Aperture export PANIC

[anewman143]

OK - trying to prep my images for moving away from Aperture. My library had been managed, so after reading online (not enough, apparently), I chose all of my images on my laptop (8000+) and used the relocate master option in the file menu to make referenced instead of managed files. Chose my brand spanking new 5TB USB drive and off it went...

Was under the impression that things were "supposed" to be organized by date into folder and sub-folders.

What I got was a new hard drive with 8000+ files on it. No folder structure, nothing.

Was my mistake selecting all of the images and not all of the projects instead?

So now what? Can I "unconvert" back to managed and then "re-export" back so that folder structure is maintained??

Help!!

 

[robgendreau]

Organizing into folders by date is pretty easy IF your images have timestamps in exif (as opposed to say scans). Any competent photo management software should be able to import them as referenced images and move them into dated folders upon import. Lightroom for example. You didn't say why you did this, other than to get referenced files, but I assume there's some post-Aperture solution lurking.

Or just use your backup (you had one, right?) and start over, but this time use Aperture Exporter. It allows you to have more control over the process.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Was my mistake selecting all of the images and not all of the projects instead?

So now what? Can I "unconvert" back to managed and then "re-export" back so that folder structure is maintained??

Help!!

Yes, when I did this, I found by trial and error that I could re-locate my Year folders, each containing lots of projects, and the structure was maintained. I think the rule is that you can keep the structure re-locating at one folder level up from individual projects. Re-locating a year at time wasn't too onerous. Don't relocate a folder contains other folders.

Providing the Aperture Library is still showing your structure you should be able to "Consolidate" I think it is called from memory (not used Aperture for a while) to get them back to managed before trying again.

 

[anewman143]

Yes, when I did this, I found by trial and error that I could re-locate my Year folders, each containing lots of projects, and the structure was maintained. I think the rule is that you can keep the structure re-locating at one folder level up from individual projects. Re-locating a year at time wasn't too onerous. Don't relocate a folder contains other folders.

Providing the Aperture Library is still showing your structure you should be able to "Consolidate" I think it is called from memory (not used Aperture for a while) to get them back to managed before trying again.

Ended up being much ado about nothing. I missed the little pull down menu that lets you choose how to generate referenced images. So even thought I had done it once with "none" selected, I just went back into Aperture, chose year:month:day and it reorganized the mess in about 10 minutes.

Will take a look at Aperture Exporter as well - am hearing that not all GPS data is necessarily included in the reorg, so need to look closely.