Stuck on “Opening Aperture Library”? Try Opening in iPhoto, First.
By PhotoJoseph
August 14, 2012 - 4:47am
Reader John Giordani ran into an issue after the Aperture 3.3.2 and Mountain Lion upgrade where his Libraries wouldn’t open in Aperture [forum post] — he was never getting past the “Opening Aperture Library” screen! After trying many many things, he found a suggestion to simply open the Library in iPhoto ‘11, then close and open it again in Aperture. And it worked!
Let us know in the comments if this simple solution has helped you, too.
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Comments
on August 15, 2012 - 9:53am
What? Another good reason to not upgrade until two dot releases.
www.ImagesbyRansome.com
on August 15, 2012 - 7:22pm
Had no problems with my libraries. Could open them in Aperture 3.3.2 and iPhoto 11
on August 15, 2012 - 9:28pm
No problem with my libraries, either.
on August 16, 2012 - 4:59am
I think this is a pretty fringe case, but it did affect more than one person. Always nice to have tricks in your back pocket.
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
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on August 16, 2012 - 9:46am
Same problem. I had found a backup prior to my upgrade that worked, but would have lost a few pictures if I hadn’t found this. Thanks.
on August 16, 2012 - 9:48am
Peter,
So this solution worked for you?
-Joseph
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on August 25, 2012 - 4:02am
I’ve been experiencing this problem, but I don’t have iPhoto ‘11. Not to seem cheap but I’d rather not pay Apple more money to fix their error. I discovered that I was able to open my main library only after opening a new blank library if I didn’t want to do the iPhoto ‘11 fix. Kind of a pain but it works for now.
on August 26, 2012 - 2:15am
Jordan,
Good to know. I’m pretty sure others had done that to no avail, but great that it worked for you!
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on August 26, 2012 - 2:36am
Opening in iPhoto 11 worked for me.
on August 28, 2012 - 1:53pm
Same here. I started with cmd + option and initially tried, repair, then rebuild and nothing worked. Then used the suggestion here to open in iPhoto ‘11, that worked and it took about 10 minutes to show the library. Then closed iPhoto and reopened Aperture 3.3.2 - and it worked!!! My library is 465 GB with about 41000 photos.
on September 8, 2012 - 2:30pm
And another save by opening in iphoto first. After some maintenance (moving libraries to new temp Hdd before setting up new replacement Hdd for library). Could never get past opening library message. Then opened in iPhoto , closed and opened in aperture. So far so good.
on October 5, 2012 - 5:47am
I’ve been having this problem (stuck in ‘opening Aperture library’) on and off for a few weeks now. Rebuilding did noting. Opening in iPhoto didn’t work either. I can’t find my install disk so had to download 3.1 trial version and update to latest version. When 3.4.1 came out, that seemed to fix it. Now it won’t open again.
This sucks but I have so much in Aperture in terms of photos that I’m giving it one more try. This is expensive and shouldn’t be necessary (Apple should give all people with a valid license a Mac App version) but I threw away the old version and had to pay full price for the exact same version from the App Store. It seems to work again. Shouldn’t have to do this though.
on October 11, 2012 - 10:10am
Dave,
I certainly concur that you shouldn’t have to do that! I wonder what the problem was.
If it comes back, do be sure to contact Apple for a refund on your second purchase. Heck I’d do it anyway if I were you.
As far as the problem itself goes, if it does come back, try out the “magic” fix listed in the FAQ where you import an existing library into a new one.
@PhotoJoseph
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on September 22, 2013 - 10:06am
Hello,
I have Aperture version 3.4.5 and iPhoto version 9.4.3.
I am trying to merge two iphoto libraries in Aperture using the instructions found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5296
But everytime I try to import an iphoto library I get this error:
Aperture cannot switch to the selected library because the file system of the library’s volume is unsupported.
Can anybody help? Also, is this new “unified volume” between aperture and iPhoto physical or virtual? Thanks.
on September 23, 2013 - 8:45am
Derly,
are you able to open those libraries in iPhoto? Make sure both open in iPhoto first. They may need to be updated before Aperture can import them.
If that doesn’t do it, the “file system” error may be hinting at a drive format issue. Are these libraries on the internal Mac drive, or on an external drive that may not have been reformatted to the Mac’s HFS+ format? If that’s possibly the case, try copying the libraries to the internal drive first, or to another drive that’s HFS+ formatted.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
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