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How Do You Use Aperture for Desktop Pictures!?

this is a problem older than lion, unfortunately, but since the problem still exists i thought i'd try this forum.


basically, i'm looking for a definitive answer to whether you can reliably use aperture as a source for desktop pictures (or the screen saver, for that matter). the problem of course is that aperture only shows up occasionally in the system preferences desktop-picture/screen-saver dialog. mostly it doesn't show up at all, sometimes it shows up as just the word "aperture" (but with no content and no sub-directories), and sometimes (rarely and with no predictablility i've discovered) it shows up with all its contents.


my question: does anyone know why this is so broken and whether there is a fix? and has apple ever actually acknowledged this problem?


thanks!

iMac / iBook / iPhone, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Aug 14, 2011 10:13 PM

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8 replies

Aug 14, 2011 10:57 PM in response to markmal

Not convinced that the OS is broken because I have had no problem on my system using Aperture pictures reliably as a desktop whether under Lion or previous OS variants. System Preferences>Desktop & Screensaver and Aperture shows up. Click on the triangle and select the folder. Maybe you have to have a folder in Aperture for that to work. Or maybe you need to have Previews created and set to be shared. Apart from these possibilities if there is an issue I suspect that you must look for it in your specific hardware or software setup.

Aug 15, 2011 8:53 AM in response to Bruce Sanderson

unfortunately i have this problem on all my machines (multiple imacs and a macbook). their configurations are similar, i suppose, but not identical. i do have previews set to be shared (all the time). and aperture does appear correctly sometimes. there are other people here who have reported the same problem.


could it have to do with having a large number of projects (500), or a large apeture file (140G)? (bruce, how large is your apetrue file?)


the problem feels like aperture is locking its previews from being shared, perhaps while it does some sort of updating to its db?

Jun 5, 2012 6:42 PM in response to markmal

I recall having a similar problem with iPhoto actually, long ago before I got Aperture, and the solution was to delete the plist file that tracked which wallpaper folders you'd used before, your iPhoto and Aperture libraries, etc.


Letting OS X (or Finder?) rebuild the plist file resolved the issue completely at the time.


I believe the file is called "com.apple.desktop.plist".


If you venture this way, you might find you'll have to re-open and close Aperture to let it re-publish itself into the plist file before you'll see your projects appear again.


Hope this helps!

How Do You Use Aperture for Desktop Pictures!?

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