Few Questions about iPhoto to Aperture Switch

Upgrade to iPhoto 9.3, and then Aperture 3.3 will use the _exact_ same library. The libraries are unified as of the releases from yesterday, so there is no need to "switch" at all. You can use Aperture, or use iPhoto, or use both, as the changes and everything carries over from both programs.

Your concerns, as of yesterday, have become a total non-issue ;-)

da1bearsfan wrote:

I have been using iPhoto every since I got a mac. I store all my photos (I am an amateur photographer so I have a lot) in iPhoto and I have iPhoto synced with my iPhone over iCloud.

I am still figuring this out myself, but I do not believe you can synch all your photos Mac to iPhone over iCloud. There are various complex limitations (number of pix, how recent, what were the pix shot on, cloud versus hard-connected, etc.) that I am still researching.

Apple of course fails to publish the various and complex limitations and instead implies otherwise. I would love to hear from other users on what they are achieving in photo-sharing-among-devices workflows and exactly how they are doing it. Especially from those who are using the very latest upgrade.

Lastly, and this is more of a iPhoto question, but if I have a Macbook Pro and an iMac, how do I get the two libraries to be identical.

iPhoto or Aperture, there is NO SYNCH available laptop-to-desktop. This is a very serious limitation of Aperture. Many workarounds do exist, all flawed in various ways.

Note that the new iPhoto/Aperture Library confluence does require OS 10.7 Lion.

HTH

-Allen

da1bearsfan wrote:

...essentially what I am saying is that I want the libraries to be the same at all times on both machines.

Exactly, you want synch capability. I want that too. And it is not possible. I went from laptop plus Mac Pro to just a Macbook Pro with an external display because of the lack of ability of synching a Library on two computers.

One workaround is exporting Projects on one box as a new Library to the other box then merging Libraries. However that is decidely a non-routine workflow and fraught with potential for user errors and other workflow breaks.

It s*cks. Complain to Apple that we need single-user two-computer Library synch.

-Allen

da1bearsfan wrote:

As far as Aperture, will it take up extra space to use the iPhoto library in Aperture? If I make a change in Aperture, will it show up in iPhoto? And, everytime there on I upload to iPhoto, will it show up in Aperture?

The new changes were just announced, so it will take a while for folks to figure out how it all works real-world. Personally I have always used Aperture, never really used iPhoto, so others will have to advise. Sorry.

-Allen

da1bearsfan wrote:

If the changes happened yesterday, why would I have to wait lol, is it all buggy?

Bugs have nothing to do with it. Apple's announcement is not a User's Guide to the very many changes that were made just yesterday. We are all just users here, with no advance knowledge. No-one has yet produced a full list, let alone a detailed map or guide, to what the changes are and what they mean. One of the most significant changes -- the unification of the image database formats for iPhoto and Aperture -- bears directly on your questions. Instead of LOLing about, pitch in: it would help us if you would try what you say, and report back what you find. No-one yet has a firm answer.

Yes. They use the same library. In fact if you have Aperture open and try and open iPhoto, it will tell you to quit Aperture first (to prevent corruption). Just point them both at the same library and you're all set.

Note that synching libraries between your two machines is a different issue. You can do that from Aperture via exporting and importing libraries. I would assume because Aperture and iPhoto can now share libraries that once you'd done that through Aperture, that iPhoto on the second machine would have the updated library as well.

I have done it. Update Aperture, let it update the library, then update iPhoto, and tell it to open the Aperture Library. It works great. Changes you make to photos in one application are immediately reflected in the other.

And if you make changes in iPhoto that aren't in Aperture by default (say, some goofy olde-tyme photo looking vignette) and go back to Aperture, there is a new '"Photo Effects" brick right there.

To be perfectly clear: iPhoto and Aperture can now share the EXACT SAME library. It's one library, and that's that. There is NO synching necessary between iPhoto and Aperture, and there is NO import process to go from iPhoto 9.3 to Aperture 3.3. The library is now unified.

Synching between machines is a separate issue. Contrary to Allen, I've had great luck with this since Aperture 3.3 came out: You can export projects from one machine and import to them to another, and all adjustments, keywords, etc., come out great. If you later re-import to the original library, it will make the changes in the original library. Yes, there's a bit of work, but it's worked fine in my experience so I'm unsure what else you want.

And then the "to iPhone" is a 3rd issue. Photostream syncs stuff, but it won't do it across machines and it is JPEG copies. I just select the Aperture albums I want to sync via iTunes and call it good. You cannot use PhotoStream or iCloud to keep Aperture or iPhoto libraries in sync across machines FWIW.

Correct: One note: iPhoto has to be upgraded to version 9.3 as well for this to work. And because iPhoto 9.3 and Aperture 3.3 include retina support, they require you be running OS X Lion 10.7.4 (i.e. the absolute most up to date version of OS X). If you have those, you're good to go.