This image cannot be rendered for editing because Aperture does not support

Tony,

Thanks for the welcome. It is an Aperture issue as the dialogue occurs in Aperture. Nothing is wrong with Photoshop's ability to open files. Aperture is doing the rendering for Photoshop. Something is wrong with the library or ability for aperture to transition certain photos into Photoshop using the "edit with xxx" option as you said. Most of the images in question are RAW files, (CR2) but some are jpgs as well. I know aperture CAN open and convert them, since other files of the same exact type are being sent to Photoshop no problem (from the same file type and from the same camera).

The files are referenced properly. They are .CR2 files just like the rest of the files in the library, and from the same camera. In fact, I made my computer work all day by completely starting over with my Aperture library- I re-imported all the folders of my library and all my photos. The problem persists even with the new library. Quite frustrating.

I think I've made a bit of progress but not completely there yet. I think the images that won't open were renamed by aperture on import to have rather lengthy file names- such as the image date followed by the original file name, and then in some cases followed by the date again. The images are viewable and editable in aperture, but for some reason it can't export these to Photoshop. When I copy the original image to the desktop, rename the file to a shorter name, and then import into Aperture, the images export just fine to CS4. So now my challenge is to rename all my affected master files. I try using the batch change command and click "rename master file" but I get an error each time, and in finder, it won't let me change the file name due to permission issues (though it says I have read/write privileges). So frustrating! Why would aperture be incapable of exporting an image due to the file name that it created?

Ernie, I tried your suggestion and it looks like CS4 is indeed having a problem opening these files. I can't figure out why or what happened when Aperture renamed them on import to render them unreadable by Photoshop. Does Aperture tag the EXIF in any other way that corrupts normal file opening? I have the latest updates to CS4. I can see how this is a blurred line problem between Apple and Adobe at this point since Aperture renamed the file and possibly altered the file in such a way that Photoshop can't read the file. An example file name is 20100706-IMG_8776.CR2 Not terribly long, really. But with most of these, even if I truncate the name to, say, IMG_8776.CR2 Photoshop says it cannot open the file type, whereas the same file, prior to having been imported by Aperture IS readable.

Ernie, I really appreciate your interest in helping. I have more informtion: I was unable to even open the affected raw (.CR2) files in Photoshop CS4 when using Adobe Bridge or finder ->open in Photoshop CS4. I discovered that my version of camera raw was old, so I went ahead and updated it (although my older version supposedly already supports all my camera models, and has no problem opening the files originally imported without Aperture's help). The new version of camera RAW did solve my problem of getting affected photos to open directly out of finder into Photoshop, but I still can't get photos to export from Aperture to edit Photoshop using the "edit in external editor" command. In trying to discover where the problem lies, I changed Aperture's external editor default from Photoshop CS4 to iPhoto. I get the same error message as when trying to open in CS4- "This image cannot be rendered for editing because Aperture does not support the image format." This makes a pretty convincing argument to me that the problem does, in fact, lie in Aperture after all. For some reason, it doesn't think that it can convert these files to edit them in Photoshop.

As a side note, for affected images, I'm able to export a 16-bit .PSD version to my desktop without a problem. From what I can tell, this is all that Aperture is doing when editing in an external editor- it is exporting a version, having Photoshop open it, and linking the created version to the master within Aperture. Am I not correct in this? So I can't figure out why it can export just fine but not edit in the external editor. Something is wrong with my settings or there is a bug.

Okay- here's my latest theory: there seems to be a folder permission issue. In finder, all the affected folders say that I have read/write privileges. However, when I try to relocate masters or rename masters, I get an error in Aperture that says that I don't have permission, with a question if I want to continue anyway (in the case of relocating); in the case of renaming, it says I can't due to permission issues. When you export to external editor, it appears as if Aperture creates a .PSD file in the same folder as the orginal RAW file. If I'm having folder permission, could Aperture interpret the failure to create the .PSD as a problem with it's own image processing capacity?

Again, thanks for the input. As for the first suggestion, when I import without renaming they all work, but as of late, all appear to work no problem. It seems like it was a block of time from roughly October 2009 through November 2010 where most all the files imported during this date demonstrate the problem. As for the second suggestion, I've tried both 8 and 16 bit TIFF and PSD file types selected in the editor preferences, with no luck.

My next move has been to relocate the offending files out of their current location to another location (they are referenced, not managed). In doing this, I encountered what seems to be a file access or privelege error message, although about 20% of the files were moved, and in doing so, it seems to have solved the problem for those. But I don't have a good way of isolating the involved images outside of Aperture, and I don't want to move them with Finder anyways since that would ruin the referencing.

This bug is getting so complicated I'm ready to throw my hands in the air and just go back to Lightroom. Aperture has so much potential, especially in regards to integration with ipods, iPads, other Macs, etc. but in the 4 months I've been using it, I have spent WAY more time addressing buggy issues like this one than the amount of time supposedly saved using Aperture instead of Lightroom.

Okay, even more info. Since the photos in questions are from the end of the 2009 through most of 2010, I went into Aperture and deleted all the versions for 2009 and 2010. I then went to the source folders and re-imported all these photos, which took quite a while. (I did this after testing one photo, where I deleted the version in Aperture and re-imported it, I found that this would now open in CS4, when it wouldn't do that before). We'll after all this, still no luck. It appears as if the only way to fix this is to delete and re-import all the photos one by one. Oh my gosh this is killing me!