Aperture & iPhoto referenced library issues

Hi,
For the last couple of days I've been busy trying to get my Aperture library to work properly. I recently started using a referenced library because of lack of space on my internal ssd. I've generated previews on all of my 40000 photos. I can see all of my Projects, thumbnails, metadata etc. when my external drive is disconnected. However, there are two major issues:
1) Most of the video thumbnails are broken, both in Aperture and iPhoto. By double clicking a thumbnail of a video (.mov, .avi etc.) it sometimes starts playing, sometimes it doesn't, totally inconsistent. I can export the video and it works just fine.
2) While using iPhoto with the external drive disconnected, all Events are there, the thumbnails are there, everything looks ok, but I can only view some of the previews/photos after double clicking the thumbnails. A dialogue opens up saying "The volume for [imagefilename] cannot be found. Insert the disk or connect to the server volume..", but I can actually see the full size preview behind this dialogue. By clicking "Cancel" the photo dissapears and is replaced by a black screen with a grey exclamation mark. This does not occur while using Aperture, I can see all of my previews in full glory when the external drive is disconnected. However, with the external drive connected everything works in iPhoto (except above mentioned issue with videos).
Please boys and girls, help me out with this!
System information
OS: Maverick 10.9.1
Aperture: 3.5.1
iPhoto: 9.5.1
Thanks!
//Michel

I don;t use iPhoto much so I'm no expert but looking at other posts asking a similar question sems to indicate iPhoto is not capable of doing this.
See Can iPhoto view pictures on a disconnected external drive in a unified photo library? for one example.
Again if Aperture is working correctly on the referenced images on the disconnect drive and iPhoto is not you will need to ask the iPhoto folks.
regards

Similar Messages

IPhoto Referenced Library: repair aliases

Hello everyone, I have an iphoto referenced library of about 58 thousand pictures, I have the originals stored on a 1TB lacie hard drive ("castor") connected through firewire 800. Tonight I was doing some funny stuff in order to get that drive clean and empty for re-partitioning (since disk utility wound't let me erase a couple of mac journaled partitions I didn't need anymore without reformatting the whole volume), so I took all the pictures, documents, applications, and a mac os tiger (from which I boot sometimes) to another daisy chained 1TB lacie (pollux) and once I was done, back to it's original home ("castor"), I thought that, even formatted, it would keep it's original path, but may be it didn't for when I tried to open my library all of the files where missing. There were only thumbnails and once at full screen it would ask me for the current location of the picture and if canceled, it would show just a huge exclamation mark.
I remade some of those aliases manually but there are 58,000 + files. So I am looking for a clever solution to get all those aliases fixed automatically without having to re-import all the folders containing my pictures again (not yet).
A few days ago I had a rather similar problem with iMovie which I solved by following a tutorial; editing the project's binary file by turning it into html via terminal and then modifying it with the correct location of the files. I hope there might be some trick like this for my mess. I would guess all of the ilife applications have a similar architecture and way to work.
I will post back if I find any fix for others to learn. Meanwhile, thanks in advance for your useful help and sorry for my english, I am Mexican... greetings! .

Good day, unfortunately filebuddy did not work for me, however I found on the internet a hope for all of us having issue with our referenced libraries: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=711230
This man affirms that by double clicking in one of the files and manually finding it's location when prompted (as expected in iTunes) was able to regain the order of his library.
And in http://thedigitalstory.com/2010/05/reconnecting_master.html this function appears to be more reliable and may be I am upgrading to Aperture now.
My "referenced videos" iphoto library seems to be working quite well, even though it passed through the same odyssey of getting out and back to my external hard drive, and it's also within an intricate directory structure.
I certainly have the need of a referenced library since my computer's hard drive is laptop-size and therefore it can't run as fast for browsing 4 years of amateur digital photography, so I think there's no workaround about that, in fact it is a pretty amazing feature.
Meanwhile I managed to solve it using automator: renaming folders, making aliases, and replacing the dead ones with these. The only problem is that the aliases made by automator which uses (I think) a similar method as Finder for creating aliases is that these links occupy much more hard disk space that the ones generated by iPhoto. I am sure I read on some other post that I can get into the iPhoto application package and mess around with its vital files to get the aliases repaired, in a similar fashion as I did to iMovie. Thank you for your help.
Message was edited by: sighi.dmor

IPhoto and Aperture referenced library issues

Hi,
For the last couple of days I've been busy trying to get my iPhoto/Aperture library to work properly. I recently created a referenced library using Aperture because of lack of space on my internal ssd. I can see all of my Projects, thumbnails, metadata etc. in both iPhoto and Aperture when my external drive is disconnected. However, there are two major issues:
1) Most of the video thumbnails are broken, both in Aperture and iPhoto. By double clicking a thumbnail of a video (.mov, .avi etc.) it sometimes starts playing (with the external drive connected), sometimes it doesn't, totally inconsistent. I can export the video and it works just fine.
2) While using iPhoto with the external drive disconnected, all Events are there, the thumbnails are there, everything looks ok, but I can only view some of the previews/photos after double clicking the thumbnails. A dialogue opens up saying "The volume for [imagefilename] cannot be found. Insert the disk or connect to the server volume..", but I can actually see the full size preview behind this dialogue. By clicking "Cancel" the photo dissapears and is replaced by a black screen with a grey exclamation mark. This does not occur while using Aperture, I can see all of my previews in full glory when the external drive is disconnected. However, with the external drive connected everything works in iPhoto (except above mentioned issue with videos).
Please boys and girls, I need your help on this one!
System information
OS: Maverick 10.9.1
Aperture: 3.5.1
iPhoto: 9.5.1
Thanks!
//Michel

1. Are these videos different formats? Or the same?
2. See my answer to your duplicate post.

OK to use Aperture to maintain iPhoto Referenced Library

I have Aperture and iPhoto. We are an OSX and Windows household. But thanks to the Windows 8 debacle, my wife (the diehard Windows user) has abandoned her PC with all regard to photos and videos (viewing, editing, sharing). Now, I use Aperture most of the time, but my wife uses iPhoto 100% of the time. I manage all the imports with Aperture. (I currently have one referenced library that I use in Aperture of all files and a second default iPhoto Library that is managed but only has post-2010 files in it. Both created in their respective programs, if that matters.)
Coincidentally, we are also at a point where we need to quit adding photos/videos to the PC or we'll exceed its backup capacity.
Now that she is using the iMac, I would like to get the Library organized and minimize my workflow and eliminate duplication. I do not have enough contiguous disk space for single managed aperture library. I have avoided proceeding because iPhoto and referenced files are not recommended by most of the experts here, for well founded reasons. However, now that both apps can use the same library, and Aperture handles referenced libraries so much better... why not go referenced now? I can leave the pre-2010 files on the PC, and keep all the post-2010 imports on the iMac, all in one Library. The fact that nobody is getting into the files on the PC virtually eliminates all the problems I've had in the past.
Is there something I'm missing?
Thanks for any thoughts on this, or hidden gotchas.

No assuming that you have the latest version of both iPhoto and Aperture so there is total interoperability between them
LN

IPhoto referenced library, importing

iPhoto looks like a pretty nice app, but I use my photos with a large collection of different picture utilities and keep copies on both Mac, PC and NAS drives. This made using iPhoto with a "referenced" library pretty much a must so all the programs can use the pictures easily.
So unchecking "copy into library" worked ok for me....but one little problem. When I insert an SD card it goes right to iPhoto and when you do an import the new pictures get copied straight into the iPhoto library. Can iPhoto do an import that just drops the files from the SD card into a selected folder?
If iPhoto can't import this way, how do you setup things so iPhoto doesn't automatically launch when you stick in an SD card? ie: just have the SD card (or camera) show up as a folder on the desktop.
Also, I've got hundreds of thousands of pictures in my collection from a lot of sources, does the iPhoto app have a library size or picture count limit?

iPhoto looks like a pretty nice app, but I use my photos with a large collection of different picture utilities and keep copies on both Mac, PC and NAS drives. This made using iPhoto with a "referenced" library pretty much a must so all the programs can use the pictures easily.
You really can not successfully do that - at best you will be working only with the original photos sans any modifications made in iPhoto
So unchecking "copy into library" worked ok for me....but one little problem. When I insert an SD card it goes right to iPhoto and when you do an import the new pictures get copied straight into the iPhoto library. Can iPhoto do an import that just drops the files from the SD card into a selected folder?
No
If iPhoto can't import this way, how do you setup things so iPhoto doesn't automatically launch when you stick in an SD card? ie: just have the SD card (or camera) show up as a folder on the desktop.
In the iPhoto preferences set action when a camera is connected to "do nothing"
Also, I've got hundreds of thousands of pictures in my collection from a lot of sources, does the iPhoto app have a library size or picture count limit?
250,000
LN

HT4007 Lost Link to Aperture/iPhoto combined library procedues

I lost the link to the information about combining Aperture and iPhoto Libraries. Help! How can I get back to it?

Did you try the support docs here? http://www.apple.com/support/aperture/
Or this main page: http://www.apple.com/aperture/iphoto-to-aperture/

How to optimize my Aperture/iPhoto shared Library configurations?

Hi, Dear All:
I just got a new Aperture 1.5 installed on my Mac Pro two days ago, and I decided to use the iPhoto Library as my Aperture's defualt vault, however, I also relocated my iPhoto Library from primary HD (Macintosh HD) to 2nd HD (Media HD).
However, When I launched the Aperture, I found out that I now have two iPhoto Library on my Aperture Project Pane (shown as iPhoto Library and iPhoto Library (1)...)
How can I clean up the old iPhoto Library and set the new iPhoto Library (1) as the defualt vualt of the shared iPhoto/Aperture Library?
Do I better up to let Aperture using a separate dedicated Aperture Library?
Thanks in advance!!
KC

I found the right answers from the replies.

IPhoto 5 library issues

Hi all,
For the past three weeks, every time I try to fire up iPhoto5 I get a message that reads "The photo library was created with an unreleased version of iPhoto. Please quit and upgrade this library by opening it in iPhoto 2 or iPhoto 4."
At that point, the only option seems to be to quit out of the program. Any ideas on how to solve this issue?
Thanks in advance.

Hi Bill,
So far I have not seen any solution for that error message in these discussions. If you have a recent backup of your iPhoto Library folder then take the old library out of the Pictures folder and put your backup library in there (I suggest you backup the backup before you do this) Launch iPhoto and hopefully everything will be back to normal. If you don't have a backup then...
The only thing I can tell you to do right now is to create a new library and import/add to the library to reimport your images.
these are the steps:
Close iPhoto
Drag the iPhoto Library folder to the desktop
Launch iPhoto
In the next window that opens choose to create a new library.
When the new empty library opens go to File/add to library
In the next window navigate to the library on your desktop and choose it.
Your images will be imported in nice dated rolls. (make sure your view is set to sort by rolls to see it) There are a couple of caveats to this. You will get rolls named "Originals" These rolls will contain your video clips and your original images that you had edited. If you had RAW files they would be in those rolls too (I don't do RAW, so I don't know for sure) Delete what you don't want from those rolls. You will also get the jpeg pointer files to your video clips imported. They will just be jpegs and will not point to the video clips anymore as iPhoto made new ones when the clips were imported again. You can delete those. they should be in a roll right next to the newly imported video clips so they are not hard to find. The thumbnail files don't get imported as iPhoto makes new ones when the images are imported.
You will have to redo your albums, keywords, etc.
Good luck!

Referenced library issue

I don't want to have a aperture library that is 150GB in size so I choose to leave my images in the current location. I have a file structure of image that is ranked by year, then within it by event, then by camera (sometimes i have a few friends go out to shoot together and i gather their pictures). eg. an image will be under 2011> 20110904_NYC_Visit>Eric_Camera. After I add extra folder (from drag in the finder) in the "20110904_NYC_Visit" folder, other than the folder 'Eric_Camera' , I added 'Jenn_Camera' as Jenn just send me her pictures. I restarted aperture and the 'Jenn_Camera' folder didn't show up in the aperture library. Am I doing something wrong? Should I import the picture by other means like by >import>folder>and choose a location so the picture are imported by aperture in the file system instead of by dragging via the finder?
Thanks a lot in advance.
Also I would also like to know if I happen to do a reference library instead of store files in the aperture library folder. If I rotate a picture or assign location does the rotation or location metadata apply it to its master jpgs / RAW ? If not, how do it do that?

That's a fairly comment misunderstanding of how Aperture works. What you do to your file system external to Aperture has no effect on the Aperture library. How you store your masters when they are referenced is in no why reflected in the Aperture library.
The Aperture libraries organization of projects, folders and albums is entirely an internal representation. It is up to you to decide how you want the layout to look, the external folder structure the images are in when you import them has no bearing on the Aperture library structure.
As for you second question Aperture is non-destructive, that is the master image is never modified. All changes are applied to the versions of the master.
regards

Aperture with referenced library on a terastation

I was experiencing a problem similar (or identical) to the one discussed in this post (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6695612&tstart=0) and made some head-way on debugging it. Since I have a few more data points, I'm creating a thread with a more specific description of the problem.
To quickly review: I was attempting to import photos from a camera or card reader and place the photos onto a volume hosted by a terastation. I would select 1 or more photos for import, push the button, and Aperture would quickly respond "0 Images have been imported" with no error/failure message.
- In the aforementioned configuration, I had the Library "package" on my local drive and was simply trying to save the pictures to the terastation.
- I started over (whacked the pictures folder, whacked the prefs.plist, whacked the library) and created a new library package on the local drive.
- When I selected a local drive as the destination for the pictures (though not IN the library itself) the import worked ok.
- Tried moving the library package over to the terastation and it said something to the effect of "could not copy all files because one or more files uses an unsupported character in the filename".
- I could move the folder containing the pictures to the terastation after import.
- If I create a library package on the terastation, it does not complain.
- So, with the library on the TS, I tried importing again with the destination for the pictures being a local drive.
- This time I got an error message saying "Import From Capture Card Completed with Errors" and it listed the files that failed (though it did not elaborate on the error).
So if either the library AND/OR the destination for the pictures is the terastation, the import will fail. Though I see no "good" reason for a failure in the case where the library is local and the pictures are on the TS.
Is there a way to enable logging so I can get a better idea for the failure mechanism?
Any known solutions/work-arounds to this problem?

Most of the description was a list of trouble-shooting steps I've gone through. The fundamental thing that I'm trying to do is keep the library on my local computer and the pictures on the terastation.
In the import dialog, I set "Store Files" to a path on the TS, copy and move are grayed (but copy is selected), subfolders is set to "Image year/month/day", I click "Import <n> Images" and it says "0 images have been imported"
None of the picture filenames are unusual. I'm not sure why its failing because none of the errors are verbose
FWIW, I believe the terastation uses XFS as the underlying format.
At this point I've disabled all access permissions and the folder should be fully writable by anyone.

Aperture 3 external library issue.

I just upgraded to Aperture 3, but now I can't get the program to link to the external drive housing my photo library. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Did you move move your library to a new drive? Is your drive formatted MacOS Extended and a local volume, or is it a network volume? See:
Aperture: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3252
Check the ownership and permissions on the drive, also the "Ignore Ownership on this Volume flag", and try to launch Aperture on this volume by double clicking the Library.

Aperture/iPhoto - Use Unified Library or import iPhoto into Aperture?

So as it is June 30th, I've been forced into upgrading to Lion. Now I know I can take advantage of the Aperture/iPhoto unified library structure.
But should I?
I am new to Aperture and use it for photos starting in January 2012 going forward. I have already upgraded to Aperture 3.3. I am still currently running iPhoto 8.1.2 for photos from 2011 and earlier. My plan was to eventually import my iPhoto library into Aperture. Now it appears I don't have to.
So I'm standing at a crossroads and I'd like feedback. I have read some of the discussions where folks are having issues with migration with both avenues so I'd like to know which one makes more sense.
Should I upgrade to iPhoto 9.3? Should I keep each library separate? Should I merge? Should I import iPhoto into Aperture still and have one library going forward?
Looking for folks with some experience to give me guidance!
Thanks in advance!
Chrystal in TX

Merge them. When you upgrade to iPhoto 9.3 and Aperture 3.3 the programs use the same library format... you can open it in either one.
Note people rarely post feedback about something if it's working for them, so results will always be skewed toward the negative online. Still, it makes sense to have a backup before upgrading, as a general best practice.

Can you use iPhoto as your referenced library in Aperture 3?

Hi folks, new to the forum here and I've searched around older posts for an answer to this dumb question but can't seem to find it. Any insight much appreciated.
I'm a relatively new mac user, migrated over just under 5,000 photos from Photoshop Elements on the PC to iPhoto on my new iMac and very happy with it. I was going to get the new PSE for Mac to use as my editor with iPhoto, but now that Aperture 3 is such a ridiculously good price on the App store I've been testing that out and I love it!
So the question is, as I start to get more serious about my photography I would love to be able to use Aperture for everything - but the rest of the family just want the simplicity and great interface of iPhoto for the family shots. Can I / we keep importing, storing photos in the iPhoto library, and everyone else just uses that for the cropping, red-eye removal etc., but I can access the library in Aperture (sort of like a referenced library) make changes, add versions etc. without messing it up?
Hope that makes sense, and again, apologies for what must be the millionth time this question has been asked.
James

In a word, no.
Aperture and iPhoto are entirely different applications that work in very different ways.
The only communication between the two is as follows:
Aperture is able to parse the iPhoto Library to allow it to import the contents while stacking the Originals and Modified versions, preserving metadata and so forth.
Aperture can share its Previews with the iLife apps, including iPhoto.
That's it.
So, specifically, what interaction there is between the two is designed to facilitate migration from iPhoto to the more powerful app. After that, iPhoto has exactly the same relationship to the Aperture Library as, say, Pages or iMovie.
Regards
TD

How can I move my old iPhoto library into a Referenced Library format and use that as my default?

Hi, I have been using iPhoto for photo management where all the jpegs have been living, in organized events by date and subject for some time. I recently upgraded to aperture and am using the same iPhoto library. The issue I have is that I use Carbonite for my cloud back up and I am able to look at the pictures I have on my PC with the same folder organization I have them on my PC hard drive. This is apparently not possible for iPhoto library. The only way to access a picture on the iPhoto library in the cloud is to go through the master and hope you can find the specific picture since they are not organized in a comprehensible manner (like events or folders) in there.
So the only solution I can think of is to move the current iPhoto library to a referenced image library and use that as my default library from now on. This way I get cloud access and the events will hopefully turn into folders with dates and subjects that I can continue to keep organized to satisfy my OCD tendencies.
So the question I have is that:
1. How can I make a reference Library for Aperture/iPhoto?
2. How do I move the current library to the Referenced Library in an Organized manner? My wish list would be a series of folders labeled with the date and the subject, like I have in my iPhoto library right now.
3. If there is any alternative, your suggestions and recommendations would be much appreciated.
My computer: Mac Mini (Mid 2012), Lion, 16GB RAM.
Thank you kindly,

Or is there a way to go through aperture to make a new reference library that I can move the masters into later?
you do not move the masters into a references library - you turn your current library into a referenced library. As Terence Devlin said:
File -> Relocate Masters
What you should set up:
Select a folder, where you want to store your referenced files - probably on an external drive.
Decide on a hierarchical folder structure inside this folder - that is completely up to you.
Select a project from your library and use the command "File -> Relocate Masters/Originals" to move the original image files to the folder where you want to go them to. Only take care not to send two projects to the same folder.
Alternatively, if you do not care about the folder structure Aperture will use, select all images at once from the "Photos" view and let Aperture decide how to assing the folders - in the "Relocate Originals" dialoge you can specify a subfolder format.
Regards
Léonie

I just noticed that I can no longer select photos out of my finder that are located in my Aperture/Iphoto Library. I used to be able to attach photos to my gmail out of the aperture library in the finder and for some reason, no longer can.

I just noticed that I can no longer select photos out of my finder that are located in my Aperture/Iphoto Library. I used to be able to attach photos to my gmail out of the aperture library in the finder and for some reason, no longer can.
I can't access these images except to go into the applications.
Also, I'd like to import my iphoto library into aperture, and move aperture library to an external drive. I tried the import first, but there wasn't enough space. Then I tried copying over the aperture library onto the external drive but it failed bc it said file was in use.
As it is, I only have 50gb left on my imac, and the aperture library is 150gb. Also, I have over 10k images in both libraries combined and there are tons of duplicates that need to be sorted, and hopefully not messed up because I've organized most of them.
So in short, I need to know how to do the following:
-select photos in finder in aperture/iphoto libraries
-move aperture library to live on external drive
-import iphoto library into aperture library
-eliminate dups but maintain organization
-moving forward i need a better workflow so that I import images from camera, and can organize right away into albums rather than creating projects by default and then creating albums so essentially the photos are in 2 different places, even tho they are referenced
-live happily ever after
Thanks in advance for any support you can offer!!

If you're using apps like iPhoto or Aperture then they replace the Finder for managing your photos. The point is that you use the (many) options available via these apps for the things you want and need to do with the Photos.
So, simply, you don't select the photos in the Finder. I'll append the supported ways to do this - which are faster and will yield the current version of your Photos - to the end of this post.
-move aperture library to live on external drive
Managed or Referenced Library? Managed -
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit Aperture
2. Copy the Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching Aperture. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Referenced - relocate your Masters first.
These issues are covered in the Manual and on this forum hundreds of times.
-import iphoto library into aperture library
FIle -> Import -> iPhoto Library? Have you done this already? If so are you trying to move the Masters to Aperture from an iPhoto Library? Or Consolidate them?
-moving forward i need a better workflow so that I import images from camera, and can organize right away into albums rather than creating projects by default and then creating albums so essentially the photos are in 2 different places, even tho they are referenced
You can't. Every photo is in a Project. They’re the basic building blocks of the Library.
You might want to spend a little time with the manual or the video tutorials. I'm not sure you've grasped the app you've purchased.
The following is written for iPhoto, but about 97% works for Aperture too.
There are many, many ways to access your files in iPhoto/ APerture: You can use any Open / Attach / Browse dialogue. On the left there's a Media heading, your pics can be accessed there. Command-Click for selecting multiple pics. This is what you use to attach your shot to your GMail
(Note the above illustration is not a Finder Window. It's the dialogue you get when you go File -> Open)
You can access the Library from the New Message Window in Mail:
There's a similar option in Outlook and many, many other apps. If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto/ Aperture.
If you use a Cocoa-based Browser such as Safari, you can drag the pics from the iPhoto Window to the Attach window in the browser.
If you want to access the files with iPhoto/ Aperture not running:
For users of 10.6 and later: You can download a free Services component from MacOSXAutomation which will give you access to the Library from your Services Menu.
Using the Services Preference Pane you can even create a keyboard shortcut for it.
or use this free utility Karelia iMedia Browser

Aperture & iPhoto referenced library issues

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