So I went on a trip to Alaska in May. I was shooting mostly with an almost brand-new Nikon D5100 in RAW+JPEG mode, as well as with a small Canon camera and my iPhone. I had previously decided to use Aperture because I need a photo management program, and iPhoto doesn't cut it because I don't want to have the actual files stored in a library file, and I need RAW handling. I'd like to learn how to actually edit the images in Aperture, but that's still to come.
Because I left a couple days after graduating on this trip, I didn't have time to learn Aperture, and ended up not using it until the end of the trip, when I was in Michigan. I shot a total of 5,332 images in Alaska and Seattle, probably 80% on the D5100, and some on the Canon and iPhone.
I started importing into Aperture, but I didn't adjust the time zone when I imported, as I was in a rush to get it done, and figured that I would just go back and figure it out later. I had to change the D5100 and Canon's times to "mesh" up with the pictures from iPhones, as I forgot to change the local time on the D5100 and Canon, but the iPhone changed automatically from AT&T's and ASTAC's networks.
That was a mistake. I manually changed the time, not realizing that the time zone is also written into the metadata. When I first changed the time zones, I also had it change the originals, which I thought it would change properly. Wrong. I'll get back to that in a second.
The metadata was screwed up beyond belief, with many days being wrong, many 4-hour offsets that would start in the middle of albums, etc etc. Lesson learned: Aperture can't handle changing it reliably later. Do it right the first time.
I finally got it all fixed, and got it showing the right time zone (AKDT for Alaska, PDT for Seattle). I found a great forum post here that described how to fix the time zones without changing the time (since I had manually adjusted it.
However, back to changing the original files' time stamps. Aperture lied. It said it would change the original files to the new metadata, but instead, it changed the "date created" and "date modified" to the current date (when I was working in Aperture), not based on the Metadata.
I do have backups in Time Machine of the unmodified image files, but they are still off 4 hours, show EDT, and would be a nightmare to restore. I don't have a full backup set on the drive (an old iPod) I was using on the trip, as it got full, so I deleted a lot of the backups of the RAW images, keeping just the JPEGs.
The better option would be to have Aperture write it's metadata to the metadata in the files. How do I do this? This time around, I will test it with one image to make sure Aperture is doing what it says it will do.
A few other lessons I learned:
1. The Aperture library HAS to be on an SSD. Otherwise it is a real turkey. After I moved my XP VM off to my HDD, and the Aperture library onto the SSD, it became buttery smooth. It's also a space hog galore. I only have just over 6,000 images in Aperture (a fraction of my collection), and the library is already 9GB. At least that VM was about 40, so I have plenty of space for it.
2. The Facebook integration basically doesn't work. It exports them all out of order, so what I do now is export the album I want to upload as 2MP JPEGs in a folder on the desktop, and then upload those through a browser, and then I delete the folder of 2MP JPEGs.
3. Aperture isn't very stable. When switching from one long task to another, exit, let it save the library and open it back up again, so that you know everything is saved, and restarting might make it more stable.
EDIT: 4. Aperture is a RAM and CPU pig. It uses multiple GIGABYTES of RAM and at times uses a noticeable portion of a quad i7 (almost everything else, including 1080p H.264 video use a few % at most of that beast). Good thing I got that 8GB of ram and that i7 that I would "never need".
Because I left a couple days after graduating on this trip, I didn't have time to learn Aperture, and ended up not using it until the end of the trip, when I was in Michigan. I shot a total of 5,332 images in Alaska and Seattle, probably 80% on the D5100, and some on the Canon and iPhone.
I started importing into Aperture, but I didn't adjust the time zone when I imported, as I was in a rush to get it done, and figured that I would just go back and figure it out later. I had to change the D5100 and Canon's times to "mesh" up with the pictures from iPhones, as I forgot to change the local time on the D5100 and Canon, but the iPhone changed automatically from AT&T's and ASTAC's networks.
That was a mistake. I manually changed the time, not realizing that the time zone is also written into the metadata. When I first changed the time zones, I also had it change the originals, which I thought it would change properly. Wrong. I'll get back to that in a second.
The metadata was screwed up beyond belief, with many days being wrong, many 4-hour offsets that would start in the middle of albums, etc etc. Lesson learned: Aperture can't handle changing it reliably later. Do it right the first time.
I finally got it all fixed, and got it showing the right time zone (AKDT for Alaska, PDT for Seattle). I found a great forum post here that described how to fix the time zones without changing the time (since I had manually adjusted it.
However, back to changing the original files' time stamps. Aperture lied. It said it would change the original files to the new metadata, but instead, it changed the "date created" and "date modified" to the current date (when I was working in Aperture), not based on the Metadata.
I do have backups in Time Machine of the unmodified image files, but they are still off 4 hours, show EDT, and would be a nightmare to restore. I don't have a full backup set on the drive (an old iPod) I was using on the trip, as it got full, so I deleted a lot of the backups of the RAW images, keeping just the JPEGs.
The better option would be to have Aperture write it's metadata to the metadata in the files. How do I do this? This time around, I will test it with one image to make sure Aperture is doing what it says it will do.
A few other lessons I learned:
1. The Aperture library HAS to be on an SSD. Otherwise it is a real turkey. After I moved my XP VM off to my HDD, and the Aperture library onto the SSD, it became buttery smooth. It's also a space hog galore. I only have just over 6,000 images in Aperture (a fraction of my collection), and the library is already 9GB. At least that VM was about 40, so I have plenty of space for it.
2. The Facebook integration basically doesn't work. It exports them all out of order, so what I do now is export the album I want to upload as 2MP JPEGs in a folder on the desktop, and then upload those through a browser, and then I delete the folder of 2MP JPEGs.
3. Aperture isn't very stable. When switching from one long task to another, exit, let it save the library and open it back up again, so that you know everything is saved, and restarting might make it more stable.
EDIT: 4. Aperture is a RAM and CPU pig. It uses multiple GIGABYTES of RAM and at times uses a noticeable portion of a quad i7 (almost everything else, including 1080p H.264 video use a few % at most of that beast). Good thing I got that 8GB of ram and that i7 that I would "never need".
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