moving photos in aperture from one library to another

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Level 1

8 points

moving photos in aperture from one library to another

I am trying to organize my photos by moving many from one aperture library to another..I've been doing this by dragging the photo onto my desktop. Deleting it from the library it came from - opening up a new library and dragging it into that library... Now I'm worried that by doing this - I've lost integrity and original file size of the photos. Does anyone know? It's so easy to work this way - much quicker than exporting to a file and then importing.. Thank you.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011)

Posted on Jan 10, 2013 3:59 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 10, 2013 4:48 AM in response to pamperk

Stop!

You are destroying data. I don't have time to respond today -- someone will fill in and explain what you are doing wrong.

In the meantime, read this brief introduction to the parts of Aperture, and read this page in the User Manual.

What you want to do is select the Images to move, export them as a Library, and then import that Library into your "new" Library.

You could also simply put your entire current collection in a Folder in Aperture, and then move things, _within the same Library_, to a new set of Projects, Folders, and Albums that your create. When you're done, delete the remaining "old" folder.

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Answer 2

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Jan 10, 2013 5:46 AM in response to pamperk

Dragging to the desktop gets your Aperture Preview. This is very likely lower quality than your original and definitely missing a lot of metadata.

Deleting from the library is destroying your orginal.

So, yes you've destroyed the integrity and file size of your original, as you have destroyed the original.

Gather all the photos you want to move to a project in Aperture.

Export that project as a Library (it's under the file -> export command)

Then import that Library to the other one.

But why bother? Aperture can hold 1,000,000 images in any one library. Why not just use one and the Aperture tools to classify them?

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