This has been driving me crazy for a while, so have come seeking help!
Basically, I would like a copy of my entire Aperture 3 library kept in a separate location - but I'm limited on file size (i'm uploading to some “cloud” storage) so want versions to be exported - and ideally I'd like to do this from a Smart Album so that I can have it ignore rejected or 1* photos when it's exporting.
The problem I have is that I can't find any way of doing that without re-exporting the entire library every time - I can't find any mechanism within Aperture 3 to export only those things that have changed. And I think I've tried everything:
- if I just run Export again, it will create an additional copy of any duplicates, appending them with (1), (2), etc.
- I can't find anything within Aperture's export options to only export images updated since the last change
- I can't find any events within AppleScript that I could hang onto to, for example, add some metadata to images indicating when they'd been updated (which, if it existed, I'd clear with AppleScript when I'd exported it)
- and that's all the options I can think of!
Surely such a thing is possible somehow? All I want is a folder, locally is fine as I can copy the images to my cloud storage later, with sub-folders for each Project, and jpg versions of each image within that project copied into that sub-folder. And I want to be able to keep that folder up-to-date when I change images (ie edit them, make adjustments, or change metadata) without re-exporting the entire set. And I want it to be as automatic as possible!
Any ideas / suggestions to help me? I really am at a loss to do what I think should be really easy…
Regards,
David
David,
There is a metadata tag for images that have been exported, under a custom field called “Photo Usage” [screenshot]. You could use that search criteria to separate images that you’ve exported and ones that you haven’t. [screenshot].
The folder on export can automatically be named the Project name, and you can customize that to be something like year/month/project name if you like [screenshot]
The only hiccup here is that if you go back and make more changes, the photo usage status [exported] will not change, and you could potentially have images you’ve updated since exporting get lost in the shuffle. However if you make a new version of a photo before making your new changes, then it will not inherit the exported status, since that version has not yet been exported.
You could go as far as setting the Aperture preferences to make a new version every time you make adjustments, to ensure that you never run the risk of having a missed file [screenshot]
I hope that helps,
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Joseph,
Thanks for the suggestion. I’m not sure it’d be the best solution for me, as generally if i make a change i no longer want the previous version, so would end up with an ever-growing library which wouldn’t help my aim of having a jpeg-version of my library for smaller online backup and remote access.
However, your post got me thinking and, actually, I guess i don’t go back to edit photos all that often once i’ve done them the first time, so maybe just using the exported tag is enough. And if i subsequently edit them, i could manually (presumably via AppleScript, but haven’t looked yet to confirm) reset the “exported” tag… That might be my only way forward for now.
Not ideal, but I guess you’ve confirmed that i won’t be able to do exactly what i want with Aperture… which is a bit of a shame, but guess i’ll have to live with it until Apple add some new functionality.
Thanks - though if anyone does come across any other particularly clever ways of doing what i described, i’d be very keen to hear about it.
Cheers,
David
I was also hoping that the “Photo Usage” “Exported” would be cleared when one do some change in the photo. Does anyone know whether any of those flags can be reset btw?
I have been looking in the sqlite3 databases as well, and I can not really see any timestamp on the RKImageAdjustment table that seems to get items added to it when one do an adjustment. Given a timestamp on those, one could have searched for photos that have some changes.
I can btw not see any timestamps in the Faces database either.
So, I guess, what one could do is to have external lists over the UUID of all RKImageAdjustments and RKDetectedFace, and keep track of the ones that have triggered an export. Then first export photos that are not exported. Then loop over all photos that have been exported, look at the RKImageAdjustments and RKDetectedFace connected to those photo and see whether it has adjustments and detections made after the last export, and re-export those images that do have such changes made.
Sounds plausible?