hi - I am trying to help a friend who is a professional photographer (read that 10s of thousands of photos) who recently had a stroke. He exclusively used Aperture to import his photos from his cameras, and indeed, I can see when I open Aperture that there are numerous named folders within aperture that each hold many many photos. My question is: where exactly on the hard drive (Mac G5 running Lion) are the photos stored? I cannot seem to find a folder anywhere on the Hard drive where I can actually “see” the individual tiffs and jpegs. He was never really a computer geek, so probably never really understood the program to start with – now it's totally beyond him. He would like me to find the original photos (without “exporting” each and every one) so that I can make a back up of the photos on an external drive so that they don't get lost (and yes, his computer is set to run Time Machine but his Time Machine drive is really flaky. Sorry to be so long winded, but I would really like to understand the hierachy of where the original photos are actually stored on the Hard Drive. Any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated. Oh, and he is using Aperture 3.3 (?) not the newest. Thanks!!
Just Google something like “Aperture 3 where are photos stored” - there are numerous online articles and posts that will give you the information you’re seeking.
thank you, I did try googling and think I found an answer - “Boot drive->Users->your user name->Pictures
You’ll see a file called “Aperture Library”
Right click or Control click on it and choose “Show Package Contents”
You originals ore in a folder called “Masters
I did try this on my own at one point and never found anything called “Aperture Library” I will try it again. Would I be correct in assuming that once I found this “Masters” folder, I could just drag and drop it onto an external drive to save them?
You’re looking for “Aperture Library.aplibrary” - right clicking on it should open a menu with one of the options being “Show Package Contents” —> the Masters Folder should be listed among a number of other folders. I would suggest you use extreme caution when mucking around within the Aperture Library. I have never tried to access photos from within the Aperture Library but know it is possible to cause catastrophic and irreparable damage. If you do try to move photos from within the Aperture Library, I think I would COPY the files and then paste them to another destination as opposed to moving them out of the Library. That way you wouldn’t be altering any components of Aperture’s internal elements. However, if you have a lot of photos, that may be time consuming.
Another option is to open Aperture, select the files you wish to move, go to FILE —> RELOCATE ORIGINALS, then select the destination where you’d like to store the photo files. This will move the original (Master) files out of the Aperture Library. There are undoubtably numerous online posts and You Tube videos (that you might want to check out) detailing the pros & cons of doing this.
I’m sure there are other more viable options as well - perhaps someone more knowledgeable will respond.
thank you for that information – if, after going to “show package contents”, do you suppose I could just make a copy of the whole “Masters Folder”, and then move that copy out of the library? there’s no way I’d have time to copy each individual photo (as I mentioned, there are probably 10 to 20 thousand of them) and I’m not sure that I want to “relocate originals” because the owner is still able to work on the photos using Aperture - he just wants the originals saved elsewhere in case something happens to them. thanks again for your suggestions - I will try duplicating the Masters Folder as a start and see if I’m then able to move it outside of the library.