Q: Can I transfer photos directly between Aperture libraries on same computer?

No to transfer images between libraries you need to select the images (or project or album) you want to move and export it as a new library and then import that new library into the other library.

regards

You didn't read my post. You select the images you want to move and export those as a new library and then you import that new library into the other library.

You will mot be moving the entire library.

This is the only way to get the master, versions and all metadata moved between libraries.

If you don;t care about any metadata or adjustments you can export the maters and import those.

This is the only way to get the master, versions and all metadata moved between libraries.

Aperture is designed to work with one library at a time - you can have many libraries, but there should not be a necessity to switch between libraries too frequently and to move items between libraries frequently, because Aperture is designed to contain all your photos in one huge library. I have two main libraries - one for private photos and one for teaching/research. And I rarely have to move items between these two libraries. Your best strategy with Aperture would be to avoid moving items between Aperture libraries. Only create separate libraries for unrelated photos, where there would never be a need to move between libraries. I only need to move image files between libraries when I have temporarily worked on a different computer - to get the images from my travelling MBP to the iMac, for example.

tks, it did help, its just that I had something simpler in mind, like drag and drop images from one library to another. Anyway, now I realize that is not possible.

Dragging and dropping from Aperture will usually only export the previews. But that may suffice, if you need only a preview in another application.

To browse two Aperture libraries at the same time and to drag and drop between libraries, you can open one library in iPhoto and one library in Aperture. You will need the latest versions of both applications. But this will allow you to drag and drop from the Aperture Browser to the iPhoto browser or from the iPhoto Browser to the Aperture icon in the Dock.

But as Frank Caggiano pointed out - you will not transfer the original master image files this way, only the previews, keywords, and other metadata tags. It will only be useful, if you have high quality previews. I use this technique mostly to compare two libraries and to search two libraries at the same time, not to transfer images between them.

Regards

Léonie

You're right it's not as easy as a drag and drop but it's also not so onerous as to prevent you from doing it.

Basically it's a three step process

Select image in library 1, export as new library Temp

Switch to library 2, import library Temp

In Finder delete library Temp.

Writing it down is more involved then doing it.

Hello All,

(I'm not adding value to the discussion, just pointing another good reason why we should be able to have two libraries in simultaneous)

Still on having two libraries in simultaneous, consider this case that I consider having the two libraries working in simultaneous would be super productive:

a) have one large 1TB SATA 7200 RPM HD connected through an USB2.0 port. On this disk, I have my main Aperture Library where I store the final photos or the ones that I would like to work on someday;

b) The iMac internal disk is an 256GB SSD HD. On this disk, I have my scratch Aperture Library where all photos that I have just imported from the camera lands on and from here I do the heavy work before I move then to the final Library - the above disk.

The reason why I have this work flow is because I want to associate the intensive IO activities with the disk where I have better performance, while when high performance is not required, all needed is a large storage space. I'm currently doing what Frank suggested +couple scripts to make this task automatic, but I think it would be super productive if I just could drag the files that I finished working on to the final library destination.

(I'm not contributing either, I'm just interested in the process used by anaxanywhere)

Hi,

I have a mac and it only has 128 GB on the internal hard drive but I have a 2 TB external HD connected via USB. I make and edit lots of GoPro videos which take up lots of space and my computer is filling up from past photos and random videos. I want to put it all on my 2 TB HD but it seems I need to jump through some hoops before I can. Sorry that I'm not as tech savvy but would you be abel to write out a step by step process explaining how you edit videos/photos on your mac and then store them all on our TB external storage?