My Aperture library is on an external hard drive. I don’t want to move my rather large photo library back to my internal drive. One question is if I change to Lightroom and move my images to Lightroom are they then back on my internal hard drive or will Lightroom just “view” my images on the external drive as Aperture does now? It seems there are a number of confusing instructions with multiple steps on how to do move from one application to the other. Does Lightroom have a clear path to follow which will leave my images on the external hard drive? How much phone support does Lightroom/Photoshop provide?
Lightroom will leave them all where they are at. Unless you want to move them. But it clearly tells you what’s happening as you import them. It’s easy.
Milo
www.milosmetal.com
Thanks, Milo, for your support.
bp
The answer depends on your Aperture library status. If you have a referenced library and your originals are on the external drive, then Milo’s answer applies. Lightroom will leave them where they are.
However, if you have a managed library and the entire library file is on the external drive, then Lightroom won’t have direct access to the originals because they are hidden inside the library package. In this case I’m not sure how the Lightroom Aperture import function works. It might require you to change Aperture to a referenced library or it might be able to extract the originals from the library - in which case it seems it would be doubling the space required as it creates an external copy. If anyone knows please add to the conversation.
Thomas
I’ve decided to also make the move but slowly. Does anyone know if the Lightroom CC has the Aperture Exporter option in it? That looks like an easy way to get the job done.
When I update my vault, it is saying I have 350’ish photos that are not managed. How do I correct this? I never meant for that to happen. I always wanted Aperture to do all of that for me.
Katie
Katie S.
Thanks to all for your information. Now the trick is to determine if my images on my external drive are managed or referenced. Again there are conflicting ideas. According to an Apple Care Tech support person if the images are not in the library then they are “referenced” and “managed” if they are in the library. That seems to make sense but I’m not really sure.
In Katie’s case it would seem that the images in the vault being copies would therefore be referenced as they are being managed in the library. It seems logical but I’m not sure.
Thomas’ comments are appreciated but add to the mystery. If it is indeed the case that the originals are on my external drive making them thereby managed I would then have to somehow make them referenced for Lightroom to function. This seems to then create a very cumbersome process to use Lightroom. I certainly don’t want images back on my internal hard drive just to use Lightroom. The whole reason they are on the external hard drive was because they were taking up too much space.
I am attending an Apple one to one session this week and hope to find some answers for my situation. I will keep you informed.
bp
bp
I have well over 250,000 photos on 3 external hard drives, internal iMac and my laptop being managed by Light Room. It knows where they are and is very easy to manage. What I don’t like is they viewing options. No matter what, I cant keep photos together by the date and time. Apple Photos did that near perfect. Light Room is great from managing though.
Milo
www.milosmetal.com
“ If it is indeed the case that the originals are on my external drive making them thereby managed I would then have to somehow make them referenced for Lightroom to function.”
No, the originals can be on your hard drive separate from your library and referenced.
Open your Aperture, select all photos, and use a filter to see if you have managed photos (Add Rule. then File Status = Managed). Only managed photos will be displayed. You can then select those manage photos and relocate the originals outside Aperture Library.
Please read the Aperture manual. It is an excellent document.
The terms “managed” and “referenced” have no relationship to the location of the library itself. Any library can reside on any disk, internal or external.
For referenced images, the library and referenced image can live anywhere completely independently of one another as long as Aperture can see both when Aperture is open. An Aperture library can reference images scattered across many disks including a mix of internal and external disks. While this is not wise image management practice, Aperture will let you do this.
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Aperture badges ! Please explain with pictures. Thanks Not mentioned in Aperture 3 index of book by Dion Scoppettuolo
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