Migrating from Lightroom to Aperture

I have 60,000 images in my Lightroom 3 Catalog and would like to move to Aperture. Is there a way to import the file folders and XMP data in Aperture?

Aperture can't currently read sidecar files, even though it can generate them.
But that would still only bring across keywords and metadata, not any of the image adjustments.
Ian
EDIT - if you mean exporting converted files (TIFFs or JPEGs) then everything should come across, but of course you'd be losing the advantage of lossless changes to RAW files.

Similar Messages

Migrated from Lightroom to Aperture: TIFF's in LAB mode don't work

I migrated from Lightroom to Aperture and I noticed many TIFF's were black, or strangely colored (reddish, greenish). I couldn't figure it out, but I think I know what is the problem. I used to work in LAB-mode in Photoshop for quite some time, and I see that those files cause the problems.
Not only can't I see the previews correctly, Ican't do anything with these files (not even open them in Photoshop). What can I do? Because these files are my portfolio (the material I sell, exhibit, etc.). They're extremely important for me. What can I do? I'm willing to convert them to RGB if necessary.

There have been some issues with greenish previews lately. Browse this forum for threads with the tags "green" and "Previews". If that is the problem, then only your previews look strange and your original images might still be o.k.
So I recommend to check if the images or only the previews are faulty.
If you have a referenced Library reveal the masters in the Finder and look at the master with Preview or another Photo Browser.
If your library is managed, you can reveal the masters inside your Aperture Library by opening the package (in Aperture 3.2.1), select the Library in the Finder and click "Show package contents". You will see folders "Masters" and "Previews". Compare the Masters and the Previews.
If only the Previews are faulty, then select the the images in question in the Aperture Browser, ctrl-click them and select "Update Preview". If that does not help ...
What can I do? Because these files are my portfolio (the material I sell, exhibit, etc.). They're extremely important for me. What can I do? I'm willing to convert them to RGB if necessary.
I assume you have a backup or can access the originals you imported into Aperture.
Convert a copy of one of pictures to TIFF in RGB mode and see if Aperture can handle that properly.
If you are satisfied with the quality do that with all your important pictures.

Import from Lightroom to Aperture 2.0?

Would like to give Aperture a second chance, but I have already built up my lightroom library. Is there a clean way to do this?

Has any additional progress been made on migrating from Lightroom to Aperture without losing develop settings and metadata?
I tried the Aperture 2.0 demo and really wanted to switch. Lightroom gets absolutely bog-slow once you start accumulating "professional" quantities of photos in your library (I'm managing about 25,000 DNG images) and not only is it slow on its own, it takes a death-grip on anything else running on your Mac as well. Aperture 2.0 was unchained lightning by comparison. And the new plug-in architecture and brush-on dodge/burn effects in 2.1 are deal-sealers for me.
Problem is, I've invested hundreds of hours in cropping and exposure adjustments of my images in Lightroom, and I can't face walking away from all that work and then having to re-do it, even with a superior tool.
Since both of these applications are nondestructive editing tools, all that crop and exposure setting data is just data in databases... I can't believe there's NO way to export that data out of LIghtroom's database format and convert it into Aperture's database format! Surely there's a third-party opportunity here -- I'd certainly be glad to pay for a Lightroom-to-Aperture converter that really worked, and I'll bet a lot of other people would as well.

Migrate from Lightroom 3 to Aperture 3 - Problems with DNG

Hello : )
I will migrate from Lightroom 3 to Aperture 3. I've tested Aperture for a while and I like it, but I have one problem. If I import DNG files, I lost all the settings I've made in Lightroom, except Metadata. Is there any way to import DNG files and get all the settings? If not I think a migration to Aperture will not be possible to me, because I've over 50.000 DNG files and I don't want to convert them to tiff or other formats and lost all the benefits of the RAW files.
Thanks
derRabe

Look at the video below- I think it will solve your problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R4HgOZ3oBc

Migration from iPhoto to Aperture

Hello,
I just moved from iPhoto to Aperture. I did the migration described here : http://www.apple.com/aperture/iphoto-to-aperture/how.html but it failed at the last step.
I choosed “Consolidate Masters for Library” and I get this error message (sorry it's in French).
Are you able to help me ?
Thanks,
Wistiti

It appears that the error you are getting is telling you that the selection does not have any referenced masters. This can only mean that when you imported your iPhoto library into Aperture you choose to move or copy the masters into aperture.
As a test go to the Library tab of the Inspector, select the Photos icon near the top of the list. Go to the right hand side of the window. Click the dark magnifying glass:
Select the Add Rule pulldown and add File Status to the filter. Select Managed this will show you all the images in the library that are managed. You can also select Referenced to see all the images that are referenced.
If the files are already managed you don't need to do anything else.

Several questions about migrating from iPhoto to Aperture

I'm currently a heavy iPhoto user and am looking into migrating to Aperture. Can anyone give me a sense of what I to expect if/when I make this switch?
Here are several particular things I'm wondering about:
1. iPhoto works great as a computerized photo album for casual browsing. (I can see a page of different events with mouse-over previews, plus I can hide poorer shots so that I can just view the highlights.) Will Aperture be a step back in this department? If so, is it possible to "share" my Aperture photos with iPhoto without keeping two parallel copies of everything?
2. When I import an edited photo from iPhoto to Aperture, will the iPhoto "original" become the Aperture "original" and the iPhoto "modified" become the Aperture "modified? Is the same true if I export an edited photo from Aperture to iPhoto?
3. Does Aperture have an analog for "hidden" photos? I currently mark my best shot from a series by hiding the rest. Will I lose this marking if I migrate to Aperture or is there a way to preserve it?
4. I currently have a number of short video clips (taken with my point-and-shoot's video feature) mixed in with the iPhoto albums. (iPhoto really does let me keep everything organized in one place!) If I understand correctly, Aperture won't let me store these in my Aperture library alongside the still-photos of the same subjects. Is this correct? If so, how have other people handled this?
5. Do EXIF tags get re-read upon import from iPhoto to Aperture? I've got a number of iPhoto files which I've retroactively geotagged with HoudahGeo. Will the tagging be lost (since iPhoto is not currently aware of the geotagging as the EXIF tags have not been re-read)... or will Aperture now recognize this metadata?
6. If worst-comes-to-worst and I give up on Aperture after a few months, how painful will it be to un-migrate back to iPhoto? More importantly, what album metada (e.g. events, albums, ratings, tags, notes, dates, hidden-ness, links between original and modified versions of a photo, iWeb references, etc.) will be lost? In other words, if I were to import everything from iPhoto to Aperture, wipe my iPhoto library clean, and then export everything back from Aperture to iPhoto, what information will have been destroyed?
Thanks in advance for any answers to this long list of questions!

Here are several observations (read: warnings) in case anyone else is considering migrating a significant iPhoto library to Aperture...
A) Pictures marked as "hidden" appear to be silently skipped over (along with video clips, as was expected) when importing an iPhoto library to Aperture. They do not appear in the relevant Aperture project regardless of the filtering options.
B) Both iPhoto originals and modifieds are imported. The former are given the keyword "iPhoto original" and the latter are given the keyword "iPhoto modified." Each pair of photos is put into a single Aperture "stack." Both photos are given the same tags/ratings (so, for example, the un-rotated, uncropped, poorly balanced original will show up alongside the nice clean "modified" if you were to filter for 5-star images), and both files are given identical "version names" (equal to the "name field" in iPhoto). In most cases the original -- not the modified version -- was set as the stack's "pick" and displayed when the stack was collapsed. *Significantly, I could find no way of creating a view in Aperture that showed one copy of each picture, with the "iphoto modified" version displayed for photos that had been modified in iPhoto and the original version displayed for photos that had never been modified in iPhoto!* (This is, of course, the way they are shown in iPhoto.)
C) My understanding of "stacks" is that they are designed to help organize multiple "tries" at the same shot (e.g., I want to make sure that nobody's eyes are closed in the group photo, so I press the shutter six times in quick succession -- I'm going to pick a "best" one will be mostly interested in that shot from then on). This is a fantastic idea! However things get confusing if you are already using stacks to track original and modified versions (as described above)... particularly if your stack should contain six pictures plus original versions of each. Plus, as I mentioned, the "original" version is usually the default "pick" in each stack.
D) After import, "iPhoto original" versions of portrait photos appear un-rotated. Normally, my cameras (including a Nikon D80, an iPhone, and others) mark photos' orientations and they are automatically displayed in the correct orientation. Aperture appears to consider this auto-rotation an iPhoto edit and helpfully displays the "iPhoto original" always in landscape.
E) Aperture may incorrectly import events whose names contain a "/" or a ".", so if your event names contain dates, rewrite them with "-"s before importing to Aperture.
F) Aperture does have a rough mouse-over-the-icon-to-flip-through view, similar to the "events" pane in iPhoto... although you will lose your choice of which photo serves as the default icon for each event when you import your library from iPhoto, and you cannot "hide" photos from appearing in the flip-through as you can with iPhoto.
G) Perhaps it's my inexperience with the program, but I could find no way to sort the project list by date (vs. alphabetically), nor could I find any way to make a correction to a single photo's date/time.
As a bottom line, remember that Aperture is definitely not "iPhoto Plus." It lacks a number of iPhoto's features, but in exchange gives you a number of really slick tools aimed at streamlining a digital photography workflow.
I'd also encourage people to think very carefully before moving a large, well-organized iPhoto library to Aperture. You may lose a fair amount of information, and the result will take a lot of work to "make pretty" again. It does look like a nice program, though. Are you ready to relegate all of your existing pictures to an iPhoto "pre-history" and start over with a blank -- but much fancier -- slate in Aperture?

Migrating from iPhoto to Aperture

My iPhoto library has 3,700 pictures, which causes the application to run slowly. Can Aperture do a better job of handling that many pictures? Also, should I import my pictures from iPhoto to Aperture, will the comments and titles move over too?
Thanks!

Comments and titles are preserved. Check out the following thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=939438&tstart=90
This points to an free seminar that answers questions related to iPhoto and Aperture and migrating from one application to the other.
- Joe

I exported jpg, tif, psd, and dng files from Lightroom but Aperture does not see them except for dng during import

How do I import jpg, tif, psd files exported from Lightroom 3 into Aperture 3.2? I had no problems before...seems like since I installed Lion, they do not show up in the import folder.

How are you trying to import them (again) ? If you're importing through the Import Window and have RAW only set then that's all you'll get.
Also what's an Import Folder? Not sure how Lightroom fits into this. If you share your workflow with us we might be able to help.
regards

HT204655 How to have a unified Photos Library after migrated from iPhoto and Aperture?

The "HT204655: Get started with Photos for OS X" do not help. If you have previously used iPhoto and Aperture, when you "migrate" the iPhoto, then follow the steps to "migrate" the Aperture library, you end up with 5 files in your Pictures folder: Photos Library (from iPhoto), Photos Library 2(from Aperture), iPhoto Library (Not sure if can be deleted or not - of course no), Aperture Library (for some reason blank), Aperture Library 2 (Created by Photos?).
So, looks like a mess and no easy way to make a clean migration.
I've a hope that exists a solution to have a single Photos Library with the merged iPhoto and Aperture contents, like a real migration.
If I export everything (From iPhoto and Aperture) then import in the Photos in a single Library should work, but will lose all the organization, faces, etc...

You could merge libraries with iPhoto Library Manager, but I never tried this for merging Aperture 3 libraries with iPhoto 8.
Are you planning to keep all your photos in iCloud? Then consider to merge them in iCloud, but it will take a long time.
Are you using iCloud Photo Library (Beta) and have enough iCloud storage for the merged library?
Wait, till your current Photos Library has been completely uploaded to iCloud.
Then quit Photos, and launch it again, while holding down the alt/options key. Select the old iPhoto lIbrary.
When the upgrade of the old library has been finished, make this library the System Photos library (in the Photos Preferences > General).
Enable again iCloud Photo Library (Beta) in the Photos > iCloud preferences.
Now Photos will upload the new library to iCloud as well and create a merged library in iCloud. After this merged library synced with your Mac, you will have a merged Photos library.

Graceful way to migrate from iPhoto to Aperture -- w/o losing metadata?

Does anyone have advice on migrating an iPhoto library into Aperture without losing some critical metadata? I'm specifically concerned about two things:
1. "Original" and "Modified" versions: I shoot RAW but put quite a bit of work into post-processing photos (e.g., white balance correction, cropping, etc.) It's very important to me that I don't lose the connection between original and modified versions of files. Additionally, when I browse an event, I would like to be able to see the "modified" version of files that I have edited and "original" version of files that I have not -- just like in iPhoto. My efforts to date have resulted in either A) losing original versions of all modified photos or B) creating an Aperture project with duplicate original and modified copies of each iPhoto photo.
2. "Hidden" photos. The "hide/unhide" feature is the best tool iPhoto provides for sorting "good" pictures from "bad" in a shot, so I have used it extensively. I would like to not lose this information when migrating to Aperture (even if it takes a different form -- maybe "reject"?), and it would certainly be nice to be able to optionally either browse all photos in a shot or only those that were not hidden when in iPhoto.
Is there any hope?
(Context: I've been using iPhoto for years, but I really like Aperture's interface and photo tuning/editing options. I've considered migrating a number of times and have always turned back because of how much information I'd lose in the migration. Has anyone managed to crack the code... or has Apple finally made this transition doable?)

I do have a related question and problems. Any input would be greatly appreciated
I am in the process of migrating my iPhoto pictures over to Aperture. Because I have close to 100k pictures and short clips, I can not import my entire 500 GB library at once because I don't have enough hard drive space to support both iPhoto and Aperture libraries at the same time. I also thought it might make sense to not have one gigantic library. Also I would like to have my old photos separated by years, and I don't know if Aperture would do this if I imported the entire iPhoto library (which does only separate them by events) at once. So it appears to me that the only import method that would work (please correct me if this is wrong) would be to open the "Masters" directory of iPhoto in the Finder, and drag and drop each year's directory into the "Projects/Library" panel in Aperture. Note that I do not want any editing information preserved from iPhoto, so using the Masters seems to be the most space efficient thing. So far so good but there appear to be at least two big snags. Firstly the yellow projects folders within each blue years folder in Aperture are not in chronological but in alphabetical order and I can't find out how to fix this. Secondly (and much more problematically) the dates on many old photos have been altered in an apparent random manner during the import into Aperture! Therefore they do appear in the wrong locations in my events library, according to the altered date. There are many too many photos that have been changed to undo this manually (I estimate it would take several weeks to do this).
But how and why could this have happened in the first place?
I also noticed that even when I change the dates of the Aperture masters to the true ones (by comparing to the masters in iPhoto), they still remain in the same wrong location in my Projects/Events library, according to the date originally (and falsely) assigned by Aperture.
There surely has to be a way to import photos into Aperture without ruining their date stamp?
Thanks in advance for your help!

Moving from Lightroom to Aperture

I've had Lightroom running on my iMac, but am looking at moving to Aperture on the quick recommendation of a pro photogapher friend. I haven't upgraded LR along the way, and so I'd be looking at buying the full program, which is more expensive than Aperture. And per my friend, workflow is pretty simple with Aperture, which sounds appealing. He's promised to give me a short tutorial on how to make Aperture work well for my needs
I have actually done very little in terms of reworking pictures in LR, so there's very little LR "work" to save. I have the originals on an external hard drive, organized into folders: Family Events, Travel, Kids Sports, etc. There are subfolders for various events (Dad's 75th birtday, etc.). My guess (not knowing much about Aperture) is that I should be well set up to bring these images into Aperture, and off I'd go. I could probably leave my LR catalog alone, since I don't have much work to retain.
Does this make sense, more or less? I should note that I do expect to have more time going forward to devote to working on my pictures, and I do have quite a few on that external drive (which is backed up, of course). thx

Michael Winner wrote:
...workflow is pretty simple with Aperture, which sounds appealing. He's promised to give me a short tutorial on how to make Aperture work well for my needs
Your friend is more optomistic than I am. IMO although one can evolve a simple workflow, there is a significant but worthwhile learning curve. I recommemnd fully completing one of the tutorials available.
Put 8 GB RAM in your iMac before starting so you can be sure any anomalies are not RAM-based. Also note that Aperture is a hardware hog.
I have the originals on an external hard drive, organized into folders: Family Events, Travel, Kids Sports, etc. There are subfolders for various events (Dad's 75th birtday, etc.). My guess (not knowing much about Aperture) is that I should be well set up to bring these images into Aperture, and off I'd go.
Yes on bringing them into Aperture. During import set to "Store Files: in their current location" so that you stay with what is called a referenced-Masters workflow. However moving forward you should lose the folder-think organization. Instead import Dads 76th as a (date based) Project, and use Keywords to identify things like Family Events.
My comments from an earlier thread:
First, Projects should be just that: individual-shoot based projects rather than some kind of organizing tool for all the architectural photos or whatever. For performance reasons personally I keep each Project under 500 20-MB images, making a second Project if the shoot is large (e.g. 110829_KJones_Wed_B). One or more albums will always organize the KJones wedding pix together anyway.
Folders are indeed flexible organizational tools but IMO often overused. Folders can effectively hide contents from view and therefore require users to remember how folders are nested and what is inside them. Folders were the only way to deal with single-original film, but are IMO limiting to image database thinking.
The way I look at it conceptually:
Aperture is a database, and each image file lives in one Project.
Albums are just collections of Pointers that point to individual image files living in one or more Projects. Since they just contain pointers, albums can be created or deleted at will without affecting image files. Very powerful.
Keywords can be applied to every image separately or in batches. Keywords are hugely powerful and largely obviate the need for folders. Not that we should never use folders, just that we should use folders only when useful organizationally - - after first determining that using keywords and albums is not a better approach.
As one example imagine the keyword "flowers." Every image of 100k images that has some flowers in it has the keyword flowers. Then say we want to put flowers in an ad, or as background for a show of some kind, or to print pix for a party, or even just to look for an image for some other reason. We can find every flower image in a 100k-image database in 2 seconds, and instantly create an Album called "Flowers" that points to all of those individual images.
Similarly all family pix can have a keyword "family" and all work pix can have a key word "work." Each individual pic may have any number of keywords.
So by using keywords and albums we can have instant access to every image everywhere, very cool. And keywords and albums essentially take up no space in the database.
Another approach is to use a folder "Family" for family pix, a folder "Flowers" for flowers pix and another folder "Work" for work pix. IMO such folders usage is a very poor approach to using an images database (probably stemming from old paper or film work practices). Note that one cannot put an image with family in a field of flowers at a work picnic in all three folders.
HTH
-Allen

Switching from Lightroom to Aperture

I have been trying to do this for years, but have not been able to because Aperture does not seem to handle large scan neg files. What I mean by large files are 800mb and up. After editing they can be almost 2Gbs. Lightroom does not seem to have a problem, but Aperture just seems to choke. I have tried import single projects, and files at a time, but no go. Lightroom 4 Beta has just come out, so I wonder if I should even worry.

and this is one of the reasons, outside of the choking issue, I stay with Lightroom, I can use two external editors. In Aperture only one.
You can only define one default external editor, but you can use more than one editor: there are editing plug-ins, and you can call other image editors using Services.
For example:
I have the Aperture preferences set to use GraphicConverter as external editor, but when I want to edit in Photoshop, I use an Automator Service like this, and activate it from the Aperture -> Services menu:
The AppleScript passes the images to Photoshop and waits for the edit to finish, the reimports the edited images to Aperture.
I put the workflow and the script on this webpage for download: http://dreschler-fischer.de/FAQ/Scripts_Services/Entries/2012/1/12_Additional_Ex ternal_Editor_in_Aperture.html
Regards
Léonie

Missing folders, albums and images when Migrating from iPhoto to Aperture

I have 3,333 image in iPhoto (v.7.1.3). I'd like to import the entire library into Aperture (v.2.1) and use that primarily to edit and organize the images from here on out. Problem is, when I try to import the iPhoto library from Aperture, it only imports half of the images (1,553 images). I tried deleting the Aperture library and re-importing everything but had the same result. Any suggestions would be appreciated -- I'm eager to get started in Aperture after years of iPhoto.

Hope we get an answer - I'm in the same situation as you, though I just went from iPhoto to A2.x on an older G5 tower. I've been debating whether to take the time to go through them, reorganize "better" than they were under iPhoto or wait for a more elegant solution...
KWO

Question about migrating from iPhoto to Aperture 3

I have been using the free trial of Aperture 3 after importing my iPhoto library with the option chosen of storing the files in their original location. I am now considering purchasing the program. My question is: Should I just carry on, or would it be better (or worse) to import the files into Aperture, placing them in a new Aperture library, then deleting my iPhoto library? I have not done any significant work in the trial so this is the time do redo it if it is preferable. If this question does not make sense then I would appreciate knowing that too. Many thanks!

Andrew
One of the ways that Aperture is much more powerful than iPhoto is in how it relates to the Master files.
From your post I understand that you imported to Aperture leaving the Originals in iPhoto, right?
There is no need to now move the original files into Aperture. You can leave them where they are, move them elsewhere or bring them over to Aperture. Whichever decision you make Aperture can work with and help you do do it.
Check out 'Relocate Masters' in the Aperture Help for more.
Regards
TD

Restoring keywords that were deleted when moving from iPhoto to Aperture

I recently migrated from iPhoto to Aperture, and this apparently involves losing a TON of metadata. One new discovery I've made is that for my older photos (i.e., ones added and edited a few years ago when I was using an earlier version of iPhoto), the keywords have been deleted.
More specifically, if I have a photo and it has keyword X, then TWO copies appear in the Aperture library:
- the original image, with the keyword "iPhoto original" AND the keyword X
- the modified image, with only the keyword "iPhoto external edited"
(Note that I have not used any external editors; this is just how iPhoto seems to interpret images that were edited with older versions of iPhoto)
This is definitely buggy behavior.
This means that if I have a "best-of" keyword and I make a "Smart" album, it gets filled with original, unedited versions of my "best of" photos.
Is there any way to fix this without going one-by-one through THOUSANDS of older photos and manually copying the keywords from the original to the modified?
Thanks,
Mike

Hope we get an answer - I'm in the same situation as you, though I just went from iPhoto to A2.x on an older G5 tower. I've been debating whether to take the time to go through them, reorganize "better" than they were under iPhoto or wait for a more elegant solution...
KWO

Migrating from Lightroom to Aperture

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