unable to open old aperture library with photos Ventura os

I have an old aperture library that I didn't migrate to photos but left alone on an external nas

I now want to open it with photos (Ventura on Mac mini) but cannot

I basically want to be able to curate and definitely save the keepers to the main photos library

Mac mini (M1, 2020)

Posted on May 29, 2023 4:21 AM

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Posted on May 29, 2023 4:54 AM

  1. Get it off the NAS. Aperture (and iPhoto and Photos) libraries need to be stored on a disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or apfs, and directly connected to your Mac, not on a network share. Storing it on an inappropriately formatted disk can cause silent corruption.
  2. Since Ventura, you can't open an Aperture library, only import from it using the File -> Import command. Try this after you've moved the library to a correctly formatted disk.
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May 29, 2023 4:54 AM in response to doh

  1. Get it off the NAS. Aperture (and iPhoto and Photos) libraries need to be stored on a disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or apfs, and directly connected to your Mac, not on a network share. Storing it on an inappropriately formatted disk can cause silent corruption.
  2. Since Ventura, you can't open an Aperture library, only import from it using the File -> Import command. Try this after you've moved the library to a correctly formatted disk.

May 29, 2023 9:18 AM in response to doh

If you have a lot of organizational effort in your Aperture library you might want to use the paid version of PowerPhotos to merge the Aperture library into your current Photos library.


 I ran a number of tests with a 50 photo Photos library with keywords, captions, keywords and locations.  I merged it into an empty library using Photos and PowerPhotos.  This is what I found was imported by each;


PowerPhotos:                                      Photos:


Albums                                               -----------

Captions                                             Captions

Titles                                                   Titles

Original images                                  Original images

Edited images                                     Edited images

---------------                                        Locations

Favorites                                             Favorites

Can detect and exclude                      Duplicates

duplicates or not


Neither method included projects. 


Both methods could import older iPhoto libraries into a Photos library when the iPhoto library couldn't be migrated into a Photos library. 


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unable to open old aperture library with photos Ventura os

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