Workflow for Merging Libraries without Duplicating Projects

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Level 1

12 points

Workflow for Merging Libraries without Duplicating Projects

I have a master aperture library that I keep on a dedicated external drive at home. This is connected to a Mac Mini for serving up my photo, music, and video libraries across my home network. This master aperture library contains numerous projects with associated albums and smart albums.

I do a majority of my editing on my MBP. At any given time, I'll be working on multiple projects (editing versions, tagging faces, etc.).

My preferred workflow would be to do all of this editing on my MBP, and occassionally (1x-2x a month) connect my external drive and import my MBP library into my Master library. Then I could purge the files on my MBP.

However, when I do this, I end up with new projects in my master library for each time I import. For example:

On my Master library I have:

Project A (500 photos)

Project B (1,000 photos)

Project C (750 photos)

On my MBP library I have:

Project A( 100 photos)

Project B (50 photos)

Project C (75 photos)

When I import the MBP library into the Master library, I would prefer to have:

Project A (600 photos)

Project B (1,050 photos)

Project C (825 photos)

But instead I get:

Project A (500 photos)

Project B (1,000 photos)

Project C (750 photos)

Project A (1) (100 photos)

Project B (1) (50 photos)

Project C (1)(75 photos)

Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Nov 26, 2012 2:35 PM

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Answer 1

Munas

Level 4

1,270 points

Nov 26, 2012 2:39 PM in response to drummerjoe

And what happens if you drag 100 photos from Project A (1) to Project A and then remove Project A (1)?

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Answer 2

drummerjoe Author

Level 1

12 points

Nov 26, 2012 2:43 PM in response to Munas

It works - but I don't want to manually do that for every project, album, etc. twice a month. I thought the merge feature was supposed to identify and merge projects of the same name. It's behaving as if I am adding a library, and I'm specifying it to merge the libraries.

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Answer 3

Nov 26, 2012 2:56 PM in response to drummerjoe

How are you getting/creating the Projects on your laptop?

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Answer 4

drummerjoe Author

Level 1

12 points

Nov 26, 2012 3:03 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

The MBP library was a new library. I manually created the projects, named them to be identical to the projects in my Master library. I manually import photos from an SD card into the Aperture projects.

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Answer 5

Nov 26, 2012 3:22 PM in response to drummerjoe

When you import the library from the MBP into the master library to you select merge or add?

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Answer 6

Nov 26, 2012 3:27 PM in response to drummerjoe

Just manually merge the Projects in your "master Aperture Library" on the external drive. The easy way to do this is in Projects View by drag-and-drop.

When you want Projects to work on on your laptop, select them from the "master Aperture Library" and create a new Library via "File➞Export➞Items as New Library". Then move this Library to your laptop (using Finder), open it and work on it. You can import files and create new Projects. When you are ready, transfer this Library back to a location that is local to your "master Aperture Library" and import it with "Merge" selected.

I don't know for sure, but I'm 99.9% certain that Aperture maintains unique internal names for Projects. Even though you named a Project with the same name as an existing Project in another Library, they are not the same Project to Aperture. You can merge them yourself (in which case Aperture _simply_ combines them), but Aperture won't merge them ("merge" here means "combine and select this particular set of changes and discard all others").

Before proceeding, I suggest re-reading the following section on the linked page in the User Manual:

Merging Libraries

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Answer 7

drummerjoe Author

Level 1

12 points

Nov 26, 2012 3:36 PM in response to Frank Caggiano

I am selecting merge.

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