I want to get my original photos out of aperture and can't seem to find a way to do it, I can't locate an original folder, I understand that images I have edited won't be exported I just want to have a copy of my files out of the system

Hello Joe,

do you want to continue using Aperture or do you want to manage your images yourself?

If you want to continue using Aperture, but to be able to browse your images without launching Aperture, then relocate your master image files:

• Select all images in the Browser
• Use the File menu: File -> Relocate master and select a folder, where you want to store the master image files.

Be warned, that you must not edit, change, tag these files in any way, unless using Aperture itself to do the modification. Otherwise the link between master image files and version in Aperture may be broken.

Make sure you have a working backup of your Aperture Library before you do that.

But why do you want access to your images outside Aperture? Aperture as a digital asset management system is supposed to be able to manage you images in versatile a way, to give you access to all information you need. So what are you missing?

Regards

Léonie

O.K. I see. Don't forget that this forum only shows the few problematic situations, not the many, many cases where Aperture is working reliably. Missing masters and lost images may sometimes be caused by user errors, hard disk crashes, or network problems, if people risked to put their Aperture library onto a network volume or a hard drive with a wrong format (which is not recommended and supported by Apple).

To protect yourself against this kind of problems, you really should have a routine of regular backups.

To create a backup of your master image files you can export them to an external volumet:

File -> Export -Masters

Here is a recent discussion to get started with backing up your Aperture Library, see Kirby Krieger's and Sierra dragon's posts:

Re: Best setup for external drives and backup

Regards

Léonie