Aperture master images

How do I find the master image of an image. I clicked on the "Show master image" icon of an image but all I got back was "Master image not found". This particular image was cropped but I can't seem to find the original.

Dream,
Welcome to the user-supported Aperture discussion group.
Using the "M" key or the "show master image" menu option or button should show you the master in place of your version, allowing you to toggle between version and master view. So, yes, you are trying the right thing.
Your error implies that you have a referenced image, and that the image is missing. Is that true? Can you "Show in Finder"? If you have the option, it's a referenced photo, but if you cannot actually find it in the Finder, then you misplaced it after Aperture imported it.
nathan

Similar Messages

Changing master images in aperture and iphoto

hi
am i right in thinking that there is no way of altering my original (master) images (located in my 'pictures' folder) in both aperture ans iphoto? I want to be able to see the changes in the original images in this folder, and have these altered images available for other applications, such as itunes. i don't want to have to export altered images from aperture/iphoto, but rather just have one copy of each image. will i need to use preview for basic changes or a third party application such as graphic converter/photoshop for more advanced permanent changes to the originals?
thanks
nick

hi
i have checked the following options: 'maintain previews for project' for my project, and 'share previews with ilife and iwork' in the general preferences. i have then altered the colours of an image in an album for this project and the thumbnail and image in aperture update OK, but nothing changes in finder, and when i open the image in preview it it is still the same as the master image, rather than the image with changed colour. am i doing something wrong?
thanks
nick

How can I possible lose my entire photo library/ referenced master image file if I have downloaded all my images directly onto Aperture?

How can I possible lose my entire photo library/ referenced master image file if I have downloaded all my images directly onto Aperture?

CeliaJane, you need to distinguish between the Aperture Library and the Aperture Application.
Aperture stores your images in a database, and it is this database that we have to find and probably to repair, not the application (hopefully). And since you do not see any images, I suspect that Aperture created a new, empty Aperture Library,and you are now viewing this empty library. Usully the library sits in your Pictures fiolder.
Look into your Pictures folder, if you see a file with a colorful icon with three pictures, called something.aplibrary, as shown above. And also enter ".applibrary" into the "Spotlight" searchfield in the upper right corner of your screen. If you have more than one Library, you should be able to find them this way.
The largest file you find will probably be the correct library.
When you have found the correct file called aperturexxxx.aplibrary, try to open it in "First Aid" mode.
Select the Library and press down "command" and "option" key at the same time, while you double click the library.
Now the First Aid dialogue should appear:
Select: Repair Permissions" and see if you can open the Library again. If it did not help, try the other two options in turn.
Regards
Léonie

Aperture 3- Calls Master image version 2 ????

Downloaded the trial of Aperture 3. Started playing around with it and noticed that the master image is being called version 2 and the actual adjusted version is not even labeled as a version. If I create multiple other versions of the image they are being labeled correctly as 3, 4 etc...
This is very odd to me. Possibly a BIG problem when deleting versions. Might end up trashing the master image since it's labeled as version-2.
Anyone else notice this?

Thank you both.
Of course I'm still confused though. Thought I knew Aperture, ha!
What I find in Aperture2 is that when I look at my viewer with all versions unstacked there always is one image in the stack that is indeed an image without any adjustments to it (what I thought to be my master). If I try to delete this image I get a warning that I am about to delete a master image.
In Aperture3 I do see what you are saying about them all being versions. I guess the question I have then is that when I do delete all the images in the stack where is my master image? When I turn off the "create new version" preference things seem more 'normal' to me as compared with Aperture2 but I still don't see an unadjusted 'version' of the image like I used to.
In Aperture2 when I had say 4 versions of an image and I didn't want or like any of them I could delete all the versions of an image in a stack and there was the unadjusted image there still viewable. I'd start adjusting away again and then my new version would be created.
There must be some preference somewhere that I'm not seeing to accomplish this all.
Thanks again! I think I've got too many versions of this question in my head.

Master images not available in Aperture 3

Hi,
I recently bought a 27" iMac. I moved all my data and apps from my 20" iMac.
All my image folders are present, and my photos are in there (Canon raw).
Aperture shows my photos in the correct library, but when I try to export them as jpgs, I get an error, something like "master images not locatable".
Anyone know how to fix this?
Cheers
Martin
Message was edited by: martinbass

"I assume in transferring my data to the new iMac, the hard drive name has changed or something."
Corrrectamundo! I'm guessing you are right.
The library is trying to find the masters at the old location. You need to use the "Relocate Masters" command, under "File".
Under "Photos" (left tab), select all images, then do the Relocate Masters. You should then get a listing of all photos that are disconnected from the masters. Now point to the location where they actually are and do a reconnection. You may have to do this for all top-level projects.

Master image not found

Dear,
I am facing the following problem in Aperture. In only one of my many folders (and all the albums in that folder), all the pictures have a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it ... when i try to openany of these pictures to make adjustments Aperture is showing a pop up box with the following message "The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again". When I then right click on that same picture and select "Locate referenced file" the system is showing a path to a Finder folder where the related file is not present.
I am puzzled ... if these pictures are not in my system how come I can still see them (though not adjust, print or export them) in Aperture. Is there another to retrace/restore them?
Thanks
Thibault

You may find also this usefull https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3741280
Or, if you have really lost your masters , you may still recover a lower quality image from your Preview here
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2600903

Use Referenced Masters To Avoid Accidentally Deleting A Master Image File

If you use Managed images it is possible to delete the master file accidentally. If you delete versions of an image using File -> Delete Version and the version you are deleting is the last remaining version for that image, Aperture 3 will delete both the version and the master image. If you subsequently empty Aperture Trash and then System Trash that master image file is gone forever. In Aperture 3 there is no warning that you are about to delete a master image.
A workaround (although a weak workaround) is to use Referenced Image Masters. Then when you delete the last version which includes the master image from Aperture, you can uncheck the box "Move referenced file to system trash." and no master image file will be deleted. The downside to this workaround is that when you really want to delete a master image file, it must be done via Finder.
The best solution would be for Apple to fix this bug so that when you select "Delete Version" it only deletes the version image and reverts to the master image. That way the master image can only be delete via the command "Delete Master Image and All Versions."

There is no bug there.
I had some trouble wrapping my mind around the file-Master-Version-Image-(Preview) complex that flows, sand-like, through the entire working of Aperture. (I like a thing to be represented by itself and itself alone, and to exist in one place and one place alone. I was comfortable with the seeming precision of the location-based "file+path" metaphor for the existence of these virtual things. Aperture quite cleverly moves beyond that.) Two things helped me move forward:
- understanding the difference between Projects and Albums, and
- separating my Library into a storage area and an output area.
Projects are, for me, storage containers. (I have said elsewhere that the mis-naming of "Projects" is the single worst interface decision made in Aperture.) They have a privileged relationship with your Images: every Image must "live" in a Project, and "lives" in only one Project. It may help you to think of "Image+Project{Path}" as functionaly equivalent, within the Aperture Library, to the file directory "file+path" mentioned above.
Albums are, for me, output containers. I create Albums every time I know I will output a set of Images.
In practice, I work on Images in each. In general, I develop my digital captures in the Project that holds them (and I rigorously stick to "One Project = One shoot"), I create Versions and add them to Albums as needed for output (they are automatically made the Album Pick), and I tweak them for output and then output them from Albums.
You may be wondering (if you've read this far) -- "What has this got to do with deleting Masters?" A lot. Note the difference in the context-menu between a Version in a Project and a Version in an Album. The menu for the Album contains two delete commands: "Delete Version", and "Remove from Album". The Versions live in Projects, and only visit Albums. As Terence correctly points out, if you delete the last Version, your expectation should be that you are deleting that Image from your Library. My suggestion is that you adopt something similar to what I've set up, and delete Versions from ONLY Projects (never from Albums). This way you will never unknowingly delete the last Version (because Images can be in only one Project, and if you delete the last Version from that Project you know you are expunging that Image from your Library).

Where Are My Missing Master Images?

I keep my Aperture Library as a "managed" library rather than "referenced, so every master image is kept inside the Aperture Library icon.
Today I decided to look inside my Aperture Library (by selecting Show Package Contents), and I can only find master images from the past five years. The "Master" folder contains folders for projects I've titled 2012, 2011, and back to 2008. None of the earlier images that I keep in Aperture, 2007 through 2003, appear in the "Master" folder in the Aperture Library, and there are no folders for 2007 and earlier.
That is, if I look in Aperture Library -> Master -> I see folders for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008. But that's it!
There are also no folders inside Preview for those earlier years, or inside Thumbnails.
And yet...
And yet when I'm in the Aperture application, I can Export any of the images, all the way back to 2003. So the master images are obviously available to Aperture somewhere. They exist. And I checked -- those earlier missing images not Referenced, they're Managed, just like the whole library.
So where are they??
I dug through other folders inside the Aperture Library package but didn't find a thing.
Help!

But I'm digging around inside the package and still puzzled -- images inside the folder Aperture Library.aplibrary -> Masters -> 2009 -> 06 -> 14 -> 20090614-214439/ were indeed shot on June 14, 2009. So it appears that those various level folder names reflect image creation date, not the import date.
Joe,
these various level folder names reflect what Aperture thinks are the import dates.
The "Import Session" is one of the Aperture specific Metadata tags. You can display it in the Info/Metadata pane of the Inspector Panel, if you add it to one of the presets, and then you'll know, where to search, if you absolutely must to sleep well .
You can also use this tag to search or to define a smart album. For example, the image below has been captured in 2003, but was imported in 2010, and will be found in a 2010 folder.
Regards
Léonie

Project management and multiple master images

Anyone here making use of 2 or more projects with the same master image in each project?
scenario is:
project 1 "blah shoot" <-- contains all images from shoot
project 2 "portfolio" <-- will contain some of the images from the shoot
The problem im having at the moment is when i drag any master image from project 1 into project 2, it removes the master file from project 1
Surely i can have multiple images in multiple projects?

You can copy the master image to your portfolio by
clicking and dragging with the option key held down.
I don't know of a way to link these images so that
changes in one are carried over to the other though.
If someone does know, please let me know, it'd make
my life easier...
If you drag an image from one project into an album under another project, it will not move the master - it puts only that version in the album, linked back to changes made in the original project.
if you export that project, the master that version is based on will be copied at that time and pushed out into the exported project. So if you export a project and then re-import you will no longer have a link but a copied master. To get around that you can manually copy the project with the album holding links out of the Aperture library to elsewhere to make backups or move a set of projects together,

Can't locate master images

I can plainly see the photo in a folder I want to export but I get the message that Aperture cannot locate the master image...I have checked both external hard drives and that folder doesn't exist.
Is there any way I can export or copy this one image...

I don't get it....I used the "relocate masters" tool to put all my images on one hard drive. I created a folder on my new 2TB drive and "relocated" all the masters to this folder...
Okay, so when I try to edit an image I have relocated, with the drive still plugged in, I get the message that master images cannot be located....
This is getting a little nuts...

Unavailable Master Images are present

Trying to relocate masters to an external drive using Aperture 2.1. Project with many albums which I am relocating to folders with the same name as the album on an external drive. Most of the albums I was able to relocate. There are 4 where I get the "unavailable master images cannot be relocated" message. When I select and image to show in finder, it shows its location on my internal drive. I have rebuilt the library and still get the same message. I have gone to Manage referenced files and located all the images in the bottom window then click reconnect all. Still get the same message about unavailable masters. What am I missing?

I am having the same problem. I had all my master images stored in one folder on an external 300gb hard drive. However, I noticed that in aperture, it said I had only 15,000 images while in the folder showed ~17,000 masters. What were these extra 2,000 images? I decided to try to separate these "unconnected" images from the real masters by relocating all my master images into another folder. All went well until I got the following warning:
"Unavailable master images cannot be relocated. The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again."
I was able to move most of the masters, but Aperture says I still have 3,009 masters in the original folder (which if I navigate to in the finder contains ~5,000 images). The strange thing is that if I right click on one of these images in aperture and select "show in finder" it finds them with no problem. It can't find them thought when trying to relocate.
I have tried rebuilding the aperture library, manually moving the images into another folder and then attempting to relocate, and copying the masters to another hard disk and linking aperture to those masters. All with the same result.
I am using Aperture 2.1.
Any help here would be great.

Exporting master images WITH adjustments

Hello,
I have a simple question about exporting images.
Let's say I have imported a bunch of raw images into my Aperture Library (but they are referenced files, located in the folder specified by me). Then I have worked on them. And now I want to backup my work - all my adjustements. But I don't want to export them as new versions (jpgs), but just export the raw files together with adjustments I have just made.
How do I do that?
Any help would be really appreciated.
Best greetings,
Tomasz
iMac G5 17'' Flat Panel Mac OS X (10.4.8)

This is where the Adobe DNG could shine.
http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/index.html
Worth the read ... this can save the changes that one
makes.
DNG does NOT help in this case.
There is a huge misunderstanding that this is part of what DNG can or should do.
But if you think about it, what good are the adjustments being stored in DNG if you have to use a particular program to open it anyway?
Think about Aperture's Edge Sharpen for a second. Lets say you store that value in a DNG. Fine, what other program is going to able to reproduce that result EXACTLY to how you were previewing it at 100% on your monitor?
Lighroom is trying to do something along these lines by passing editing commands off to Bridge through DNG. But here you run into another problem - it constrains what editing any one program can do. If Lightroom is limited to only ever having editing commands that are the same as what Bridge offers, and no other program on earth supports them, then what have you really accomplished? Will unknown editing commands simply be dropped without warning?
That's why I think simply exporting projects, which hold master images alongside sidecar files (very like XMP) that describe edits are about as good as you are going to get. If you want to truly preserve editing work and you care about quality, nothing beats a TIFF file where 100% of the pixels are exactly as you reviewed them during editing. I personally trust Aperture enough to back up master images along with edits, and am fine with that.

"Unavailable master images cannot be exported.The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again."

I have imported my iPhoto library onto Aperture, and then deleted the iPhoto library so not to have any duplicates. Now, the images on Aperture are pixelated and when I try to export them the following message appears: "Unavailable master images cannot be exported.The selected master image is either offline or not found. Please reconnect it and try again." What does this mean? How can I get my photos "online" so that I can see them as they used to be?

How did you import your iPhoto Library? I assume, you used "File > Import > iPhoto LIbrary", but how did you set the "Store Files" pop-up menu?
If you chose to "Store Files in their current location", then you did not actually import the master image files into Aperture, but referenced them inside the iPhoto Library. In that case, you just deleted all your images, when you deleted the iPhoto Library. And if you did that, and your iPhoto Library is still sitting in the Trash, put it back; then your Aperture Library should work again. Or restore the iPhoto Library from your most recent backup and put it into the exactly same location where it used to be.
If you used a different "Store Files" setting, please explain where you have chosen to store the master image files. This will help to track down your images.
After restoring your master image files you may need to reconnect them to the versions. Post back, if you need help with that.
Regards
Léonie

Delete multiple master images: hangs

When I choose multiple images for delete I get the infinite spinning beach ball. I searched for similar posts and did not find anyone with the same problem.
Deleting one image at a time works ok.
I have to force quit and restart. When the project is opened again I see that the images were in fact deleted. This is very repeatable.
This is a reasonably serious bug for me since doing the pruning of images outside of aperture will require a raw-enabled viewer.
It would also be nice to have a hot-key for deleting a master image, and a way to get rid of the "do you really want to do this" dialog.
nmurray

Hi nmurray,
a number of posts here which concern hangs, spinning beachballs, performance and the like point to a single conclusion:
Rebuild your library.
In order to do that, quit Aperture, and restart it while pressing the Alt key. (You can let go of the Alt key after the startup screen has appeared.) After having started, Aperture will then ask you whether you really want to rebuild the library as that may take some time (and if you have a large library, you might want to do this before preparing and having dinner with friends. Spend a nice evening while Aperture is keeping your Mac busy. Have some wine. Maybe a walk).
The hot key combination is Command-Backspace. The confirmation dialog is there for a reason - after all, you're telling Aperture to delete a master. However, to dismiss it, just hit the Return key on your keyboard.
The best way to get rid of several masters is to select them, press Command-Backspace, hit Return, and then sit back and wait while Aperture is throwing your masters into the trash. Don't ask me why a simple delete takes so long; I have the impression that the way Aperture works with its libary has significant room for improvement.
Cheers,
Karl

Master image not available?

after downloading my pics from a sd card, my photos sow that master image is not available. can someone help? i am a new mom and all the pictures are of my son. i have deleted them from the sd card. I am not fmiliar with aperture so sorry if this is a dumb question. i just really want to be able to export, print and actually have my photos.
thanks in advanced

missbeba, tell us more, please.
It is hard to guess, what might be wrong without more information.
First of all, what is your Aperture version and what is your MacOS X version?
my photos show that master image is not available
Where does Aperture expect your photos to be? You can see that, when you select one of the photos with the missing master/original and use the command "File > Locate Referenced Files".
This will open a panel, with the versions with missing master in the upper part, and to the right is a thumbnail of the selected image. Below the thumbnail is the file path the original file. What does it say? Are your missing photos still in that location?

Aperture master images

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