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Switching to mac, questions on best place to host reference masters

I am getting ready to switch from PC to Mac and have a question I am hoping I could get some advice on (I have a lot of questions actually, but will start with this one).


I have a large library of photos and videos and plan on getting an imac for my wife and macbook pro for me (I do the tagging/organizing and video editing).

Based on what I read, I am planning on keeping the masters on a separate drive and the aperture library on my macbook pro.

Question is, am I better off keeping the masters on the imac and access that folder as an external folder on my macbook pro for the masters, or should I use a NAS drive for them?


I have an older NAS that I can probably reformat for this purpose, but I often run into complications using a NAS (offsite backup issues, connectivity issues, can't use Time Machine, ...) and have read on the forums about people having issues writing to files on NAS's...


I have a buffalo terastation pro ii, it is about 3 years old. It is 2 terabytes. I would get the imac with 2 terabytes and the 256gig ssd drive so the 2 tera could be dedicated to media.


Thanks in advance for any advice, appreciate it.

Peter

Posted on Jun 27, 2011 6:46 PM

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Posted on Jun 27, 2011 8:25 PM

Oh boy, methinks you may be in for interesting times...


Aperture is a single-user application, so if somebody is working on images external to Aperture you could get issues with unintentional overwrites and incorrect previews. If the other user is taking copies of the images that Aperture is managing, that's okay, but not so if they're being worked on directly by another party.


Use of a NAS can be problematic. It may work for you, but the easiest approach is, as you identified, is to share the contents of your iMac hard drive (noting the potential risks described above, which apply equally to this approach or the NAS approach).


Take a look at the "more like this" posts to the right of your post to see what's happened in the past with others in this situation.


Regards,

Calx

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Question marked as Best reply

Jun 27, 2011 8:25 PM in response to plampione

Oh boy, methinks you may be in for interesting times...


Aperture is a single-user application, so if somebody is working on images external to Aperture you could get issues with unintentional overwrites and incorrect previews. If the other user is taking copies of the images that Aperture is managing, that's okay, but not so if they're being worked on directly by another party.


Use of a NAS can be problematic. It may work for you, but the easiest approach is, as you identified, is to share the contents of your iMac hard drive (noting the potential risks described above, which apply equally to this approach or the NAS approach).


Take a look at the "more like this" posts to the right of your post to see what's happened in the past with others in this situation.


Regards,

Calx

Jun 28, 2011 3:20 AM in response to CalxOddity

Thanks for the reply, really appreciate it.


I have been reading all the similar posts, which is what drove me to the idea of using the imac as the external drive to host the masters.


As far as risks of others editing the masters that won't be an issue. Even though I will be hosting them on my wife's imac, she won't be editing the files. She might use some for projects she works on and copy them to another folder, but she won't edit them, so all edits will come from my computer through aperture.


Key thing I wanted to confirm with people is that using the imac as the external drive should work and perform well (being new to mac I wasn't sure if there were any issues with doing that).


Thanks again,

Peter

Jun 28, 2011 4:01 AM in response to plampione

Hi Peter. Using the networked iMac's drive as storage for your Images' Referenced Masters doesn't make sense to me on three counts:

- The Images with adjustments (cropping, tweaks, metadata tags added in Aperture) that you want to share with your wife won't be available that way (they are in only your Aperture Library), and

- There is no advantage to putting your Images' Referenced Masters on a networked drive vs. a fast external drive intermittently attached to your laptop (except perhaps back-up, which you haven't mentioned), and there are many reports of problems using networked drive storage. (I have never had a problem with Libraries or Masters on locally mounted drives.)

- (Pure speculation) It is likely that you'll have a wireless network. I can't imagine not having problems running Aperture this way (Aperture on a laptop with Masters on a wirelessly networked drive).


Do you want to give your wife access to Images you've adjusted in Aperture?


What reason is there to not put your Images' Referenced Masters on a locally mounted external drive?


Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

Jun 28, 2011 5:54 AM in response to plampione

Hi Peter


At the risk of upsetting your plans, I strongly recommend using the iMac for the tagging, organizing and editing.


I have just moved from a MacBook Pro to the current iMac for my Aperture work, and the frustrations of lack of speed have gone away.


Aperture has these characteristics:-


1. It's good to have a lot of screen real estate. I have a 27" iMac with two 22" external monitors. I put the HUDs on the side monitors for instant access


2. Aperture is very CPU intensive. I have the i7 3.4GHz model of iMac, and when skimming through photos in full screen mode, it still takes about 1.5 seconds to complete an image render. When skimming fast enough, I see near to 400% CPU busy


3. Aperture likes a lot of RAM. I have 8GBs on the MBP, and paging was a problem. I have 12GBs on the iMac and still see some Page Outs, so RAM still gets depleted, but with the SSD doing the paging, it's not a problem.


I have my ApLib on the SSD with most, but not all, masters on the HDD. I import new images as managed masters on the SSD, do my tagging, organizing, edits etc with everything on SSD. Later, as the ApLib grows, and my activity on these images reduces, I'll selectively move them to HDD using "Relocate Masters"


Hope this derailing helps!


John

Jun 28, 2011 7:45 AM in response to John Kitchen

Appreciate all the replies, they are a great help, though they don't make the decision simple 🙂


I am about to buy the macs, so both the desktop and macbook pro will be fast. I plan on buying the fastest processor, 8gig of ram on the macbook, debating 8 or 16 on the imac, though from the previous thread sounds like it should be 16, and ssd on both (imac with 256 ssd + 2 TB HD, macbook with 512 ssd). I would have hoped a top of the line macbook pro could handle aperture.


In response to some of the questions/suggestions above:

- give access to wife? I would like her to be able to see them, was thinking of having the library copied to her computer every night. Should would not do any edits, but can look at the photos.

- using an attached harddrive on the macbook pro - Definitely a reasonable idea, but I was hoping to be able to bring up the library from anywhere in the house. I do have gigabit ethernet throughout the house and can wire in as needed, but again, was hoping to be able to sit on the sofa and do some tagging.

- Backup - by putting the masters on the imac i was planning on using time machine to back them up onsite, and crashplan to backup offsite.

- Using the imac exclusively for this function - definitely an option, but again, was hoping to be able to do it from my imac wherever i wanted. I am more likely to update my tags/organization of media more frequently if I can do it from my laptop. Plus, it would be nice to be able to see the library even when away from home (preview images at least), and can do some tagging...


What I want to do (and appreciate further advice):

- Ideally for me I can manage my photo/video organization from my macbook pro so I am not locked to my wifes desk/computer to do this. (library on macbook, photos on imac was the original thought)

- My wife will be able to see the library and extract images for various projects she might do (nightly copy of library to her computer?)

- Want to back up the photos locally and remotely (time machine/crashplan).

- Want it to be as simple a workflow as possible, not looking for a lot of overhead.


What if I plug into the gigabit ethernet whenever I am going to run aperture? Would that allow the imac/macbook model to work? Concerned about the performance issues described above though, even for the machines themselves. Would copying the library nightly to my wife's computer work? How big does a 20+k library get with referenced masters?


Today we are on PCs and I use windows live photo gallery and tag all my photos, which are stored on a NAS, my wife also runs WLPG and can see all the tagging I do. This works pretty well and is simple, I just import from the camera, show all 'untagged' photos/videos, and tag them. I also move them to a basic folder structure to be safe.

I understand this is not as feasible on mac, and if you are wondering why I am switching, it is because I have been having a lot of stability problems with the pc's and have had enough. I use iphones, ipads, and apple tv's. Recently got a macbook air and really like it. Just need to figure out how to manage the photo/video library.


Thanks again for all the advice, appreciate any further advice you can give on my goals, sorry for the long response.

Peter

Jun 28, 2011 9:31 AM in response to plampione

plampione wrote:


I am about to buy the macs, so both the desktop and macbook pro will be fast. I plan on buying the fastest processor, 8gig of ram on the macbook, debating 8 or 16 on the imac, though from the previous thread sounds like it should be 16, and ssd on both (imac with 256 ssd + 2 TB HD, macbook with 512 sad).


I suggest ordering both Macs with the minimum RAM and adding 3rd party RAM yourself. The task is trivial and will save you heaps. I bought my iMac with 4GBs (that's two 2GB modules plus two empty slots), and then added two 4GB modules into the empty slots. So I have 12GBs. My plan is to try to live with just 12GBs until 8GB modules become affordable, and then replace the two original 2GB modules with two 8GB modules, bringing it to 24GBs. If needed, I'd ultimately go to 32GBs by replacing the two 4GB modules I have just installed.


I think the MacBook Pro (MBP) still has only two slots, so using 4GB modules, you are limited to 8GBs. If the architecture of the MBP supports it, you may be able to go to 16GB when 8GB modules become affordable. But you'd need to check this.


- using an attached harddrive on the macbook pro - Definitely a reasonable idea, but I was hoping to be able to bring up the library from anywhere in the house. I do have gigabit ethernet throughout the house and can wire in as needed, but again, was hoping to be able to sit on the sofa and do some tagging.


Another way to achieve this still has your Aperture Library and Masters on the iMac as I recommended above. You could use the MBP to share the screen of the iMac. It's a standard OS X function, no software to buy. You enable sharing on the iMac and log in from the MBP. That way you have the function on your sofa, but the power and capacity of the iMac for your actual work. This works fine over wifi for me via an Airport Extreme using 802.11N


- Backup - by putting the masters on the imac i was planning on using time machine to back them up onsite, and crashplan to backup offsite.


Good plan. TM and Crashplan are good products and free.


I'd also recommend making a second onsite backup by cloning to a pair of external drives, and periodically send one of these drives offsite. You may find that Crashplan for offsite backup over the internet is too slow if you have a big photo shoot.



What if I plug into the gigabit ethernet whenever I am going to run aperture? Would that allow the imac/macbook model to work? Concerned about the performance issues described above though, even for the machines themselves. Would copying the library nightly to my wife's computer work? How big does a 20+k library get with referenced masters?



Size of the library depends on many factors such as choices for previews, and the amount of editing (adjustments) you do, but here is a data point. I have 47K images, many RAW and the Library was about 60GBs, the referenced Masters another 280GBs. I say "was" because I have let it grow by importing recent images into it.



Today we are on PCs and I use windows live photo gallery and tag all my photos, which are stored on a NAS, my wife also runs WLPG and can see all the tagging I do. This works pretty well and is simple, I just import from the camera, show all 'untagged' photos/videos, and tag them. I also move them to a basic folder structure to be safe.

I understand this is not as feasible on mac, and if you are wondering why I am switching, it is because I have been having a lot of stability problems with the pc's and have had enough. I use iphones, ipads, and apple tv's. Recently got a macbook air and really like it. Just need to figure out how to manage the photo/video library.


A lot of my concerns about your plan are because I'm impatient. On my MBP, it was taking about 5 seconds to render each image as I reviewed them. I typically take a very short time to tag the images, so the computer was slower then me. Now, with the iMac, I'm the slow link in the chain.


It may be that you are used to a leisurely tagging process, but I have no experience with WLPG.


The great things about Aperture that I really love, having come from a Photoshop background are that Aperture is always non-destructive in its editing and it is non-modal in the UI.


There is a price to be paid for non-destructive editing. Aperture often has to go back to the Master and then apply your adjustments. This takes resources. But it saves you time. And you don't have to muck around creating another external folder structure yourself, as it seems you do with WLPG. I just import my images into "Projects" in Aperture (the Masters are Managed), and when I want to selectively change Managed Masters to Referenced Masters, I just tell Aperture to do this and that it should utilize my Project structure as the external folder structure. Aperture does all the folder creation for me, yippee!


Finally, you may even find that the MacBook Air is good enough to do the tagging on with the shared screen approach I mentioned above, and then maybe you don't have to buy a MBP.


HTH. Happy to discuss further

Jun 28, 2011 10:49 AM in response to John Kitchen

Thanks John.


Sharing the screen is an interesting idea, will have to try that out as an option.

Based on what I have read it looks like you are able to move the aperture library. Would this work:

- Create the library on the mac (with referenced masters also on the mac). Lib on the ssd, masters on the 2tb drive.

- When I get the macbook move the library to the macbook and keep the masters on the mac (mounting the mac folder on startup). Try this out and see how it works (if necessary I can connect to my gigabit ethernet.)

- If it works well enough great, if not move the library back to the mac and go with your original proposal.


Would I be able to move the library as i described above and try this??


Like your idea of not having to buy the macbook pro, but I need it to do hd video editing and the air won't cut it for that. Can't do it on the imac because it will be my wife's primary computer and she won't want me on it any more than necessary.


Thanks for the help,

Peter

Jun 28, 2011 10:06 PM in response to plampione

I'm not too sure if that would work. I suspect the library may lose its connection with the Masters, but it's probably possible to reconnect via Locate Masters if I got the function right.


I think I read somewhere that Lion provides the capability of logging into a remote Mac without taking over that Mac completely. If I'm right, you may well e able to both use the iMac at the same time, one via your MacBook Air.


Good questions!

Jun 29, 2011 8:25 AM in response to John Kitchen

Thanks, the multi-user sharing option sounds pretty good actually, i looked it up after reading your post. Being new to macs not sure how user accounts work. If I install the aperture library on the imac under my user account it will go into my user folders by default. Will my wife be able to access that from her login and itunes session? Or should i put the library somewhere outside of the user folder structure?


Thanks,

Peter

Jun 30, 2011 6:42 AM in response to plampione

File sharing capabilities under Mac OS X are quite comprehensive.


The answers to your three questions are "yes/maybe" and "it depends".


I'm putting a link to Apple's article on File Sharing below, but before that some commentary.


You can share folders with other user accounts choosing read only, read/write, write only (drop box), or of course "none".


It would be fine to share your "Pictures" folder (within your Home Folder) with the account called "Wife". Normally, the Ap Lib would be in the Pictures folder.


Then "Wife" opens the Ap Lib and closes it. Aperture now understands that the most recent Ap Lib opened is yours, and Wife's iTunes should pick up that fact and be able to sync photos to iOS devices.


My only slight concern is what may go wrong in actually sharing the Ap Lib. iTunes access should be read only, so I would start by giving "Wife" read only access.


More investigation is required!


But read this...


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1549

Jun 30, 2011 7:58 AM in response to plampione

OK. Curiosity got the better of me.


I have two Macs, an iMac and a MBP. Here is what I did to do some limited testing of Aperture library sharing.


iMac: Created new Ap Lib on a shared disk, and imported some images. Went into "Viewer" to look at one image. Aperture is still open.


MBP: Navigated to the test Ap Lib and opened it. No problem so far. Both Macs can see the same Ap Lib


MBP: Duplicated a version and adjusted it


iMac: Clicked on "Browser" to switch to a mode in which maybe I can see new versions, but Aperture "hung" in a "not responding" mode.


MBP: Quit Aperture


iMac: Immediately comes back to life, but not showing new version


iMac: Quit and reopened Aperture, new version is now visible


I conclude that so long as you don't try to share the same Ap Lib, you can use Aperture concurrently on both Macs *****, but I don't know what will happen if you have the Ap Lib open on one Mac and iTunes tries to access the images on the other Mac.


It will probably work since iTunes access is likely to be read only. I suspect that iTunes uses the same mechanism as the iLife suite (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) to access Aperture images. In all cases, you must have "Previews" of your images in Aperture.


I did test concurrent access with the iMac running Aperture and the MBP trying to access images (actually Previews) through Pages. That worked just fine.



**** If you buy Aperture on the Mac App Store (which is the best way and cheapest), you are allowed to use Aperture on any of your Macs, but not concurrently. If you really want to use Aperture concurrently on two of your Macs, you should buy it twice. I would not think that having Aperture active on your iMac while the other Mac was running iTunes and accessing an Aperture Library would in any way violate the EULA, since it's not the Aperture app which is concurrently running.


Here are some references


An article which talks about sharing, but is less precise in its language than I'd like

http://aperture.maccreate.com/2010/02/09/the-importance-of-libraries-aperture-3s -new-syncing/


The Aperture User Manual

Aperture User Manual

Jun 30, 2011 10:32 AM in response to plampione

Wow, lots of tangents in this thread. Apologies in advance if I am over-simple.


• Aperture is a single-user application. In the interest of simplicity I suggest focusing first on setting up your new MBP, because that is the lead Aperture operation. Aperture is in its third pro version and absolutely can be done well on 2011 MBP hardware for single user. Only after the single-user setup is clear and fully functional should you worry about how a second user will view images.


• Step one is your workflow should separately back up original images before they are touched by Aperture or any other images management app. This is critical to avoid the "Aperture ate my images" type comments we see here all the time, and lots of otherwise-competent manuals and individuals do show workflows importing directly into Aperture, which is horrible images management workflow.


• A 2.2 GHz 2011 MBP (I own one) with SSD and 8 GB RAM will rock Aperture.

Specs:

15" or 17" 2.2 GHz. $250 additional for 2.3 GHz is cost-ineffective.

6750M graphics a must (comes with 2.2 GHz models).

SSD a must. 256 GB recommended; even 128 GB will handle a 30k ref-images Library fine.

Order with stock 4 GB RAM.


The 2011 MBPs will take 16 GB RAM but for now 8 GB is cost-effective. As previously noted buy RAM from third parties. I have used OWC for more than a decade:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3_133 3MHz_SDRAM

OWC will buy back the original two 2-GB DIMMs from Apple.


Choice of display size and type is personal. When I finally moved to the 17" size I was amazed at how much better everything works on the 75% more pixels and hella more screen real estate of the 17" size. And I use it in my lap a lot.


OTOH some folks connect to external displays most of the time, in which case the value of the 17" size diminishes. And the high resolution displays do have a downside of smaller fonts that some folks (me) do not like. Personally I tolerate the small fonts because images are much better viewed on high-resolution.


Many image pros prefer matte displays and I am one of them. The glare displays absolutely gag me, but it is each individual's choice. Check them all out at an Apple Store, and experience the various different lighting angles that are forced on us when we use a mobile display.


• Only the 17" size has an Express Card 34mm slot ("EC/34"). EC/34 rocks for input when paired with fast UDMA camera cards. My recent coarse tests of the 2011 17" MBP's EC/34 slot:

SanDisk Extreme Pro Express Card Adapter for CF cards from Amazon, $40.


Approximate real-world test results in the 2011 17" MBP:

-Sandisk Extreme III CF Card, SanDisk EC/34 Adapter = ~10 MB/sec

-Sandisk Extreme IV CF Card, SanDisk EC/34 Adapter = ~37 MB/sec

-Sandisk Extreme IV CF Card, SanDisk EC/34 Adapter = ~36 MB/sec


-Sandisk Extreme Pro CF (UDMA6), SanDisk EC/34 Adapter = ~80 MB/sec


With fast CF cards upload speeds via the EC/34 slot are sweet; fast enough to literally change workflows. For comparison, a Sony USB card reader's fastest upload was ~12 MB/sec. My emphasis has been on images uploading to date, but cheap prices of slower CF cards are making me look at using the EC/34 slot for backup in the field as well.


EC/34 SD adapters also available, and presumably Thunderbolt adapters will become available that allow the same fast i/o for all 2011 Macs, but it has not happened yet.


• The optical drive slot in your new MBP can easily and inexpensively be retrofitted with a 750 GB hard drive or a second SSD from OWC when your boot SSD starts to fill up. That is what I will do when my 128 GB SSD fills.


• I strongly recommend keeping the Aperture Library on your new MBP's SSD. Initially also put the (referenced) Masters on the SSD while you are working on them. That is what I do, and the Aperture performance is spectacular.


Then experiment with how you offload (i.e., move the referenced-Masters on the SSD to another drive) images after you are done editing them. Your NAS may or may not work just fine as a repository for referenced Masters. If it does not, hard drives are cheap.


• How your wife views the images is IMO a fully separate consideration with lots of alternatives. Personally I would be looking to cloud solutions (e.g. publish each project to the Cloud as you complete the edits) but it really depends on what you and your wife personally want to achieve.


HTH


-Allen Wicks

Jun 30, 2011 12:52 PM in response to SierraDragon

Thanks for all the great feedback, very helpful.

To clarify a couple of points, I am not looking to use the same library concurrently. If my wife wants to look at the library it would only be when I am not using it (and vice-versa). And ideally my wife wants to see the whole library, not just some albums or projects. She does her own photoshop projects for albums, framing... and she sometimes needs to search through the whole collection to find what she wants.


As a side note, just to experiment I imported my 20,000+ photo/video collection into iphoto on my macbook air (4gig ram, latest version). The masters are on my NAS (XFS formatted), and the library is on the air. iPhoto performs really well doing this, I was very surprised at how well it did. The thing that really shocked me and is going to save me a ton of time is that it recongized all the tags I had set in windows live photo gallery and it shows them as keywords. That is a huge win for me.


Given that iphoto seems to be managing so well in this setup I am hopeful that keeping the masters on the imac and the library on the macbook pro (when I get them) will work. I don't think I can reformat my old buffalo NAS for the MAC OS format so I don't want to use that.


As everyone adviced, I will experiment when I get the machines to see what works best, main question I will be looking to answer is whether to keep the library on the macbook pro or the imac, the masters will likely be on the imac either way. Just have to decide which approach works best (e.g. having the library on the imac will allow itunes to see it so we can access the photos through our apple tv's.)


Based on your comments for the hardware SierraDragon, I am now thinking of getting the 21.5" imac with the 2.8 i7 processor, 8gig ram, 2tb +256SSD drive. I was previously thinking of getting the 27" with the 3.4 i7, but I don't want such a big monitor and it doesn't sound like I need the 3.4ghz processor. Will upgrade to 16gig in the future if needed.


As I mentioned before, I really appreciate all of you taking the time to answer my questions, it is extremely helpful.

Peter

Jun 30, 2011 1:21 PM in response to plampione

While 8GBs of RAM makes sense on a MBP with its limitation of two slots, upgrading an iMac to 8GBs by adding two 2GB modules doesn't. For a little extra you get two 4GB modules and when added to the 4GBs the iMac comes with, you get 12 GBs.


I have 12 GBs and I still get Page Outs in a small number, which indicates I do get RAM depletion. I have been tracking what Aperture does with RAM and I see spikes of usage. It would be a shame to buy 2GB modules and then find you really need more and have to discard them in favor of 4GB modules.


It is my expectation and hope that Lion will make even better use of RAM, so I expect that RAM demand will increase when I go to Lion. RAM is so darned cheap, it makes sense for the OS and apps to make heavy use of it. If by using more RAM they can offload I/Os and CPU usage and save me time, I'm all for it.


I have also been tracking Aperture's CPU usage on my i7 3.4GHz machine, and I see close to 400% CPU busy when I am reviewing images. Even with this CPU and my Aplib on SSD, it still takes about 1.5 seconds to finish rendering a RAW 18 megapixel image from a Canon 7D. Given the speed of the SSD, it seems most of that time is CPU time. Smaller images are of course much faster.

Switching to mac, questions on best place to host reference masters

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