Previews from multiple libraries

Question

Level 1

8 points

Previews from multiple libraries

Aperture 3 makes it easy to swap libraries on the fly.
Supposing that by default preferences previews are created for all images/projects: which previews are left available to the other applications (like iWork, iTunes etc.) once Aperture is closed ? All previews from all libraries, just the last opened library, the "most used" library ?

Thanks,
Simone

iMac, MacBoook, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Feb 24, 2011 7:06 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Frank Caggiano

Level 7

25,969 points

Feb 24, 2011 7:07 AM in response to oraziosimone

Last opened.

Reply

Answer 2

oraziosimone Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 24, 2011 1:00 PM in response to Frank Caggiano

Thanks !
In fact I just tested by switching to some test libraries.

This is a bit annoying when you need to switch to some temporary library
loosing the availability of all previews of the standard library.
It suffices to open the library you like in Aperture to make its previews back
available.

The process is nearly instantaneous (I had keynote opened and I saw all Aperture previews change as soon as I swapped the Aperture library) so I suspect the xml file used to share the previews is not deleted and regenerated each time, but it is kept somewhere inside the Aperture library itself. Then the system just changes a pointer to this file.

I'm wondering whether some "guro" would know how to instruct the OSX to look at the wished Aperture library without opening Aperture itself.

Simone

Reply

Answer 3

Feb 24, 2011 2:05 PM in response to oraziosimone

The current or last opened library is in the preferences file: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Aperture.plist the key is LibraryPath.

It's just an ascii string so you could go in and change it. An interesting experiment would be to quit Aperture, point the LibraryPath value at a different library and start something that uses the media browser to see if this is the sole place that the current library is stored.

If that works writing an Applescript to change it (while Aperture isn't running) would be fairly trivial.

Message was edited by: Frank Caggiano

Reply