Aperture 3.3 Bug? Dragging to external editor can modify the original

As a follow-up to the thread below I explored the role of the previews in Aperture:

Edited image appears then quickly reverts to original?

The problem: When dragging images from the Browser to Photoshop (supposedly passing along a preview of the image) the original image file in Aperture could be overwritten.

Experimenting with this I found that the result depended on the size of the image, for the following reasons:

If the Preview size was set to a larger value than the actual image size, then Aperture would not generate a preview for images without a preview, but pass the original image to Photoshop. Saving back the changes in Photoshop would modify the original master image file in the Aperture 3.3. For images larger than the Preview size, Aperture 3.3 would pass a new quasi master to Photoshop - rather wasteful, since this quasi master is not linked to a version and this not accessable in Aperture.

Experimenting showed, that the same happens with dragging to GraphicConverter, but the changes to the original are only visible after quitting and relaunching Aperture.

I would be grateful if someone could check out these observations:

1. Do you also see, that no previews are generated in Aperture 3.3, if the original image is smaller than the preview size set in the preferences?
2. Can you confirm, that Photoshop modifies the original image files, if the image does not have a preview image, and if the image is passed by dragging from the browser?
3. I tested the same in Aperture 3.2.4: Here it seems to be impossible to drag an imageto Photoshop and GraphicConverter, if it does not have a preview image - very sensible.

Regards

Léonie

A modified original image returned from Photoshop: