Reference Files Location and Storage

What is your Aperture version? Are you using Aperture 3?

Can you please explain a little more what you did, before the referenced masters vanished? That may help to find them.

From your post I assume that you originally had refrenced master image files (in the Pictures Folder?) and then at some point consolidated your library, moving the master image files into the Aperture library - but somehow not all masters have been consolidated and now some are missing? Did I get that right?

I can't even export neither can I find the masters?

How did you look for the masters? Did you search with Spotlight? Look at the Metadata of one of the images with missing masters and try to find out the file name. Then enter the file name in the spotlight search field.

One other question is that most of my images are now in Aperature (no longer referenced), can I save my Aperature Library into my external HDD and also a backup partition (on the same HDD) in the MacBook?

You can copy a managed library to an external drive by simple dragging it in the Finder to its new location.

But two copies on the same drive, even in different partitions, will not give much added security. It would be safer to have the second copy on a different volume.

Do you have a backup of your Pictures folder from the time before your master image files vanished?

If we can find the image files you can reconnect them to their versions in aperture using the "locate referenced files" command.

Aperture should know where the files *should* have been. You can use the "locate referenced masters" command in Aperture and it will show where it thinks they should be.

Note if you are using referenced masters, and then deleting them from the location where they are on disk, you are deleting your photos. I'm not sure why you would do this?

Perhaps a managed library is a better approach 😉

i couldn't do so in the beginning because I think the photos are 'locked' as they are stored in the Macintosh HD

Do you remember exactly where you found them? You will not be able to connect to the masters if they are inside a package or in folders belonging to the system and not you; but if the images are in some flder inside your Home folder, you should be able to connect to them.

Great, that you found the missing master image files.

Create a folder inside your Pictures folder and copy or move the master image files into that folder.

Then launch Aperture and select one of the image versions with missing masters.

From the main menu bar select:

File > Locate Referenced Files

This will display a window with two sections:

1. In the upper panel you see the image versions that need reconnecting.
2. In the lower panel you see a File chooser.

Select a version in the upper panel, and in the lower panel direct Aperture to the location of the master. If both match, the "Reconnect" buttos will become active. Press "Reconnect All", and hopefully all of your missing masters will reconnect.

After reconnecting select all newly reconnected images and try to consolidate them: File > Consolidate Masters.

Good Luck

Léonie

Another question is - Does Consolidate Masters as Project' take up a lot of space? Once I have done this, does it mean I could delete the images stored in Photos?

When you consolidate masters, you will be prompted if you want to move or to copy your master image files. If you select to move, you will not need any additional space, if the images are relocated from a folder on the same drive as the library. Then you will not need to delete any files afterwards. If you select to copy, you can remove the original files after consolidating, but compare the size of your Aperure library before and after consolidating, to be sure that your images are now inside the library.

However, I got a project that has really lost the original image even though I used spotlight to search my entire computer. How do I get back these files since I still could double-click to view the image (large). I have these 'lost' images posted on facebook. How can I retrieve them?

Since you can view the image, you seem to have high quality previews. The Previews are what you see, when you access the Aperture Library from the Media Browser in any iLife or iWorks Application.

You can copy them from the Previews folder by opening the Aperture Library Package.

1. Quit Aperture, if it is running.
2. Select the Library in the Finder by opening the "Pictures" folder; then ctrl-click the Aperture Library. Select show Package Contents from the pop-up menu.
3. Open the Previews folder inside the package and try to find the Previews of your missing images. Copy them to a folder on your Desktop. If you cannot find the original master image files on your Backup, these Previews will be all that is left of your images.

Right now, I reopened my value and it says 'Aperature Library_Old'. How can I use this library as the current one?

A vault is not a library, it is a backup of your library, from which you can restore your library. Is this vault old enough to contain your missing images? A vault only stores managed images. If you created your vault while the images in question where managed, you might be able to recover them from this vault.

See this section of the Aperture User Manual on how to restore a library from a vault: Restoring Your Aperture System

Regards

Léonie

Previews:

The previews are smaller images, generated to speed up viewing in the browser and to share images with other applications -iLife, iWork. You determine how large your previews will be in the Aperture Preferences > Preview tab. Usually you set the size and quality of the previews to the dimensions of your largest display. This way you will be able to use your Aperture images as Desktop wallpaper or as a screensaver. So your previews are a fifth of the size of your original images, that is what I would expect for Preview files.

To be able to reconnect the Previews as masters you need to change the filenames to the exact names the original masters had. If you cannot remember the original names, then it would be easier simply to reimport the previews into a new project and then to "lift and stamp" the settings from the original versions to the newly imported versions. The "Lift and stamp" tools can be accessed from the Metadata menu or the buttons with the badges and up-arrow(lift) and down-arrow (stamp). This will allow you to transfer all your metadata tags and edits from the original image to the newly imported .

Regards

You are welcome, Nick.

Good to know you could solve this.

Cheers

Léonie