Aperture - Big Cleanup - Advice Please

Question

Frank, Kirby, Leonie, William, et al
Attached is my Pictures Folder - many libraries and assorted image data.  All of this goes back to early versions of iPhoto as well as early versions of Aperture.  All of this is backed up.  All of the libraries will be updated to current ver Aperture.  The early iPhoto Libs I will reimport because I do not wish to spend the $$ for iPhoto 9.5.1.  There are a ton of duplicates in this mess.
My question is what advice would you offer to get all of this into one Aperture Library?  (Note, my current library will not be involved)  I plan to create a fresh emply library to conduct the merge.
I do have Photosweeper and Duplicate Annilhilator.  There seems to be mixed experience using both for duplicate ident and removal. Do you have any advice on timing of use - after I merge? before I merge?
thanks

Answer 1

Is your current Aperture version already Aperture 3.5.1? Have you upgraded to Mavericks?
I am asking, because the Aperture version is important, when you are planning to import iPhoto libraries.
With Aperture 3.3. the earlier version of the iPhoto Library importer and iPhoto Library Browser have been discontinued. If you want to import or merge iPhoto Libraries, you now need a compatible version of iPhoto to be able to import your iPhoto libraries as libraries. Otherwise, you could only export all originals from iPhoto and lose all edits and metadata tags, or export all photos twice, once the edited version and once the originals.
I'd reconsider, re spending $$ for a new iPhoto version. It would be really worth it, even if you only want to transfer the libraries. A new iPhoto will neatly pair the originals with edited versions as master-version pairs, so you do not have to import each iPhoto photo twice, the original and the edited version, and you would save all your edits and metadata.
And while screening your libraries for duplicates it will help to be able to have two librraies open at the same time, one in iPhoto and one in Aperture.
Aperture 3.3: How to use Aperture to merge iPhoto libraries
I don't use the automatic duplicate detector tools, so I cannot give you a recommendation, which to use. I hope, other will chime in.  When I am combining libraries with possible duplicates, my man concern is to select the photos I want to keep and to delete and weed out as many boring and mediocre photos as possible.
So I will sort the photos by date, which will bring posible duplicates side-by-side, mark favorite photos and delete the non favorites.