hey folks!
twitter brought me to your site, and i'm absolutely happy to be registered now :)
i work lots with aperture and i'm looking forward to get some great tip here.
since i can barely delete pictures :) my library is huge (approx. 120GB, pictures stored on external hd) and growing unstoppable i'm asking how users handle their library (or libraries?).
i thought about a system with two libraries: one for the first import of all pictures of a shoot, the sorting, deleting, postprocessing etc…
after the project is concluded it'll be exported and reimported in the “master” library where all the finished and clean projects reside.
i can imagine realizing this requests a severe discipline and i didn't do the first step yet, because i unfortunately don't have the time to go through all the finished projects and sort them all out.
what are your experiences?
appreciating comments and tips from users who are using more than one library.
thank you and best regards from south tyrol,
günther
Günther,
Welcome to the site, I’m glad you found us.
I think that’s a recipe for a messy library, to be honest. The point of an application like Aperture is that you don’t have to store your “finished” photos in a separate location. There’s no need to export and reimport, as your finished photos are always available, in the best quality possible, at any time from your existing library—ready to be exported for whatever client need, web need, etc. you may require.
I think the only reason to have multiple libraries these days is if you want to separate personal from business work, or have one library for a specific client, etc. Aperture can easily handle a library the size of yours, and much bigger. I’d focus on keeping a single library, but making that as organized as possible, so you can always find what you need.
If you haven’t already, you may want to check out my “ApertureExpert’s 15 Tips on File Management in Aperture 3” ebook since that will give you some ideas on how to manage and organize your library for long-term success.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
hey joseph!
thank you for your reply! it sounds logical to me to keep just one library with all the pictures. i’m just trying a way to avoid an exploding aperture library an thought this way (of the two libs) keeps my library smaller and faster since i’m not importing 2000 pictures in a project and trash 1500 afterwards.
does aperture reuse the freed space in the library?
thank you for the link, i’ll give it a look!
günther
Günther,
I’m not sure what you mean by “does Aperture reuse the freed space”… it’s just like in the Finder; if you delete a file, it’s gone, and that space is available again. Of course if you don’t delete it, then it’s still there taking up space.
Check out this article on deleting files to fully understand Aperture’s deletion process: Emptying the Trash in Aperture 3—What Really Happens?
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Great eBook. The one thing we seem to forget with Aperture is that we shove a lot of images in one project. Growing the project too much can slow things down. A better way to organize things if you have too many projects, is to break down the project into smaller ones, by date for example, and store the images that way. That will allow Aperture to work a lot faster than it did before because you’re helping it index things more effectively, and when viewing a project, you’re asking Aperture to much less rendering of the images in the project. So your views get faster too.
joseph, by reusing the free space i meant if the preview files in the aperture database are removed as well. as i’ve seen, the size of the aperture library does not decrease when pictures are removed (pretending still the pictures are saved on external HD).
cheers!
If you look in the aperture project browser to the left, you’ll see there’s a trashcan there. Is it empty?
Generally when you delete a file from within aperture, it’s not actually deleted, rather it’s put in that trashcan. You’d need to right click and empty the trashcan in order to really delete those files.
Hope that helps.
R
Günther,
As Robert said — you probably haven’t emptied the Aperture trash.
Be sure to read that post on emptying the trash in Aperture that I linked to above. That explains everything.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
thank you for the hints, but i empty the trash once every 2 weeks.
my initial question/doubt was more general: whether keeping two libraries makes sense, but you told me it doesn’t.
so i’m happy with it (at least i don’t have to recreate a database from scratch).
:)