App: Apple Aperture

So many people on so many forums have been struggling for so many days on this Aperture to iLife sharing issue — some quite literally spending dozens of hours trying to solve the problem — that I thought I’d share how I personally handle this, and why this hasn’t affected me at all.

I don’t use the iLife Sharing. It’s not because I don’t like the idea—on the contrary, I think it’s brilliant. However I work with multiple computers, multiple libraries, and multiple devices. The sharing system works best if you have one Library, on one computer, use iLife on that one computer, and sync your iPad/iPod/etc to that one copy of iTunes, and so on. The system is beautiful in its simplicity.

My setup isn’t simple.

My Setup

I have an iMac that hosts my main Libraries. Even though I’ve now merged most Libraries, I do still have a couple client-specific ones that I don’t want to merge. So right there, we have a sharing problem—which library is shared? The answer is, the last one that was open. That might not always be the one you want to get to, though.

I also have a MacBook Pro that stores working Libraries as I travel. And I use the fantastic Project export feature from Aperture on the iMac to move projects over to my MacBook Pro so I can catch up on old projects while traveling (for example, I’m currently copying a managed 127GB Library across my network so I can catch up on a wedding edit and some other projects on the flights to Bangkok tomorrow). Point is, I have projects on that computer, too.

This is a topic that’s shown up here on this blog, on the flickr Aperture group as well as on the Apple boards, and it appears that, at least for one user, the source of the problem has been found.

The Problem

The problem has been people’s Aperture Libraries not showing up in iLife, Mail, etc—basically the Media Browser connection was broken. You can share your Aperture Library with the rest of your Mac by enabling Share previews with iLife and iWork in the Preferences:

As you may have heard, if you upgrade to both Aperture 3.1 and iLife ‘11, you gain all the exciting new slide show themes that Steve showed on stage for iPhoto ‘11—inside of Aperture! I’ve just installed mine, and there’s a load of new themes.

Here’s a complete list of Slideshow themes. Themes with the ** next to them are new… there’s six of ‘em!

The Stevenote ended a few hours ago, and I spent the last few hours poking around Aperture 3.1.