Hello!
My Aperture library contains about 40k photos, mostly referenced masters. My library has been with me since Aperture 1.5, and I have always felt it was rather slow. It has been upgraded several times, rebuilt and more. Aperture 3 has been slower than Aperture 2, maybe partly because I have been using Faces. I have done whatever I can to speed up things (following different guides etc), and just recently I found the method described in the FAQ on this site, the “magical fix”, where you create a brand new library and import the old one in it.
I started the import a couple of days ago, and it stood over the night. The next morning the import bar stood at about 80%, and there it stood all day. It seems like Aperture frose at some point. I force quit Aperture and reopened the new library.
It contained all of my photos and all keywords. Places looked correct. Every project had a number count of 0, but I'm rebuilding the library now as I write this, so that might have fixed it.
One thing was missing though: Faces. I have tagged a lot of faces. And now everything is gone. My original library is intact, as I imported from a copy to a new library on an external harddrive.
The new library is also 5GB in size less than the original one (76 vs 81).
Now to the questions:
1. Is it possible to transfer the Faces from the original library to the new one?
2. Can I assume that rest of the library is fine, or should I try importing it again?
3. Could this be a great opportunity to stop using Faces and just tag people with keywords? :) The Faces page have always been incredibly slow (like loading time close to a minute). Finding photos of people by viewing all faces is useful at times, but I can manage with just keywords.
I'm just a hobby photographer, and I mostly take photos of my family, some landscapes and some small projects for friends.
If anyone can give me some advice on this, I would be greatful!
Hi Chris
You never mentioned how much ram and the amount of available Hd space you have. Two things that are very important to have the most you afford. AP3 is only 80.00 cuz they want you to buy ram and large HD :) Im using 8GB ram and no Faces. My Library of data only is on a partitioned HD at about 60% empty. Runs pretty good wish I could take 16GB.
Magical Fix is like defraging your Library, only safer and better. It also rebuilds it and probably fixes permissions while it is putting all the data back. If you have a separated Vol for the library you could us idefrag or Drive Genius to defray the empty partition. That way when data comes back in that space will be clean and able to take large blocks. Defraging an empty volume is safe. I have used idfrag on my library before but I had 2 Vaults as back ups.
I trust you have back ups of the old library which you could point AP to again and then rebuild the lib, “Option click on AP Icon”. Once the rebuild and permissions are done try a new import, this time it might get your face data.
As for stopping using places and faces: RAM RAM and more RAM
Good luck and Happy shooting
David
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
Thank you for your reply!
I’m running a two year old Macbook Pro 15” with 8GB of ram, but not very much extra space on the harddrive. Trying to keep 10% available, but it is not easy.
To be absolutely safe when doing this, I copied my Library (which pretty much have no masters) to an external drive, than create a new library on that same drive, then I used my old Macbook (which might be the problem-causer here) to import the old library into the new one. I was afraid that my settings or something would merge or disappear of some kind if I did this using my Macbook Pro (This is my paranoia for losing photos talking)
I’ll try doing this again tonight, making sure my Macbook don’t fail me.
And I of course use Backblaze for backups of everything.
Hopefully this defrag of my library will speed things up, maybe combined with more free space on my internal drive.
Still not sure what to do with Faces though. If everything imports as it should I might just keep it for now.
Thanks for the great advice!
Hi Chris
Are you wanting the library to reside on a Hd with 10% available space? If that is so… that is not going to help you. Get a larger HD or take take out the super drive and put an SSD in (CDW). AP Librarys with or without images need head room on the Drives so they can figure out where to put files. Want to make sure I was clear in that, I think the Magic Fix is safer than a third party Defrag. My lawyer told me to include that.
David
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
reminder never try to defrag a SSD. Never defrag on batter power or in a lighting storm
david
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
Chris,
Don’t forget that you had to stop the import part way through. Did you check Activity Monitor before killing it to see if Aperture was actually doing anything? Your Faces aren’t there and maybe that’s why; even though that’s a ludicrously long time and I would have done the same thing myself, the fact that Faces data is missing could well be because the import was forced to stop.
I don’t use Faces so I can’t say for sure that this data would remain intact, but I have a very hard time believing that it wouldn’t transition over. After all what you’re doing is no different than importing a small Library into your bigger one, which is how Projects are moved around in Aperture, so I seriously doubt that Faces are deliberately being left behind.
I’d try the import again. If you want to be a bit more methodical about it, open your original library, separate all your projects into three or four batches (make four folders; migrate 1, migrate 2, etc. and move 1/4 of the projects into each one), then export those as new Libraries, the import those new “migrate 1” libraries into a new empty library.
Several steps but at least you’ll find out if it’s working more quickly.
The saved size could have to do with previously discarded thumbnails or previews. A user on here recently discovered that if you delete a photo, its .thm file is not erased from within the Aperture database.
@PhotoJoseph
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