New to Mac, Aperture question

[NYRangers11]

Hi All,
New to the Mac scene and totally love it. A thing that carried over with me from Windows is that I keep all pictures in self managed folders. Currently I have Aperture and Iphoto. I wish to keep my picture folders as they currently are but at the same time I want to use either Aperture or Iphoto to view my whole picture collection. My question is how to do I import the pics into the apps without having them duplicated (one copy in the current folder and one copy in the apps directory) ??

Thanks in advance.

 

[flosseR]

iPhoto I don't know. Aperture 3 is easy, you use referenced files and import that.
See: http://go-dslr.com/welcome-to-the-apple-aperture-pages

 

[fcortese]

Hi All,
New to the Mac scene and totally love it. A thing that carried over with me from Windows is that I keep all pictures in self managed folders. Currently I have Aperture and Iphoto. I wish to keep my picture folders as they currently are but at the same time I want to use either Aperture or Iphoto to view my whole picture collection. My question is how to do I import the pics into the apps without having them duplicated (one copy in the current folder and one copy in the apps directory) ??

Thanks in advance.

I believe the best way is when you import your photos keep them as "referenced" photos in the folders you now have. You can still access them, but they won't be stored in the Aperture library and kept as "managed" files. Open, A3, click on "import." On the bottom you will see your hard drive, selected the file folders you want imported. Then on the right hand side in the Aperture Library section (called a brick, BTW) where you see "Store Files;" click on the downward arrow and select "In their current location." Then click on "import checked" in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and you are good to go. Hope this helps and welcome!

 

[AndyGordon]

Aperture has been covered, but the same is available in iPhoto. Go to preferences, advanced and uncheck Copy files to the iPhoto library. This will I believe give you the iPhoto equivalent of Aperture's referenced images

Cheers

Andy

 

[NYRangers11]

Appreciate the replies.

Now if i wanted to do some very basic editing.....like rotation. How do I save once the change is made ? Will I just export and then choose whether I wish to rename the file or keep the name as was ?

 

[flosseR]

I aperture you don't have to export at all.
It automatically works non-destructively..
Picture this: you are in Aperture, and make some adjustments to your photo. All it does is, it saves the changes and applies them when you a) view the image orb) export it. Your actual master is never touched , you always work on a copy of the master which is great.
This principle is kind of like viewing an html webpage. HTML is just a description and your browser displays the description
Iphoto not as far as I know.

 

[AxisOfBeagles]

Appreciate the replies.

Now if i wanted to do some very basic editing.....like rotation. How do I save once the change is made ? Will I just export and then choose whether I wish to rename the file or keep the name as was ?

As well as being non-destructive, Aperture gives you the option of having just the one, edited, image viewable or (set in Prefs) having the edited second (or subsequent) version visible and connected as a stack. Which is my preference - to be able to see the original image, as well as any subsequent edits.

 

[flosseR]

As well as being non-destructive, Aperture gives you the option of having just the one, edited, image viewable or (set in Prefs) having the edited second (or subsequent) version visible and connected as a stack. Which is my preference - to be able to see the original image, as well as any subsequent edits.

Yeps forgot about that, i actually have the same setting enabled

 

[NYRangers11]

I aperture you don't have to export at all.
It automatically works non-destructively..
Picture this: you are in Aperture, and make some adjustments to your photo. All it does is, it saves the changes and applies them when you a) view the image orb) export it. Your actual master is never touched , you always work on a copy of the master which is great.
This principle is kind of like viewing an html webpage. HTML is just a description and your browser displays the description
Iphoto not as far as I know.

Does that take up more hard drive space since it creates another copy of the image? So the image changes are only viewable when actually in Aperture. So if I wanted to view the changes outside of Aperture I would have to export them?

 

[emorydunn]

Does that take up more hard drive space since it creates another copy of the image? So the image changes are only viewable when actually in Aperture. So if I wanted to view the changes outside of Aperture I would have to export them?

Not really. There isn't actually another copy of the image: just the small amount of space it takes to store what edits were made.

All Aperture really is a way to organise your photos and a database of edits to those photos.

And yes, if you wanted to look at an image outside of Aperture (or send it to someone) you would export the version and it will create a new file in your format of choice with the edits you made.

 

[BIS2]

this isn't working for me....

As well as being non-destructive, Aperture gives you the option of having just the one, edited, image viewable or (set in Prefs) having the edited second (or subsequent) version visible and connected as a stack. Which is my preference - to be able to see the original image, as well as any subsequent edits.

Downloaded the trial version of Aperture and am liking it so far but I am confused about versions. Right now if I edit a pic the new version shows up in the browser, but I would like to be able to see the new one(s) and the master (how else would I know which pics are edited versions and which are only masters?).....anyway I read what you said and went to preferences and checked "automatically stack new version" but it's still not doing it. Is there something else I have to do? I've been trying to figure this out for an hour and it's driving me nuts!

thanks-

 

[VirtualRain]

As you say, when you make adjustments to the image, that's what you see by default when selecting it. You will note that the filmstrip shows which images have adjustments applied vs. not by showing a small slider icon overlay on the thumbnail. To see the master unadjusted image, just hit "m" to toggle back and forth. This is what I do.

If this isn't enough, you can always select your desired master, right click, and select "create new version from Master" and apply adjustments to that instead. This will give you a duplicate to work on that you can either leave in the film strip so you can see the original and adjusted side by side, or you can use stacks to group them together. However, with the "m" toggle mentioned above, there's little value in this approach IMHO.