So I decided to migrate my work aperture library to photos. My Projects have many albums that each represent a “job” and are named appropriately. After the migration of approx 22,000 pics, none of these albums were retained. The pictures are all there in the new format. I did notice that 2 albums were retained and translated just fine. I went back to my aperture library and found that the 2 albums are located in the “Album” section of the Aperture tree. I don’t know how or why I had done this, but it is what it is.
Is there a way to migrate my albums within projects and retain the organizational structure? Can I delete the photos library and go thru the migration again. I am only prepared to start with Photos if the organizational structure works for me. Thanks for any help.
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Migrating Aperture Library to Photos with albums
#1
As far as I found out when I look at Photos there are no proper settings for neither import nor for export. If you need a proper functionality I wonder why you migrated to the new tool. This tool has nothing in common with Aperture.
Would you not be better off to evaluate Lightroom or Capture One?
Best regards, Alex
The real question is: why not?
It doesn’t break anything. It creates a new library with hard linked copies of your photos, so it doesn’t take up a whole lot more disk space. So why not just try it?
I have the same problem. Guess I will be creating new albums in Aperture with the name and the pictures from the folder structure.
Will probably be a sunday morning of work.
Unless I am missing something, both of you seem to be correct. I tried my ‘office’ library as it is not my personal 60m+ library; and want to explore Photos. It did not even pass the 1st test. I think that I want to delete the Photos library and try moving my albums into the other section of the Aperture tree and then do a new migration. One step at a time before I convince myself to move to Lightroom.
Yesterday I exported the five or six weddings I shot from my main Aperture library to a new Apterure library. I then imported that library to Photos.app. It worked flawlessly. Once you get your head around the fact that albums and folders in Photos.app work differently from projects, albums and folders in Aperture it was not problem at all.
Later this week I’ll try the same with my main/personal Aperture library, which is much larger. fingers crossed…
Do you have the folder “iPhoto events”? everything from the “projects” section in Aperture should be there…
I migrated my 60,000 pic Aperture library with hundreds of projects in year and subject folders.
They all reappeared in the Photos library under “iPhoto events” all in tact, as Adrian says above.
I renamed the “iPhoto events” to “Aperture Projects”. You can also drag them out of this folder.
The slideshows I had created in Aperture migrated successfully as projects
The only problem was that the order in Aperture was not preserved in Photos but this is easy to correct.
Mike, would you be able to take a screenshot of your Aperture Library structure?
Thanks.
Jon
The link below shows a composite of three screenshots. The left one is the whole of the Photos lib top level, the middle one expands one of the year drop downs, and the right one is the source Aperture Library.
Note they were all in a folder called “iPhoto Events” after import from Aperture. You can rename that or drag them all out and delete the iPhoto Events folder, as I did.
The screenshots don’t show that within the year folders the order is reversed on import relative to the Aperture lib.
https://flic.kr/ps/24aser
Thanks. But can you do this for your original Aperture Library? I would like to see how your folders and albums were organized. Were they under “Projects” or “Albums”?
My edit to add the Aperture screenshot crossed with your post!
They were projects in folders in Aperture as you can see, not albums. Sounds like this may be a key difference.
So, I think you are right. Notice that your Folders are not part of the Aperture ‘Project-File Box’. My organization creates different Aperture Projects (File Box) with sub folders and albums. Photos takes all of the pictures in the Project and ‘lumps’ them all together. I spoke with Apple Photos support and they agreed that if I moved all of my albums and folders out of the projects and placed them under ‘Albums’, then each would be copied into Photos as a separate item–keeping this part of my organization. I am doing this with my work library to see how it works before my home library. Thanks again Mike for taking the time.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6la1cxtirnac9up/Screen%20Shot%202015-04-17%20a…
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f12nta80lrxrqmv/Screen%20Shot%202015-04-17%20a…
The first movie from Joseph’s new training thoroughly covers how the various Aperture projects, albums, smart albums etc. get migrated to Photos (or not). He goes through an example with an Aperture library that has almost every situation covered.
Thomas
Hi All,
Maybe you can help. I purchased Joseph’s training video.But I haven’t seen the problem I keep getting. I have an Aperture reference library on an external drive. When I migrate to Photos I lose ALL my “Project” Folders & albums. The only albums I retain are a few smart albums. I have over 50,000 images & they are now all lumped in the Photos Library. I tried this twice & it also deletes all my Projects & photos in my Aperture adlibray. So I delete the new Photos Library - Delete the new Aperture Library & by using time machine use an older library & so far (twice) I’ve been able to get my Aperture Library back. Has anyone run into this problem? Is it because my entire library is referenced? Have not seen any info on referenced library. Thanks to anyone still reading this post. Was hoping Joseph’s video would help, but it didn’t go into what if the Projects & Albums don’t transfer.
Thanks
Hi D. Exactly what I had asked and have resolved as follows:
Delete the Photos Library.
Open Aperture and drag all of your albums and folders into the ‘Albums’ section of your Aperture ‘tree’. See the screenshots below. Once you have done this, you can now close Aperture and open Photos indicating the location of your Aperture Library. Photos will now import your Aperture Library maintaining all of the Albums and Folders you created. Note that Photos does not recognize these same Albums and Folders as they appear within your Aperture Project(s). (This is what you described).
My observations so far after doing this are:
Photos is fast when browsing. Editing in Photos can be as simple or as intricate as you want since there are many options to expand the types of editing that you can do; within limits of course. Importing in an ‘organized’ format that I was used to in Aperture is not simply done in Photos, even though you can create the organization in multiple steps. Changing certain metadata in batch processing is not even close to Aperture. At the minimum it is lacking. And you (I} cannot see the camera settings for each photo when browsing or viewing. My initial impression and desire to get into Photos in more detail is tempered by the the DAM or lack thereof. This coupled with the fact that the editing may be ok but clearly not enough for me, is pushing me towards a possible combination of Photo Mechanic and LR6 (just checking into this) or PM + Capture One Pro, or no PM and one or the other.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6la1cxtirnac9up/Screen%20Shot%202015-04-17%20a…
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f12nta80lrxrqmv/Screen%20Shot%202015-04-17%20a…
Thank you Jon for your response. As I am at work now, I will try that tomorrow. Thank you again & I am keeping my fingers crossed.
D
i migrated my home library from aperture to photos, but lost my “projects” structure, so i’d like to start again. below is a screen shot of my current aperture structure.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/juxj5iol1ynqp30/aperture.png?dl=0
your instructions were to drag all my folder structure from “projects” down there to “albums”. but i find i can’t do that! (aperture won’t let me), which doesn’t surprise me – projects and albums are conceptually different! so, i’m flummoxed.
i’d like to start again, and re-create my aperture structure in photos, but cannot find a good, step-by-step guide for doing that, including how exactly to set up the structure in aperture and then how to “undo” my first attempt at importing into photos, which just left everything in one huge chronological mass.
Art, is it possible you are trying to move your folders into the ‘Smart Album’ section only? I moved one of my folders just under the ALBUMS heading and this worked. I cannot tell you if this will import into Photos, but give it a try.
Jon
Actually Jon, I solved the problem, but not by moving folders into “Albums”. (My understanding is the Aperture Albums are like Playlists in iTunes – references to songs (photos) but not the photos themselves, which reside in the library/projects.) Instead, I took an earlier tip on this thread, and just used Aperture to export all my photos to a new Aperture Library. My photos were still in “Projects” in a detailed sub-folder structure. I then converted a portion of that to Photos, flawlessly, and so went ahead and converted the whole thing. It makes no sense, but it worked.
For anyone else reading this thread, if your new Photos library doesn’t convert your Aperture “projects” to Photos “albums”, then go back to Aperture, select all your Projects in the Library bar, then click File, Export Items As New Library. Then go re-start Photos while holding down the option key, which will allow you to select your new Library as the target. Photos will get to work converting that, and with any luck, your old Aperture projects will appear intact as Albums.
Weird, but true.