in a far away place at least a few miles away in case of flood or fire at him.

CCC is nice because it is simple to understand but the fact that it over writes data means that you really need several CCC disks and use them in rotation.

Aperture also has it's own backup/archive system using what it calls "vaults" It can track which files on which value are up to date and refresh or not

 

[adonisadonis]

Thank you Viggen61 and ChrisA for all the information and tips about aperture. It's very well explained and it's quite clear to me now. I'll be starting new library soon once my external HD arrive.

I'll be seeking your help once again if ever I encountered any problems,
Thank you both once again!

 

[crb595]

If you are new to Aperture, you might be interested in apertureexpert.com. This web site has a wealth of information on using Aperture.

 

[adonisadonis]

Thanks for the info crb595 , ill check the site, loads of things to learn.

 

[Badrottie]

that's great informations I will get a bigger external HD soon for my photo work.