Delete Master and Referenced Files?

Hi, barbfromedmonton,

why do you ask? The answer depends on what you want to achieve. Are you new to Aperture? You will need a basic understanding of the image management of Aperture, as described in the Aperture 3 User Manual, see the chapter on importing images.

In short, the master image files are very important to Aperture, and never should be deleted, unless you want to delete an image completely and to remove it from your database.

For each image you import Aperture will store (or reference) the master image file. This file will be used, if you edit your image to derive and create new versions of the image. One master image file can be used together with many versions of the same image. These version are represented in a very compact and clever way: Aperture only stores the steps how to compute these versions from the master image files, and not the final image itself. In this way Aperture saves space, since the versions are not full duplicates of the original master files, and you can have many versions of the same image without much additional storage required.

But a version without its master file cannot be exported in full resolution and cannot be edited. Without the master image files you will be left with previews in poor resolution.

In Aperture it is pointless to ask about deleting master files. If you want to edit an image in your Aperture Library you need the master image file too; and if you don't want an image in your library any longer, then just delete all its versions and you will delete the master image file too (there are advanced options too).

If the reason for question is, that your Aperture library is very large and you need to free space on your system drive, then post back and tell us what you want to achieve. Aperture offers the possibility to store the master image files outside the Aperture library as referenced masters, so that the library itself can be considerably smaller.

Regards

Léonie

I use a referenced library. After I'm done editing my picks from a session I select everything I want to trash .. right-click & select Delete versions. This removes them from the project and sends them to the trash folder within Aperture. Next from the main menu click .. Aperture > Empty Aperture Trash. There's a popup with an option to Move Referenced Files to System Trash .. I check that and click ok. Now the images are gone from Aperture & they are permanently deleted from my external drive.

They checkbox option should read .. permanetly erase orginal files .. because that's actually what it does. They don't really go to the trash where you can decide later to simply click the put them back option .. they're gone.

mcKown,

You have some problem with the system trash on your system if the masters you delete from Aperture are gone and not in the system trash.

Everything that is in Aperture's trash is placed in the system trash when the Aperture tarsh is emptied. If this is only happening on your external drive I would first check to make sure the /.Trashes file on the external dirve is there.

regards

You sound a bit unsure of how Aperture works. I would recommend you spend some time with the user manual in order to get a better understanding of all the bits that make up Aperture and how they fit together.

I would also be very careful about placing anything in Aperture until you have a better understanding of how it works. It's a great application but can be overwhelming at first and it is easy to have things go lost at this stage.

You're original question was Can master and referenced files be deleted in Aperture? And the answer to that is yes. How you do it and what the consequences are of doing it depend a lot on the context in which the operation is done.

You should post back describing in more detail how you have you library setup, managed masters or referenced masters or a combination of the two, what you're OS and Aperture versions are and what your hardware setup is. Then describe just what it is you're trying to accomplish.

good luck and welcome to the list,

regards

don't think so.

at least with Aperture 3.5.1 this is different. Read the online help:

"When you delete a referenced original from Aperture, you can specify whether the photo’s version is placed in the Aperture Trash. When you empty the Aperture Trash, the link to the original is deleted, but the original remains in its current location in the Finder."

=> substantial drawback in Aperture using referenced masters, as you would have no option to get rid of unwanted originals.

Nope Aperture 3.5.1 still gives you the option to move the referenced originals to the system trash

This indeed works as long as the files reside on a local disk, i.e. directly mounted on the Mac one's working on.

Once you have them on a disk on the LAN, it does not. This might indeed depend on whether the LAN drive has got any System Trash folder. Neither an Apple Time Capsule seems to have that nor any Linux based NAS - at least none supporting the Apple 'delete and move to a Trash folder' mechanism?

Correct you cannot delete the originals if they are referenced on a NAS. This is exactly why you have been told repeatedly in your other thread,

regards