How can I move projects out of aperture and save elsewhere

Thtat definitely looks like you have a corrupted image somewhere.

If you have the "continuously busy 'processing'" at start-up, then probably some recently imported image is corrupted.

What I usually do to track down the culprit is to defer the generation of previews on start-up:

Press the Shift key immediately after you start Aperture to prevent preview generation for that session. This should take care of the "processing". Then systematically select some of your most recently imported images and try to update the Previews for them (Aperture menu bar -> Photos-> Update Previews). If Aperture stalls/crashes again, then you will know that the culprit is among the most recently selected images.

Inspect these images careful in the inspector (launch Aperture again with the shift key held down) and look if any one of these look suspicious (file format, size, filename or version name). E.g. I once managed to crash Apertue by importing a 2GB file, or b importing a file with invisible characters in the filename.

Remove the suspicous files and see if this solves the problem.

If you have the photo stream turned on don't forget to check the PhotoStream or your MobileMe albums for corrupted images.

To answer your question:

If not, how do I save parts of the library and bring them back later after finding they are OK?

One way to do this would be to export Aperture items (albums, projects) as a new library (File -> export -> Project/album / as new library. This will preserve all edits, keywords, tags, folders, etc.

Later you can reimport this library and merge it with your current library. (File -> Import -> Librar/Project)

Regards

Léonie

Alan,

But a question: what do I lose by not having the previews generated? Is that essential? One a quick test on images without regenerating the priviews I don't notice any differences.

Sorry, I did not have time to come back to you earlier :

The previews are needed to share your Aperture images with other applications. This is enabled in the Aperture Preferences -> Previews tab. Here you specify if you want previews to be generated automatically and the quality of the previews.

Previews are used by the Desktop and Screensaver, by iTunes to synch your albums with your mobile devices, by the image browser in "Mail", by the Media Browser in all iApps. Without previews you cannot browse your Aperture images from other Applications, you will always have to export the images. But if you do not need them, turn the generation of - that will save space and time.

You probably do not notice any difference right now, because most of your images have Previews. To test this behaviour open "System Preferences" and try to set your desktop wallpaper to one of your new images without Previews. Probably you will not see these images in "Desktop & Screensaver"

Regards