Move Aperture 3 (Referenced) to New MacBook?

If you want to replace MS Office, you can open all your old office documents from their corresponding iWorks applications - Pages, Keynote, Numbers. But I still keep Office around, because I have to exchange documents with non-mac users. You might give the freeOpen Office for Mac a try.

My migration with "Migration Assistant" from my older mac, and also from a Time Machine backup, has been smooth sailing. If the Microsoft serial numbers are all that worries you, I would not bother to do a clean install.

I'm 90% certain I have this right from pulling various threads from the forum here but, where Aperture 3 is concerned would the correct approach be:

1) Install Aperture 3 from disc. Register etc.

2) Copy over Aperture library from old machine.

3) Connect the Referenced Masters drive and 'Consolidate' them all, given that the HD on this machine is big enough to house them.

That should work. Just in case, that you get an error message ""check with the developer to make sure Aperture works with this version of Mac OS X" don't worry, some of the older installer DVDs give his error message, because a developer certificate expired. This easily solved by resetting the date before installing, see the thread below.

Re: Install failure for Aperture 3 on my MacBook Pro. Operating on Lion.

I did wonder whether I could/should merely copy the Aperture ap from Apps on the old machine to the target device but am not sure whether this skips on part of the ap configuration from when the installer is used.

Pro Apps need to be installed by an installer, otherwise you will miss frameworks and presets installed in the libraries. Either use Migration Assistant or the installer. If you use the installer, you will have to reinstall any plug-ins you have been using.

I also considered whether I should free up space on my old machine, 'Consolidate' all the Masters back onto that and then copy the library across?

It will be easier to copy the library, while it is still referenced, because this way it is smaller and it will copy faster. Then connect your volume with the masters and consolidate, if you prefer a managed library.

Regards

Leónie

P.S. Since you did not mention the word "backup" in your long post, the obligatory caution: 😉

So, I plan to wipe the HD, re-install Lion and migrate manually, no big deal considering all my 'Mail' is IMAP, docs and iTunes music can be copied over together with any other things I decide I might need (e.g. the odd 'Pref' file).

Make a backup and check it, before you do this. When reinstalling, I prefer to make a bootable clone (super duper, carbon copy cloner). This way you keep a working system, you can boot into, if necessary.

I know what you are saying about Migration Assistant but over the years I've accumulated tons of garbage from ap unistalls and whatever. I figure there's more junk in my Libraries than files that are actually needed. I think it's just easier to re-instally OSX and copy manually rather than trying to sift through all the garbage weeding it out.

In that case 😀 Good luck!

Regarding your Aperture Masters. Personally, I would leave them as Referenced but move the Masters to the new internal drive.

Which ever way you do it I would take this opportunity to remove any "deleted" Masters.

When deleting Masters and all Versions I've sometimes had an error about not being able to delete some of the Masters due to permissioms problems, which I've not got to the bottom of, so when I got my new rMBP I took the opportunity to get rid of all these.

The way I did it was instead of simply moving the Masters in Finder to the internal drive then letting Aperture re-connect to the (now) missing Masters, I used File->Relocate Originals to move the Masters from the external drive to the internal. When you've finished, any Masters left in the old location are redundant - they are not referenced by any photo in your Aperture Library. I ended up with over 2GB of redundant Masters out of a total of ~80GB so although doing it this way takes longer, the recovered disk space made it worth the time.

If you wish, you can then convert them to Managed.

Well done, and, imho, also worth the time.

I recommend double-checking before deleting any Originals by filtering using the rule "File Status" set to "Missing". After your Originals have been relocated and you have checked that no Images have missing Originals, you can safely delete the Originals left behind.

"File Status" set to "Missing" should be an admin Smart Album in any Library that has Referenced Originals.

Kirby Krieger wrote:

I recommend double-checking before deleting any Originals by filtering using the rule "File Status" set to "Missing". After your Originals have been relocated and you have checked that no Images have missing Originals, you can safely delete the Originals left behind.

"File Status" set to "Missing" should be an admin Smart Album in any Library that has Referenced Originals.

Good point, although I assumed the OP would do a check before deleting anything.

Thanks for the tip about the Smart Album for "File Status" = "Missing", I'm going to set one up 😎

The way I check for missing Masters by selecting all photos in the Library, then File->Locate Referenced Files... and in the dialogue, checking "Show Only Files Not Found", but your idea is much better - and it's a real-time check.

TechAddict wrote:

I just set up the Smart Album with that rule (and nothing else) and there is nothing in the browser. Presume this is what we are after (e.g. in my case, currently, all my masters are either referenced and accounted for or managed and likewise)? At this time the Referenced drive is not plugged in.

Yes - if there's nything in there then Aperture can't find the Master. Without the Reference drive plugged in I would expect everything to be in that album - unless it's because the whole Volume isn't online?

parish_chap wrote:

TechAddict wrote:

I just set up the Smart Album with that rule (and nothing else) and there is nothing in the browser. Presume this is what we are after (e.g. in my case, currently, all my masters are either referenced and accounted for or managed and likewise)? At this time the Referenced drive is not plugged in.

Yes - if there's nything in there then Aperture can't find the Master. Without the Reference drive plugged in I would expect everything to be in that album - unless it's because the whole Volume isn't online?

Um ... no. Aperture differentiates between:

- Master in missing, and

- Master is off-line.

Off-line Masters are not missing. Aperture knows where they are, even though it cannot verify that at the moment (but it can verify that it knows).

Missing Masters are those that Aperture knows are not at the location at which it expects to find them.

You can create a second Smart Album for off-line Masters. Just set the Rule "File Status" to "Off-line".

(Screenshot)

TechAddict wrote:

Just to check I'm doing this right.

Open new Smart Album. Delete all the needless criteria. Add a new rule so it ultimately reads Any (Condition), Match, File Status, Missing. Close dialogue.

I recommend using "All" (not "Any"). There will be no difference if only one Rule is enabled. "All" is used much more often, and will usually help trouble-shoot errors in the settings in the Filter/Smart Settings HUD.

TechAddict wrote:

OK, my Masters are all relocated on an external HDD which is not plugged into the Macbook at all. But, that folder [Smart Album is meant] is empty? Does the Masters drive need to be plugged in for it [the Filter, set as specified] to work?

No, and yes 🙂 . When the external drive is not mounted, Aperture will report those Images whose Masters it has verified are not found at the location it expects. This may or may not include Images whose Masters are on the not-mounted drive. When the external drive is mounted, Aperture will still report those Images whose Masters it has verified are not found at the location it expects, but it will have checked to makes sure as soon as the drive was mounted and Aperture was running.

If you mount the drive and Aperture reports no missing Masters, you have no missing Masters. If you unmount the drive, Aperture will still report no missing Masters (but will report off-line Masters). If you mount the drive on another machine, and delete ten of the files Aperture has designated as Masters, Aperture won't know anything about that. If you re-mount the drive on your Aperture machine, Aperture will report ten Images with missing Masters.

TechAddict wrote:

Sometimes I've found these rules to be a bit temperamental when being set up. I often find that if I amend one after set up it it doesn't work, requiring it to be deleted and set up again.

Carefully, doubly, check your settings. There are many small ways in which you might not get the results you expect. I have never found the Filter/Smart Settings HUD to be unreliable.

TechAddict wrote:

On the relocation front. Does relocate move the masters back on to the HDD as well? I thought it just found where they were if you happened to lose the connection to them?

Aperture is literal here. "File➞Relocate Masters" will _move_ the Masters of the selected Images from their current location to whatever location you specify. "File➞Consolidate Masters" will _move_ or _copy_ (it makes you chose) the Masters of the selected Images into the Aperture Library package.

Kirby Krieger wrote:

parish_chap wrote:

TechAddict wrote:

I just set up the Smart Album with that rule (and nothing else) and there is nothing in the browser. Presume this is what we are after (e.g. in my case, currently, all my masters are either referenced and accounted for or managed and likewise)? At this time the Referenced drive is not plugged in.

Yes - if there's nything in there then Aperture can't find the Master. Without the Reference drive plugged in I would expect everything to be in that album - unless it's because the whole Volume isn't online?

Um ... no. Aperture differentiates between:

- Master in missing, and

- Master is off-line.

Off-line Masters are not missing. Aperture knows where they are, even though it cannot verify that at the moment (but it can verify that it knows).

Missing Masters are those that Aperture knows are not at the location at which it expects to find them.

Yes, that's what I meant, but I worded it really badly - duh! 😊