Compress photos WITHIN aperture library?

[rouvis]

Hello. I'm a photographer and I store my photos with Aperture 3.
I usually take photos in RAW (.CR2 format) or 15 Megapixels,
however I won't need photo of that high quality afterwards for most of the photos.

I wonder there is a method to reduce the quality and size of the master photo in order to save spaces?

Thanks for answering my question!

(I googled but the results are telling me to export a smaller image or delete previews)

 

[jdavtz]

You can't do what you're asking.

Your camera might have a small-RAW option, if you need RAW capabilities for your editing.

Or you could shoot JPEG, which will save as much if not more space than reducing your RAW size.

Or you could downgrade your camera to a fewer-MP model.

When you say you "won't need photo of that high quality afterwards for most of the photos." it sounds like you may need it for some. Are you sure you want to sacrifice the option? Hard drives are fairly cheap.

 

[marcusj0015]

You can't do what you're asking.

Your camera might have a small-RAW option, if you need RAW capabilities for your editing.

Or you could shoot JPEG, which will save as much if not more space than reducing your RAW size.

Or you could downgrade your camera to a fewer-MP model.

When you say you "won't need photo of that high quality afterwards for most of the photos." it sounds like you may need it for some. Are you sure you want to sacrifice the option? Hard drives are fairly cheap.

You should try to save a pic in the original size as a PPNG and see if it's smaller, it's lossless. other ideas are you can zip or tarball or otherwise data compress them.

 

[jdavtz]

ZIP doesn't help much on CR2 RAW files. I just tried, and went from 23.9MB to 23.6MB for one 22MP file -- it's a shot with a lot of creamy bokeh that I'd imagine would compress well if it was going to compress at all.

 

[Small White Car]

I've never found an easy way to do this. Pretty much exporting and re-importing is the way you're supposed to do it.

Why? Because apparently Aperture's designers agree with the common sentiment you see on boards like these: "Why would you want to throw away quality!?"

But here's where I agree with the OP: I like shooting full sized RAW photos of my family so that I have the ability to crop and color-correct as much as I want later.

But once I've done that I'm often happy to send them back to JPEGs. Trust me, an 18 megapixel JPEG of my kid on the playground is more than enough quality for what I'll ever, EVER want to do with that picture. Sure, I'll keep the RAWs of Disney World and birthday parties. But the day in the kiddie pool out back? Nah.

Not everything we do as photographers is a professional job. Sometimes I just have some shots of my kid in the backyard and I don't need a 20 or 30 MB file for that. Nor do I want to give up the RAW's editing abilities and shoot JPEG.

So I'm left to export and import. Oh well. An extra step. No big deal. Still, I wish I didn't have to.