Weird behavior in opening Aperture images in Photoshop

Question

I have found a lot of really weird behavior when opening Aperture images in an external editor (in my case, Photoshop, so I'll use PS to refer to it):
1) If the master image is opened in PS, a new version is created when the file is opened, not saved. So quitting PS without saving leaves you with a new version of the file, regardless of whether you actually saved any changes or not.
2) If a version (not the master) is opened in PS, a new version is not created, either on open, or on save. So in other words, changes to that version in PS when saved overwrite that version, and the previous condition of that version is lost (with respect to versioning).
3) If multiple versions of the same image are opened simultaneously in PS, there doesn't seem to be a way to tell the difference between them in PS, except for visually (possibly meta-data, but I haven't checked that, nor would I want to be forced to). The file names of all versions are exactly the same.
I'm looking for feedback from anyone out there who can explain why this isn't completely quacky version control. I've been using version control almost my entire career (as a software programmer) and here's how I have seen almost invariably version control work:
1) New versions of files are always created upon commit, i.e. saving of the file, not on opening a file. (Do not confuse this with working copies, think about what is present in the repository).
2) Opening / editing any file version is never destructive. Any change to that file version that is saved (committed) results in a new version, not an overwrite to the same version.
Aperture's interface basically has combined what traditional version management has represented separately, that being the client and repository views of a project. They are showing all versions of a file simultaneously. This is fine, but I'm really not liking the fact that some changes create new versions, other changes overwrite versions, and one case, merely opening the file creates a new version, whether there are any changes saved or not. In addition, when working with multiple versions in the editor, the file name and/or interface doesn't give any indication of what version you are working with. Easy to say that's the fault of the external editor, but I disagree -- all external editors are going to work with filenames, so Aperture should produce a unique namespace for any file version so that any external tool will be able to distinguish (visually) one file from another.
Is this completely wacky version management, or is it just me?
Brad
Powerbook G4-1.33GHz-17" / Powermac G4-1.4GHz   Mac OS X (10.4.2)   PB: 1GB RAM, Radeon 9600-64MB / PM: 1.25GB RAM, Radeon 9000Pro-128MB

Answer 1

Hi Bradley,
Due to the way I personally use Photoshop, I want Aperture to behave as it does.
That's because, with Photoshop, I use layers extensively. Any edits I do (levels, curves, saturation, sharpening) I do on layers. I can delete the layers at any time (or select to show or hide them). Because of this, I actually WANT Aperture to behave the way it does. Once I've done a bunch of edits in Photoshop, if I select again to edit that file in the external editor, I want to work on that specific file (to add another layer, or change one). I don't want another duplicate. I tinkered with this over the weekend, and it worked very nicely for me.
Perhaps you work differently from within Photoshop? Do you ever use layers? If I were to have a bunch of Photoshop "versions," each with 5 layers, I'd have like 5 GB of "versions" for my original 8 MB RAW file, due to the size of PSD files. Yuck