Tips

UPDATE: Scroll to the end for a video version of this tip!

Aperture 3 added the Trash folder so deleted photos and projects are easily recoverable, but once you empty the trash, what really happens? How are managed vs referenced files handled on deletion? Can you accidentially delete a photo that’s still in use elsewhere in the application? And is there any hope after hitting “empty trash”?

These question and more, tackled below…

Let’s throw some stuff away!

The best way to find out what happens is to try it out, and check the results! So here we go. Here’s what’s going in the trash.

• Project A which contains Photo A1 (managed) and Photo A2 (referenced) in it.
• Album B1 from Project B, containing Photo B1. Note that Project B1 will not be thrown away (so that Photo B1 is still in use, in a Project B).
• Project C containing Photo C1 will go in the trash. However Photo C1 is being used in a Book B1, which lives in Project B. This book will NOT be deleted.
• Photo D1- Version 2 will go in the trash from Project D. Notice that the original, Photo D1, will not go in the trash.

Here’s some screen shots (click to view larger): 

Project A and Photo A1 (managed) and Photo A2 (referenced)

Project A which contains Photo A1 (managed) and Photo A2 (referenced) in it will go in the trash. We want to know what happens to the master files (the .CR2s that were imported originally). Remember, one of those master files lives in the Aperture library (the managed one), and the referenced one is floating around in the Finder somewhere.

Scroll to the end for a video version of this tip!

A conversation in the User Forum about a complication with 3rd party plug-ins inspired this post. The reader was having troubles opening a photo into a plug-in a second time, and after some back and forth we resolved the issue and it pointed out what could be argued as a bug or a feature in Aperture 3. Which of course makes it great “tip” fodder ;-)

Editing with a plug-in or external application

Aperture has a fantastic plug-in architecture, with loads of developers making some very cool plug-ins for the app. If you’re short on ideas, head on over to Apple’s Plug-ins page and see what’s on offer.

Since these 3rd party tools can’t make adjustments using Aperture’s own adjustment capabilities (and if they could, we wouldn’t need them!), when you want to edit a photo from Aperture in one of these plug-ins, Aperture has to first render any adjustments you may have already made into a new file, and send that over to the plug-in. The format of the new file is determined in your preferences; you can make it a TIF or PSD, at 8-bit or 16-bit. This new TIF or PSD becomes a new “Master” file (so you can still always, always go back to your original photo). Once you are done doing whatever you’re going to do to the photo and it’s sent back to Aperture, it will have a little “target” icon on it, denoting that it’s been opened in an external editor (this could be an actual application like Photoshop, or just a plug-in—they are the same thing as far as Aperture is concerned).

In the following screenshot, we see a photo that’s been opened in Photoshop. I added some horrible color treatment to it to make it obvious to differentiate here. Believe me, it gets harder and harder to figure out what to do with Photoshop with every release of Aperture!

The little “target” logo means the photo has been opened in an external editor

See the slider badge on the bottom right of the first thumbnail? That tells us that some adjustments have been added in Aperture. Then, see the target badge on the second thumbnail—and notice that the slider badge is missing? The target means it’s been externally edited, and the lack of the slider badge means that the adjustments applied in the image on the left were rendered into a new master before being sent to Photoshop.

Let's discuss what size to make your watermark, what stylings to use, create some using Photoshop and two FREE solutions, and set them up in Aperture.