Edited image appears then quickly reverts to original?

Dragging to Photoshop is not a proper method of using an External Editor. Once PS has been selected in Preferences as your External editor, you then can right-click on an image and select to edit with the external editor. Depending upon your preferences setting, Aperture will either create a TIFF or PSD image to sent to PS. Photoshop once finished will save back to the locatiion of that .tiff or .psd.

Dragging can only move the JPEG Preview, and not an original size, in pixel dimension, image file.

Ernie

While you can drag and drop to Photoshop, what you are getting is a JPEG image to PS, that is subject to the settings for the size of a Preview, and not the original image size and resolution. The Save As would presumedly require you to specify a location, and I cannot think how that would get back into Aperture? The proper way described earlier does become part of the Aperture Library.

How did you partner begin the edit process? What version of Photoshop did she use?

Ernie

I just conducted a test of this. There is no doubt that what is being droppped into Photoshop is the Preview. In my case the images from my D800, which are 7360 x 4912 in pixel size are set to generate Previews that fit within 2560 x 2560, and the image I got with the drag into PS was 2560 wide.

When using Save As, the dialogue showed me that it would in fact be saved back to the Preview folder for that one image in the package of the Aperture Library. However, Aperture will not retain that new Preview, but will again generate a new Preview from the Version as it was just before dragging it to Photoshop. There is no way to recover what came from Photoshop.

A Save would be saved to the same location, and the same behavior would result.

You cannot have gotten full resolution images in the past unless your Preview size setting in Aperture Preferences was set to full original size.

The methodology is quiet simply flawed.

Ernie

If you are seeing a difference in this, and have recently updated to Aperture 3.3 from an earlier version, that may explain the change in behavior. A change in 3.3 has been to use a camera generated Preview until the image is actually selected and editied -- then it generates a new one. This may apply to any external Preview.

I have tested with 3.2.4, and find the image as edited in Photoshop is retained in the said Preview folder I cited earlier, but I cannot see the edited change in Aperture. I find I can drag the image to, say, Mail, and in the newly composed message the image does have those edits done in Photoshop. Therefore you might try dragging to a new folder, say, on your Desktop.

I mean no disrespect, but must say "flawed" because the behavior cannot be exactly predicted.

In an Aperture Library only one image file is meant to be durable, and that is the Master file (now in the latest version called Original). Otherwise there are Preview and Thumbnail image files that will be changed every time you adjust a Version in Aperture, and a Version file is not an image file, but rather a text file that explains to Aperture how the master has been adjusted to create the Version.

In the way external editing is supposed to work, Aperture creates a new Master (I like to call it a quasi-Master) in either TIFF or PSD depending upon your Preference setting, and that new Master is saved to the library, and it is that Master that Photoshop is permitted to edit, and then Save to with those edits. It is the only time in Aperture's non-destructive workflow that any actual image file is altered.

Ernie

Had this reply ready last night when the discussions could not be accessed for a time.

Ernie,

in Aperture 3.3. this behaviour is really dangerous. See this example:

I dragged an image from the browser to the Photoshop CS5 icon the Dock and then scribbled a bit onto the image, then saved it. For the small image with bottle post the changes appeared immediately in Aperture and stayed - and they were applied to the original image, not the preview. As you see in the screenshot - the original is displayed. I had to revert the image in Photoshop to recover my original master image file! 😮 Can anybody please confirm this behaviour? I'd hate to think I have a buggy implentation of Aperture 3.3..

But if I scribble onto a larger image, eg. the rainbow image with the scribbled sun, then there seems to be no way to make the changes visible in Aperture. I tried all combinations: camera previews or standard previews, dragging the master or the preview, apply additional edits, recreate the previews, I do not get the changes to show. But they are certainly contained in the Library. When I open the image a second time in Photoshop, I see the edits again. (I even quit Photoshop, to clear it's caches, but this may not have been sufficient with the automatic termination model in Lion, but I did not want to log off).

I assume I do not see the edits because the edits are part of the layers, and Aperture cannot display layers, so they do not show when the previews are generated. Greatly puzzled 😕

Léonie

Added:

I just inspected my "Masters" image folder.

For the larger images that I dragged to Photoshop CS5, Aperture created new quasi masters in PSD format, just like it does, when sending images to Photoshop as external editor. The only difference is, that it does not create a new version to pair with this new quasi master. But if I drag the same image again to Photoshop, then the previous quasi master will be used by Photoshop.

I noticed when I open open Photoshop, the file chooser will open directly inside the Aperture Library package, if I edited an Aperture image previously.

Leonie,

As I said, it seems not be predictable at all, and as you say, even dangerious.

My edit was only to contrast, so no layers. Did you experiment with dragging from Aperture to, say, Mail to see which image is then transferred?

Anything which allows Photoshop, or any other app to play with anything in the package of the Library orther than the specially prepared quasi Masters is counter to the philosophy of Aperture's design, as I know you understand as well as I do.

Ernie