Splitting and 80 GB Library?

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Level 1

75 points

Splitting and 80 GB Library?

Hi All.

I have an iPhoto Library that is 80 GB and I'd like to try and manage it a little better in Aperture. I'm a not a photo professional and I'm a new mac user and I'd be grateful for tips and suggestions and walk throughs on how to do this.

I can see splitting some of these off into separate libraries as soon as I get them organized and would love to get a little guidance.

Thanks,

Jon

Background: I had a bit of a battle getting things organized when they came over from my PC because they were not organized in any coherent way on the PC (multiple duplicates and placed basically wherever I was using them) and I had to basically create my own Events by moving "like with like" so that architecture, sculpture, travel, research etc, etcetera were in separate Events.

Then I created Albums for separate projects.

Now I am having a bit of a time figuring out how to handle new Events since these will contain sculpture, architecture , travel etcetera but may not necessarily get moved to the sculpture folder...

macbookpro and macpro, Mac OS X (10.6.6), parallels VM

Posted on Mar 21, 2011 12:50 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Jim Calderwood

Level 4

3,215 points

Mar 21, 2011 1:32 PM in response to hotwheels22

Aperture can manage quite large libraries so it's not essential to split it up. But if you want to do so for convenience then select a group of projects or categories and from the File menu choose Export Items as New Library (or if it's only one project it will be "Export project as new library") then delete the projects you have exported.

Hope this is enough to get you started. Go carefully and test it out as you go.

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Answer 2

hotwheels22 Author

Level 1

75 points

Mar 21, 2011 2:15 PM in response to Jim Calderwood

Thanks Jim.

I may have some old photos that might be smart to get out of the Library proper.

Can I just ask you if there is a convenient way to open two libraries at the same time or for moving files back to the Main library if you are looking through the split off library and you realize there are some files you should put back in the Main Library?

Regards and thanks.

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Answer 3

Mar 21, 2011 5:56 PM in response to hotwheels22

No way to open two Aperture libraries at once.

You will need to export the images from one library and import them into the other. You can either export projects or folders. If you are exporting projects see *File->Export->Project as New Library*. If you are exporting folders the command changes to *Folders as New Library*.

Once you've exported from the one library switch to the other and run File->Import->Library.

By doing it this way you will preserve any modifications you made to the images.

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