Aperture is not generating previews reliably

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Level 4

1,010 points

Aperture is not generating previews reliably

Hi All,

I'm having a preview problem. I thought I was having an iPhone syncing problem but I will close that question in favor of this one.

I have a project which, in an earlier version of Aperture, I had turned off automatic generation of previews. Now, Aperture will not generate them for use outside of Aperture. FWIW, I am checking for the existence of previews by using the "Show Aperture Library" function of iPhoto.

Within Aperture, I can right-click a photo (call it "photo N") and select "Update Preview". Aperture does not tell me that the preview exists, so I can safely assume that the picture is among the majority in this project that does not have a preview. (The results seem to be the same if I "Generate Preview" of a picture that already has a preview, too.)

When I then close Aperture, sometimes the "Updating Previews" status bar comes up, and sometimes it does not.

More often than not, my view into the Aperture library in iPhoto does not show the newly updated preview. On top of that, if I make a new album in my Aperture library, it generally does not show up in iPhoto either. Sometime later, when playing with previews of "Photo N+1" or "N+2" or something else, I will notice that the preview for "Photo N" is available in the Aperture viewer of iPhoto.

Can anyone offer any advice? Is this happening to anyone else? Simplest test: Make a new album in Aperture, close Aperture, and then check out Aperture previews with some other program (Mail, iPhoto, anything that has a picture browser...) to see if that album is in the list.

thanks,

nathan

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Aperture 3.2.2

Posted on Jan 12, 2012 6:48 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 12, 2012 7:11 PM in response to Mr Endo

What do you have the sharing previews with iLife preference set to?

I have mine set to always and when I create a new album in Aperture it shows up immediately in the media browser. I don;t even need to close and open either Aperture or the media browser.

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Answer 2

huskyte

Level 1

25 points

Jan 12, 2012 9:52 PM in response to Mr Endo

Exact same problem here. I recently noticed that it takes some restarts of Aperture to generate the previews correctly, but that's of no help and not reliable. From time to time a forced recreation of the previews solved the problem.

I switched to generate previews on the fly. This step looks more promising, but I can't tell you the results as I have the sync problem with iOS in general right now plus I needed to repair my aperture database recently.

Funny enough, even with the database repair the previews were queued only for the second restart of Aperture, not straight away.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Jan 12, 2012 10:03 PM in response to Mr Endo

Is this happening to anyone else?

Hello nathan,

I think, this may have been the problem of s37 in this thread, too. Desktop sharing refuses to work.

Did you import your images - or some of your images - from iPhoto? In all recent threads I have seen where the Preview sharing did not work, images have been imported from iPhoto.

Regards

Léonie

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Answer 4

Mr Endo Author

Level 4

1,010 points

Jan 13, 2012 3:31 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

Hi Frank,

When I noticed this problem, I had the "Share previews" set to "Always". I changed it to "When quitting Aperture" since there seemed to be a problem, and I have not noticed things change.

nathan

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Answer 5

Mr Endo Author

Level 4

1,010 points

Jan 13, 2012 3:32 AM in response to huskyte

Certainly does sound the same as my problem. I wonder what our libraries have in common that no one else does?

nathan

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Answer 6

Mr Endo Author

Level 4

1,010 points

Jan 13, 2012 3:35 AM in response to léonie

Leonie,

Thanks for poiting me to se37's post. Don't know how I missed that since it was from the same day as mine!

I will check back there, but it seems like se37's problem went away by of generating previews. Mine (and huskyte's) problem doesn't seem to be quite as simple.

To answer your question, way back in 2007, I imported my iPhoto library into Aperture 1. Since then I have not imported photos from iPhoto. In the album on which I have been experimenting, all photos were directly imported to Aperture. (I use iPhoto only for troubleshooting, like now, and some print service functions.)

nathan

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Answer 7

Mr Endo Author

Level 4

1,010 points

Jan 14, 2012 8:22 PM in response to Frank Caggiano

Frank,

So I tried my "simplest test" tonight, and it worked for me! I don't know why it worked today and it didn't work theother day. However, my original problem still exists. That is: when I create a folder in Aperture, it shows up in a media browser without closing Aperture; however my new previews (which I can coincidentally find within the Previews folder of the library package) do not show up within the media browser in a timely or predictable manner.

I'm at my wit's end on this one. I'm not sure I want to see how bad it is. I'm worried that when I make an adjustment on a photo, that the resulting preview will not be available in the media browser, but rather the old one will be...

nathan

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Answer 8

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Jan 15, 2012 1:55 AM in response to Mr Endo

I'm not sure I want to see how bad it is. I'm worried that when I make an adjustment on a photo, that the resulting preview will not be available in the media browser, but rather the old one will be...

You could investigate that by creating a test image with several versions (use different, easy to recognize adjustments on the versions, name and number the versions according to the adjustments), then see what happens.

I noticed, that my albums show the versions in random order, when viewed in the Media Browser, that may wrongy be interpreted as missing adjustments.

Léonie

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Answer 9

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Jan 15, 2012 1:57 AM in response to léonie

Four versions in Aperture:

And viewed in the Media Browser from Preview:

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