Hi everybody.
After updating to 3.2.1 I'm experiencing some scary crop-stuff. I posted these findings in response to Joseph's 3.2.0 workaround part 1
He asked me to start a new thread for your viewing pleasure :).
Basically, what I've found is that Aperture has forgotten the location of the crop-box in some older images. The aspect ratio, and size is remembered correctly, but when you click the image (in non-preview-mode), it looks something like this: Forgotten crop position.
It seems the crop is applied partly outside of the rotated image's boundaies, and instead showing some part of another image (maybe the previously viewed image?)
If you dis- and re-enable the crop using the check-mark, it seems Aperture discovers that it had applied the crop badly and reapplies it inside the rotated frame but in a seemingly otherwise arbitrary location - i.e. not the location it had originally been placed by me.
And now that we are discussing 3.2.1 and cropping bugs, I'm experiencing another strange but less troubling issue, that I'll put up, for the record: The crop snaps back to 'square' and forgets it was ever anything else (i.e. no cmd-z). This happens (sometimes) if I apply a crop, then rotate the picture, press enter to accept, decide the rotation wasn't helping, press cmd-z : *Snap* to 'square'-format.
/adam
Adam,
Thanks for posting the details and the link to the Apple board discussion.
I’m sure this is far too simplistic, but by chance you have trashed preferences since the 3.2.1 (apparent crop fix version) upgrade?
It’s a shot in the dark, but worth a try.
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Joseph,
I didn’t try it before now. For a second I thought it worked. But it didn’t. Has it ever in any issue, I wonder?
I did a bit more research. I created a smart album to find all the pictures that were both rotated and cropped. This is what I’ve found:
Type affected.
Theres a date line separating the affected from the unaffected. The latest picture to be affected was taken sep 23 2011. The first unaffected picture was taken oct 1 2011. There were no cropped AND rotated pictures taken between these dates. Every picture taken after oct 1 is unaffected.
With one condition, every picture taken before sep 23 is affected (Oh, the horror!). The condition is that both crop and straighten must be set to non-default values (i.e. pictures with checkmarks in both, but no actual adjustments, are unaffected). RW2(panasonic RAW), NEF (Nikon RAW) and JPG’s are all represented.
Way affected:
Initially, I thought Aperture just forgot the crop placement, but it actually seems it modifies it. On all the pictures I tested, the crop-box was moved down and left, as if a translation vector was being applied to the x- and y-coordinates. Since I can’t access the original coordinates, I don’t know if it’s by the same amount every time, but from the way the framing jumps, that could definitely be the case. Also, it seems that if the translation vector sets either coordinate to less than 0, it will be set to zero instead.
Time:
On oct 15 Aperture was updated to 3.2.0 (I’m not autistic - Time Machine told me). I don’t know how to tell what version the library is or were, though.
Adam,
Great sleuthing. If this were foursquare, you’d definitely earn an ApertureExpert badge ;-)
I think your solution is perfect. Merging will merge projects that are of the same name (although I think it’s more clever than that and will actually merge if they were at one time the actual same project, not just coincidentally named the same. Probably due to a unique ID assigned to each Project). If it’s not sure for some reason then it’ll create a duplicate project with a “-1” to the name. But are you going to delete all the incorrectly cropped photos first? Otherwise, you’ll have duplicates in the Projects.
good luck and keep us posted!
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?
Now I did some more research. It was quite time- and space-consuming. I went into Time Machine and restored my library from just before the update to 3.2.0 to a new location.
I then opened the old library with Aperture 3.2.1 and let it upgrade.
After the upgrade was finished, I went in to check the pictures I knew had issues before - and lo and behold - they were all fine!
The conclusion must be that the 3.2.0 did irreversible damage to the crop location, that 3.2.1 could not undo, but that the issue itself is indeed fixed in 3.2.1.
So now I need a bit of help in how to go about restoring the old unharmed files to my current library. I’m thinking something along these lines:
Export all cropped and rotated pictures from the old library to a new library.
Import this new library to my current and merge the two.
But I’m unsure of the outcome of that:
Will Aperture merge the backup’s projects and albums to the current projects of the same names or will it simply create new projects and albums of the same names?
/adam
Adam, thanks for the persistence and letting us know. I noticed that when I tired to crop with the aspect ratio at “do not constrain” that sometimes during the sizing process Aperture would not let me pull one side of the crop box all the way to the pictures edge either side or sometimes top. That was from a set of photos taken in early October. From a recent set of photos I have had no problem. This was all prior to the most recent update. I never had this problem or the prior problems with cropping since I have a Magic Mouse. I’ll be curious to see if this was just an isolated instance on one set of photos. Has anyone else encountered this problem?
Florian
Florian Cortese
www.fotosbyflorian.com