Aperture 3 Library Size

Does anyone have any idea what the amount of referenced images in an aperture 3 Library should be? Has this changed from Aperture 2? I am trying to get all of my libraries moved over and wonder if the limits have changed and how it affects speed in 64 bit.

I just completed upgrading my old Aperture 2 library to 3. In Ap2, the library was I believe around 2GB, maybe as big as 4GB. Now, in Ap3, it is 11GB. Absolutely nothing changed other than the upgrade.
To give a better example, I also finished importing all of my old photos (from 1999 - 2006) into Ap3... I'd say roughly 75% of the photos are from an old Nikon Coolpix 950 - not exactly the world's highest megapixel camera (1600 x 1200 pics). After importing those photos, I now have a grand total of 27,900 photos in my Aperture 3 library - all referenced masters. Now the library is nearly 25GB in size.
I did a Show Package Contents on the library, and discovered, much to my dismay, that the vast majority of that space is taken up by the thumbnails that Aperture creates for each picture. (just Get Info on the Thumbnails directory in the package - you'll see what I mean). I am really surprised that thumbs take up this much space now - and annoyed that they are stored in massive files that make it impossible to see how large a given thumbnail is for a particular image.
I don't see any way in Aperture to adjust the size of the thumbnails - and of course, you can't turn them off (but that wouldn't make any sense anyway). Note I'm not talking about Preview images, which you do have control of - those in my library only take up about 3GB, and even after deleting all of them, my library was still nearly 22GB.
I hope Apple comes out with some sort of explanation for why the thumbnails are so big now - seems particularly vexing considering the very low resolution of my earlier pictures (which take up roughly half of my collection).

Similar Messages

  • Reducing Aperture Library size

    Sorry if this has been dealt with before (I did a search and found nowt).
    I'm fairly new to Aperture, and my Library has grown to 14GB (14,000 files). All files are referenced on an external drive (31GB of referenced files). I use a MacBook Air with SSD, so I start with 56GB after formatting. There were lots of duplicate photos (because I merged my iPhoto library with some offline archives I had). So, it was time to get rid of the dupes.
    I deleted about 3,000 photos, but the library didn't get any smaller. I deleted all of the previews, but that only freed up 2GB. When I regenerated the previews, it went back to 14GB. After recovering from a prolonged bout of consternation, I searched the web. It appears that thumbnails are not deleted when photos are removed. This strikes me as a bug, or at the very least, poor design. So, I went in and removed all of the thumbnails as described here:
    http://brettgrossphotography.com/2008/04/24/aperture-library-slimming-the-size
    After regenerating thumbnails and previews, my library was down to 6GB!
    My question is: how do people on this forum deal with this unnecessary library bloat? I typically only keep a few percent of the photos from each import, so my library volume will again outpace the actual number of photos.
    One possible approach is to create a new Aperture library from a vault. Because my files are referenced, it should create a new library from scratch and then generate the thumbnails and previews. Has anyone tried that? Seems preferable to opening packages and manually deleting files.
    -Rick

    After a weekend of investigation, here's some more info on Aperture library size:
    1) I deleted another 1,000 or so photos, updated the vault, moved the library and then restored from the vault. The library size went from 6GB up to 7GB!
    2) Looking inside the old library and the restored one revealed:
    a) AP.Thumbnails files in the restored library were generally twice the size of the ones in the old one.
    b) Looking at the AP.Thumbnails files with File Juicer revealed that the restored library had created thumbnails of the master files as well as the versions. The original library had thumbnails for some master/version pairs, but nowhere near as many.
    3) I then deleted all of the AP.* files in the restored library, and got Aperture to regenerate the thumbnails. This reduced the library size to 5GB. The AP.Thumbnails files were much smaller.
    So, my conclusion is that the best way to trim your library is to go in and delete all of the AP.* files, then regenerate the thumbnails. Restoring from a vault is not as effective.
    Anyone have any intuitions as to why Aperture generates thumbnails for master files when there is an edited version? I'm fairly new to Aperture and have yet to see Aperture display thumbnails of masters if there is an edited version.

  • IPhoto vs Aperture library sizes

    I installed the Aperture tral, left the photos in iPhoto and created a book.  Didnt add any new pictures to either library.  I then deleted the trial and purchased Aperture from the app store.  Copied over the photos from iPhoto.  iPhoto had 1 book and Aperture 1 book.  The iPhoto library size is 110Gb and the Aperture library size is 90Gb, a 20Gb difference.  It appears that all my photos are in both libraries.  So no issues.  I was surprised and the 20Gb diffeerence.  Comments or thoughts if there is an issue pending that I may not be aware of.

    Hve you synced with an iPod, ipad or iPhone? The cache for these devices can easily account for that amount of disk space.
    Regards
    TD

  • Question about Aperture library size

    I am storing my photos on a secondary drive. However, my Aperture library is just as large as the original source folder even though I am not copying the images into the library.
    Shouldn't the library be smaller since it only references the images from another location?

    If you changed the size and quality of your preview settings, it's not enough to just "Update Previews". You will have to DELETE the old previews and generate new ones.
    (That's what my findings where)
    To my understanding, previews are used
    - if you use the Aperture "Quick Previews" functionality
    - for synching with your e.g. iPhone
    - in the Media browser dialog of e.g. iWork applications
    (am I correct and complete?)
    In my first days of Aperture 2 I increased the size to unlimited and the quality to 12, since "of course" I wanted to see the best possible quality of my pictures.
    Now I learned that previews are not used in normal Aperture workflows, so I reduced the size to the lowest possible value of 1280 and the quality to 12.
    This way I reduced the size of my library (30k JPEG photos, all referenced) from 108 GB to 33 GB.

  • Aperture Library size different after restore from TM and rebuild Thumbnails

    I have just completed an erase-install-migrate from Time Machine using Setup Assistant.
    The size of the managed Aperture Library originally was 397.8Gb
    After completion of the migrate back in I opened Aperture and as expected it rebuilt the thumbnails (TM does not backup the Thumbnails).
    After doing this I tested the Library as far as possible and all seems well, and the number of photos is exactly the same as before (49,883).
    However, the size of the library is now 357.8 Gb.
    The only logical explanation (to me) is that the restore process has eliminated previews and thumbnails from photos which I have deleted over the years.
    I still have a backup of the original (397.8Gb) version which I could put back with the Finder, but if the restored library has cleared years of redundant previews and thumbnails I would prefer to stay with that.
    All done with Mavericks and Aperture 3.5.
    Any insights very welcome.
    Thanks

    Just had the idea of looking at sizes in the Library package contents, and the explanation for the change in size is due to three things:
    Thumbnails old: 44.95 Gb
    Thumbnails new: 15.13 Gb
    There is also an iPod photocache of 14.6 Gb which is not yet present in the new.
    However Previews old was 27.95 Gb and Previews new is 33.18 Gb, so I assume some previews were smaller in the original Library.
    Masters is 304.3 Gb in the original and new libraries.
    I am beginning to feel more confident about the new library.

  • Aperture library size vs iphoto

    My aperture library and iphoto library have the same photos in them. Photos seem to be the same size and quality (I imported all photos from aperture into iPhoto). iPhoto's library is 20GB, Aperture is nearly 60. I'm guessing that while Aperture might be a hair bigger because of the previews (default settings there), 3x the size means something is wrong.
    Is there a way to rebuild the Aperture library without losing all my albums/libraries?
    While 60GB isn't the end of the world, I'm trying to move my photos to my laptop. And between photos and music, I'm really pushing my hard drive's capacity. That 40GB difference is going to mean I'll use iPhoto (09) vs Aperture (2), and I'm still partial to Aperture.
    Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
    Message was edited by: unleashed

    Thanks everyone for their help. Redoing the previews helped. I think I had the previews set to "do not limit" on my dekstop and had just pulled the aperture library to my laptop. Redoing those previews took 20GB off my library size.
    I see where you're coming from with the referenced images, but for now, it just keeps things simpler for my to keep it all managed. It's a brilliant solution though, if I need to in the future I might go that route. Especially when you think about possibilities with having the referenced images on Time Capsule or something. I don't take that many photos, and I upgrade my computer every year or two. I'm hoping the laptop hard drive space will expand gradually with my photo and music library, and by the time I have to worry about it, there will be another solution.
    As far as how I went from Aperture to iPhoto (Ernie), I did (from iPhoto) file > show aperture library > then pulled them all in. I know there are issues with this though, you might check the iPhoto forum if you have trouble, there are work-arounds I believe.

  • Aperture library size 0

    My aperture library is obviously corrupted. In the finder, it shows up with size 0 bytes. However, something seems to be there because the finder becomes very slow when browsing to the containing directory and it takes Aperture several minutes to show an error message when I try to open it. Showing the package content does not work, either. Any suggestions what I could do (apart from restoring a backup)? I did nothing special to the library, so I assume an Aperture crash might be the reason for the damage.

    Ack.
    Too much time with the voodoo that is Photoshop optimization has infected people. Thankfully, Apple's applications don't need the same micro-management; which really for Adobe's application serves nothing more than employing people who defend their unnecessarily complicated products.
    Seriously, the difference between block sizes will make like 1 ns of difference in loading an image. You're not going to notice a difference, speed wise.
    Leave the block size at its default, is my recommendation.

  • Aperture library size vs iphoto size

    Good Morning. I imported my iphoto library to aperture and plan to dump the iphoto library. There is a significant size difference in the two libraries so I am worried that the aperture library didn't import something although all my photos appear to be there. The iPhoto library is 168 gb but the aperture library is 120gb. Is there something different about aperture that makes it a more efficient storage space? Thanks Dave

    Terence,
    When I originally imported iPhoto into Aperture I selected the leave in original location. If I want to make Aperture stand alone now, all I have to do is consolidate the masters correct? After, which I could delete the iPhoto library, or should I just leave things as they are and not worry that the iPhoto library holds the masters? Seems like this is just a user preference as I have not seen anything state one way is better than the other.
    Thanks

  • Aperture Library Size slowing iMac even when Aperture is closed

    I recently purchased an iMac 22 quad core running Lion, with all updates.  It currently has 12GB of Ram, and 190GB free on the hard drive.
    The iMac would load programs like Outlook within a few seconds and was very fast.
    I purchased Aperture and migrated about 38,000 images, using the exisitng file structure from my PC.  This took about 12 hours yo process, update images, etc...
    Even if Aperture is closed, all programs now load much more slowly.  Outlook can take 20-30 seconds to open, and lists of email and contacts now take as much as a minute to load. 
    This is only true for the user account with the Aperture library, as programs for other users seems to work fine.
    I tried running disk utilities, restarting machine, but no difference.
    Activity monitor shows no unusual memory, CPU or disk activity.
    I started a new user account, and all worked fine again...until I again created an aperture library, and again, even if Aperture is not started, everyting else runs slowly.
    Is there a file indexing feature that is overwhelmed by the addition of a large aperture library?  (Deleting the Aperture library doe snot solve the problem-only startign a new user accountdoes).

    dphughes wrote:
    ...in both cases maintaining referenced files stored outside the catalog/library. The Aperture library is 500% the size of the Lightroom catalog - even with restricted preview sizes and no vault.
    If this is true, there must be a logical explanation that is giving Aperture users some benefit for the increased Library size. Sorry been a long time since I looked at Lightroom. Does it store the same size previews and thumbnails as Aperture? Since you are using referenced files and Aperture is using non-destructive edits and even new versions do not create duplicate files (only a new set of pointers to the referenced masters), one would think previews and thumbnails must be handled differently. Since you use both, what could it be?
    The Aperture Vault is a separate library than the Aperture Library so having a Vault of course should not impact the size of the Aperture Library.

  • Vault size vs APerture library size and related questions

    My aperture library is 50GB for some 65,000 referenced pictures...how does this compare with others? To me, it seems a bit big.
    Also odd. The vault backup of my libarary is 9.1GB ONLY! How come?
    I think that all of my pictures are referenced.....is there an easy way to check?
    If I make a new fresh library and restore from the vault, what will I loose, if anything? Will I need to reconnect pictures or anything?

    that seems about right to me. what's taking up space are previews and thumbnails. afaik, the vault doesn't hold any of those, only the database, albums, projects and configuration files.
    if you restore from a vault, all the previews and thumbnails have to be rebuilt. you can save a little space that way, because the thumbnail files don't shrink when you erase photos or move them to another project, but personally i don't think it's worth the time and effort.
    j

  • Aperture library size

    HI all,
    Can someone explain to me why after importing a 139Gb iphoto library into Aperture, the Aperture librbary file is 250Gb?
    If I look at the 2 database they both have the same amount of originals and versions.
    Is there any great advantage importing the iphoto library over just having Aperture open it as is?
    thanks in advance.

    and do I really need an aperture database if aperture can use the iphoto library database?
    If you do not have any other libraries, that you would want to unite with your iPhoto libary, there is no need to convert the library by importing. The format is compatible.
    iphoto previews folder (1.82 Gb)
    aperture previews folder (123.3 Gb)
    how do I reduce the size of the previews folder?
    How many image versions do you have? That is an amazing difference in size!
    You change the size of the "Previews" in the Aperture Preferences, the "Previews" tab. Generally it is recommended to set the pixel size of the previews to the screensize of your largest display and to pick a good quality setting. Compare the settings in the Preferences panel with your screensize.
    After you changed the settigs for the Preview size and quality, delete the previews and update them.
    To delete the previews select your images in the Browser, ctrl click, and use the command "Delete previews". Then check, if now the size size of the Previews folder is smaller.
    Then create new previews by using the command "Update Preview". If that is not available, hold down the options-key and select "Generate Preview".
    Regards
    Léonie

  • Best way to manage Aperture library size for hard drive space?

    For a couple years, I have been using Aperture 2 and then migrated to Aperture 3. All this time I have worked completely on my laptops internal hard drive and with one library. My library is now 80gb and hard drive space is becoming an issue. Now I am trying to decide the best direction to take for reducing my internal hard drive space. My biggest storage culprit are my kids sports team pictures. I have taken thousands and thousands of pictures of kids that I don't need to keep in my internal library. I would like to pull my kids out of those pics, keep them in my main library and archive the rest out. I'm looking for advice for the best process.
    I put an external drive on my Airport USB drive and put my library in a new vault last night. I know it is much slower than going direct to USB on computer. With wireless N it took about 12 hours to backup the 80gb library to a new vault on this Airport drive. Are there any issues with using the Airport USB other than speed? I know apple has issues with using time machine on this kind of setup but I don't know if Aperture has any of the same issues. My thought is that I might use this drive for additional libraries as well.
    Thanks
    -Erik

    Once I move files to external storage as a "referenced master", is there a way to move some of them back to main library on the internal drive? I'm going to move all my team sports pictures to external but would like to keep the pictures with my kids on the internal drive where they are at. But if I unintentionally move some of my kids to the external drive, how do I "un-reference" them and move them back?
    Thanks for the help!

  • Aperture 2 library size is huge !

    Hello,
    I am importing my iPhoto library into Aperture and its HUGE ! My iPhoto library is 27,17GByte and the Aperture library has already grown to 37,7 GByte and still growing. Is this normal?

    Yes it is normal, but there's a lot you can do to get the size back down.
    In iPhoto, when you make an edit (including things like rotation), another full-res duplicate is produced and the original is preserved as invisible. In Aperture, previews are used instead of full-res duplicates. You library is growing because you now not only have the duplicates, but previews for the duplicates too.
    If you get rid of the duplicates this will significantly reduce your Aperture library size; it takes a lot of time, you either need to get rid of the originals, or you need to get rid of the edits and accept that you'll have to re-edit them.
    That will shrink your library down incredibly, but my best advice is to reference your masters on an external hard-drive, rather than have them stored in the Aperture library itself. I think of my Library as being a place where all the information about how to interpret the images is, not where the actual images themselves are. The only exception to this is when I want to take 1 or 2 particular projects into college with me on my Macbook, then I'll have those files living in the library; but other than they're all referenced.
    I hope this is helpful.

  • "Insufficient disk space" to upgrade Aperture library to v.3

    I'm getting an "Insufficient disk space" and then an "upgrade failed" error when launching Aperture 3 with my old Aperture 2 library, hoping to upgrade it. My Aperture 2 library is 85.94 GB, and I have 15.31 GB free on my 250 GB disk.
    Does anyone know how much space it needs for the upgrade? How can I get this working? Thanks for your help.

    presta wrote:
    I can't believe that Aperture 3 – with the "update imaging" box unchecked – will increase the size of my database by +over 18%+ and this is just really badly designed.
    I do not know but I am wondering if there is some faulty arithmetic going on and it's not looking for say 20% more space, but over 100% more space? In other words, I wonder if people with more free space on their system than their Aperture Library size are seeing this problem. Those with less free space than the size of their library may share your problem. That certainly would be a bug rather than a design flaw I would think, but I don't know what the AP3 format conversion is doing internally in the library before it finishes the process. If you wanted a failsafe method, you could design it in a way that virtually duplicated everything and only did the final step of deleting the AP2 originals when the revisions were successful. Sounds speculative but someone else needs to respond here that only has a modest amount of free space like you yet converted a large library successfully with all the bells and whistles turned on (new RAW, new imaging).
    You might be able to call an talk to an Apple technician as I'm sure if there is a bug or design flaw, others will have called already to get the workaround. Unfortunately I won't have the problem that I am suspecting since my free space is greater than my library on this new iMac.
    Message was edited by: Rick Lang

  • My 200GB Aperture Library shows 0KB! Not Happy!!

    Hi All...
    ARRRGH!!
    A Charlie Brown moment to be sure... I had resisted switching to Leopard on my field machine (MBP) until just last week, and I am now sorry I did. I do not know if it was definitely Leopard that caused this, but Tiger had been rock-solid reliable for a year running Aperture, and now I have wasted lots of time trying to figure this out...with no progress... hope one of you folks has a good answer.
    Problem is as follows...
    First, I did not lose my master images...they are in 3 other locations and that is, of course, a good thing.
    BUT, what I did lose is almost a week of tweaking, retouching, keywording, etc. on about 3500 images, while working with the client at their offices 2000 miles from here, and I am having a very hard time letting that go...it is part of a book that has already been approved by the client, while we can redo this selection/tweaking/collage work, it will of course not be what they have approved...since that was done in the library. The last thing I want to do is tell the client the dog ate my homework here, and I need a do-over...in this market, that level of incompetence causes the phone to stop ringing.
    Before you chastise me for not using vaults, our in-house network backup system is supposed to mirror the files on a nightly basis to a master RAID that gets streamed to tape in the background, and has been fine for 2 years, but over the past week there was some network error that prevented the successful completion of that task from my machine. A Leopard issue with the client software???...the jury is still out.
    OK, so as I said I updated to Leopard upon my return from the client, using archive & Install...no apparent issues...
    I was attempting to importing/updating a Project captured in the field with my main 200GB library for this client (on a mirrored 500GBx2 RAID FW800), and started getting errors (no good import) and VERY slow performance. Clicking around to any other project in the library was causing it to rebuild previews, it would not import at all from cards or project....nausea begins to set in as I see my weekend plans dissolve, lol
    OK, after the performance went into the dumper, I quit Aperture, restarted the Mac, tried it again....same problem. I run Cocktail doing permissions repair on a schedule on Mondays, and DW monthly...and have not run into significant problems prior to this. I then looked at the Info dialog on my Aperture library, and it said the Owner of the file was "_unknown" and that I did not have permissions to R/W the file. I ran Cocktail and rebuilt permissions, log says it was successful...no change to the Aperture library, still says "_unknown". In the Info dialog, I then intuitively changed the owner of the library to my username, typed my password in the dialog to confirm when asked, the system cranked for a bit, and when it stopped...my Aperture library size was ZEROKB in the info dialog!!! Yuck! I tried to change it back...no effect...the one good thing is that the space available on the drive remained at about 179GB, the same as when I started...even though the library dialog says zero...
    I need a real tried and true answer, folks...I assume that playing with this or guessing at a fix will end badly. I do not want to have to fly back to the client and spend all that time (mine and theirs) redoing their tweaks and selections...unless I have no other choice.
    I am kicking myself over this Leopard upgrade...given its previous rock-solid performance on Tiger, this is simply too much of a coincidence for moi.
    I really wanted to be all excited about my new D3 and D300 stuff going into 2.0...darn it....please somebody out there have a magic command line statement that will restore my library...Apple folks, feel free to jump in anytime here... I am scrambling...please help.
    Thanks,
    Kevin

    Ouch. We really feel your pain.
    The only thing that jumped out at me was "Project captured in the field with my main 200GB library for this client (mirrored 500GBx2 RAID FW800)." Is it possible that Drive A of the A/B RAID1 array failed and that drive B still has your original data? I use RAID0 (striped), never used RAID1 (mirrored), so I am unfamiliar with how a failed RAID1 drive array presents.
    -Allen Wicks

  • Can I slim down the size of the Aperture Library by moving the Preview files elsewhere?

    Hi all,
    I have an Aperture library of almost 20,000 photos, dating back to around 2007. Almost all the master images are stored on an external drive (backed up of course), with only my recent and 'in progress' masters being stored in the library itself. Previously I have had my library split up into one library for each year, with the older years libraries being stored on the external drive where the masters are, in order to keep the size of my 'current' library down. So my current library, stored on my internal SSD, contained only photos from this year and last year, and only a few of the masters for these images. Confusing? Sorry!
    Now, I recently decided to consolidate the libraries into one huge library, because it was annoying to have to switch between libraries to find older photos when I wanted them. I did this, leaving all but the recent masters on the external drives (referenced). I thought that the size of the main library would remain reasonably sized, since there were no extra masters being moved into it. However, the library has grown massively - up to over 70GB, which is huge when you consider it's on a 128GB SSD which is also my startup drive.
    I'm pretty certain the reason for the huge size increase is that the Previews for all the older images are stored in the Library file, rather than anywhere else. This makes sense - they are previews, they're supposed to be able to be viewed with the external drives disconnected. So my question is this. Am I able to change the location of the preview files to be on my OTHER internal hard drive (non-SSD, much larger), so that they're still available without the external drives, but are not cluttering up my startup drive. And, if not, what should I do!?
    Thanks a lot

    Glad it worked, but permit, if you will, some observations:
    -- Bloated Previews are a known Aperture bug, which came and went  within a few updates in Aperture 3. Getting them back to the proper size is simply a elegant step to take.
    -- A Preview set to your largest screen size and a quality of 6-8 should be all but indistinguishable from the Master at 72-100 dpi screen image. (Not print resolution.) I REALLY doubt you are going to loose any quality.
    -- While using a symlink to stick the Previews on a HD is clever, it may also defeat the whole purpose of using your SSD. Previews are read a lot and are, I suspect, used for all adjustments at less than full resolution. (N.B. I could be VERY wrong on this.) Thus, depending on the amount of RAM on your Mac, you could end up reading and rereading your Previews over a slower link and doing this a lot. You own use will quickly determine if this is an issue or not.
    I have blathered on, at length, about what I think matters for size and speed here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/17959625#17959625. Some of this may be of use.
    I went through a lot of these issues when I tried to fit everything on a 128 GB SSD, so I know some of the issues you are facing. As I noted before, you really only need a Library (minus most Masters) of about 30 GB and that is with large, high quality Previews.
    I actually took the SSD out and stuck it in an ancient MacBookPro (in preparation for a trip to Blighty this summer) and have not noticed a huge drop in Aperture speed. (I do miss the speed of applications launch, restart, however.) One thing that I did find that made a small, but nice difference, was keeping all of the Masters on a separate, dedicated drive. Once defragged, etc. that was very fast. Don't know if you could achieve the same results by partitioning a larger drive, but it might well be fun to find out.
    DiploStrat

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