Moving Pictures folder to an external hard disk

In order to have more space on my hard disk, I bought an external HD where I wanted to store my Itunes and Aperture library.

Formatted the exteral HD as Mac OS extended journaled, in order to back it up using Time Machine to my Time Capsule.

I used Iphoto before going over to Aperture.

Did you import your iPhoto Libraries or exported your photos from iPhoto? What version of iPhoto did you migrate from? If you imported your iPhoto Libraries, how did you do it? Referenced, as described in this support article? http://www.apple.com/aperture/iphoto-to-aperture/how.html.

In order to move my files I selected all my projects in Aperture, and then used relocate masters to move them to my new HD.

This added 92 GB to my new external HD.

I made a check by removing the external HD, and as expected saw that if I wanted to adjust pictures in Aperture, the section adjustment was grey.

After plugging in the HD it worked again as it should.

So I thought all had gone well.

o.k.

I noticed that not all the pictures were found though, and I saw that the pictures that were not found had a keyword " iphoto original"

After moving from Iphoto to Aperture, I had deleted all Iphoto files, so did not expect to find any reference to Iphoto.

Do you mean, you deleted the old iPhoto Libraries? If yes, do you have a backup of them?

I open these pictures, but Aperture can not find the originals.

The Pictures folder in my home directory was still on my internal HD under users, and contained 90GB; all missing pictures are there as well.

I copied that folder to my external HD, and moved the original folder to the trash.

When I opened Aperture no pictures were there at all.

Of course I put the pictures back from the trash, but now I am wondering:

Aperture was clearly using the Pictures file in my home directory; why was it not using the masters I relocated?

Aperture will only relocate original that it is using. You seem to have had a mixed library, part of the originals in your "Pictures" folder, part of them in your iPhoto Library.

If not all original masters have been relocated, you may not have had selected all images when relocating. I suggest to simply flag all images, that are still on your internal drive and then to relocate them as well.

To be able to flag the, disconnect again your external volume and search for images that have the filestatus "online".

A smart album with the smart rule "Add rule: Exif: Filestatus is online", and set the source of the smart rule to "Library". Then flag all images.

Now connect your drive again and select all images in the "Flagged" album and relocate them to your external drive.

Do they now move over?

You can check the location of referenced images by using the command "File > Show in Finder".

Regards

Léonie

I suggest a simpler and more secure way to save space:

1. Make sure that your library is self-contained without referenced files (From the Library tab right click on Photos and choose "Consolidate Originals for Library"). No action will be taken if the library is already consolidated.
2. Quit Aperture and just copy your library with Finder to the external HD
3. Reopen Aperture, choose File -> Switch to Library -> Other/New and locate the one you just copied.

I strongly suggest not to work with refenced files, unless there is a STRONG reason to do so, and even then, consider splitting the library into smaller ones but self-contained.

Regards

Fernando

consider splitting the library into smaller ones but self-contained.

Fernando, by splitting an aperture library you will lose a lot of Aperture's power and flexibility. Aperture is designed to work well with very large libraries, and relocating the originals is the recommended way to keep the library size managable.

Sure, consolidating will allow to move the library all in one, but if after consolidating the library is very large, it will be questionable, if it is not safer to move the library and the originals separately. This will keep the entities that need to be moved smaller.

And here the problem seems not to be to copy the library, but to be sure about the whereabout of the masters and why rlocating did not move them all. If there is a reason why relocating did not succeed, the very same problem might occur with consolidating.

Regards

Léonie

Hi Leonie, I agree with you that keeping a single library is better. What I meant is that if space is the problem, then I prefer to split the library rather than relocate files and keep the masters in different hard drives. Technically, the way Apple handles libraries (like also iTunes), it makes no difference where the master file is, because even when is consolidated there will be a "pointer" or reference to it. But the big difference is that, when consolidated, you are sure that everthing is self-contained, and can be copied with Finder (or rsync like I prefer to do) and even with Time Machine, without having to worry if all originals are safe. Furthermore, if you are using a single hard drive, then you do not save space by using references as compared with consolidating. The only reason I can think of for keeping reference files is in iTunes, where you may have more than one library (wife, kids) to reference the same music files without having to duplicate them. But surely this is not the case with Aperture.

Another good thing of consolidating the library is that it "hides" the original files, as compared to having the masters in, say, the Images folder or like. Keeping masters separate and visible may lead to share them inadvertently instead of exporting the retouched version from Aperture. The more so if you work with RAW files, which is pointless to keep them visible because useless unless they are converted to jpegs or tiffs for publishing.

Having said that, I fully agree that the relocation should work and Apple should address this problem.

Regards

Fernando

Hi yvesleon,

The images you see with the yellow triangle are just "previews". Their size is normally much smaller than the original, and is defined in the Preferences menu under Previews. They are there as a "cache" that Aperture uses to speed up the preview both inside Aperture and when needed by an external program.

If you are lucky and used the "Don't limit" size setting and "12 High" qulaity then you may recover the preview and use it as a master. But be warned that previews are converted files, so if your original files were in RAW format then you lost much information.

Go in Finder, right click on your Aperture library and select "Show contents". Go then inside the Previews folder, select one picture and copy it to your desktop. Then export the same picture from Aperture as full quality to the desktop keeping the preview file you copied before. Compare sizes an resolutions. If all goes well and you are satisfied with the quality, then you may follow the above procedure to recover your missing originals. Once copied to a folder you may import them as masters.

I am not aware of a procedure inside Aperture to automate this.

Hope this helped.

Fernando

The only reason I can think of for keeping reference files is in iTunes, where you may have more than one library (wife, kids) to reference the same music files without having to duplicate them. But surely this is not the case with Aperture.

Fernando,

Three good reasons for going referenced:

1. Really huge libraries: Referenced files are the only way to have one single Aperture library, if the library otherwise would be too big to fit on a single drive. Aperture has been designed to support this kind of setup.
2. Performance: It is preferable to have the Aperture library on your fastest drive, i.e. your system drive. The library needs to be accessed frequently, and access speed to the library is important. My Aperture library is on my internal SSD for exactly that reason. The access to the original files does not need to be that fast, because they are not read that often and can be cached.
3. Easier backup: The original master image files will never change, so they only need to be backed up, when they are imported. For the original images it will suffice to backup your original image files directly from the card, before you even import them to Aperture, and routinely backup the drive with the referenced masters. A referenced library is much smaller than a managed library, and can incrementally be backed up with a vault or with TimeMachine, together with your regular TimeMachine backup.

Another good thing of consolidating the library is that it "hides" the original files, as compared to having the masters in, say, the Images folder or like. Keeping masters separate and visible may lead to share them inadvertently instead of exporting the retouched version from Aperture.

A valid point. Referenced libraries are dangerous, if you do not understand, how referencing works, you are right. It is nothing for beginners. You should not mix your referenced images in the Pictures folder with your other pictures folders, for example. But for an advanced Aperture user, with all referenced images residing on external volumes, well out of harms way, this really should work well. For a beginner the default managed setup is better, since initially the library will be small enough anyway.

But my recommendation holds: when your library grows, so that it will no longer fit onto the internal drive, I think it much better to use the provided tools and to turn the library into a referenced library, than splitting it. Continually having to switch between libraries and not being able to search all libraries at once, or having to remember which library holds which images will make it hard to work with Aperture libraries. I frequently need to build albums with arbitrary images based on keywords, and for my library there would be no way to split it, so that all images needed for specific projects would be in the same partial library.

Other problems with split libraries:

• Keywords and button sets are defined per library. You will have to maintain severeal sets of keywords and when you are importing images between libraries this may cause duplicates keywords and corrupt your keyword hierachy.
• Your PhotoStream can only be tied to one library.
• You can only sync and share one library with the Media Browser and iTunes.

I keep separate libraries for testing, but the main library is one library, for exactly these reasons.

Regards

Léonie

If I disconnect my external HD, Aperture can not find the library at all.

Yves, O.k. I misunderstood. Your library is now only on the external drive, together with the referenced images. Ihad hoped, you still have the copy of your original library on your internal drive.

In the mean time I found back ups of most of the pictures, but do not have back ups of all of them.

I see all pictures in Aperture though; some of them have a yellow triangle, and says the original is not found.

Would there be a way to use these copies as original?

If you have backups, great, then yes.

Aperture can reconnect image versions to the original image files. Copy the backups to a folder on your external drive, where you want to store the referenced originals.

Then select all images with the yellow triangle at once. You can search for them using a smart album or search with the smart rule "Add rule: Exif: Filestatus is missing (or Filestatus is offline)", and set the source of the smart rule to "Library".

Select all images that have been found and use the command: File > Locate Referenced Files.

Now you should see a split screen, with the missing images in the upper part and a file chooser dialog in the loer part of the window. Select one image in the upper part and try to find the original file that you want to connect to in the lower part of the window. Below the thumbnail of the image you should see the path and filename to the missing image file.

Once you have found the correct original, the reconnect buttons should become active. Press "Reconnect All".

Regards

Léonie

Files in Aperture are not previews though, big size files of around 4 MB per picture.

These files I can not export, but is there any way to do something with them?

Yves,

Where in Aperture do you see the filesize you are referring to? If you are talking about the size you see in the "Info" panel in the library inspector, that will show you the size of the missing original file, and the image shown in the browser is the preview, just as Fernando said.

If I purposefully delete an original master file from my library, I see this in the "Info" panel:

The file size given is the size of original file, that is missing.

In that case, the previews are all that you can recover.

To recover the previews, select all images with missing originals as I described above, and then drag them from Aperture's Browser window to a folder, where you want to store them. This way you will export the previews as jpeg files. You do not need to open the Library package to do that.

Then proceed to reconnect the versions in Aperture to this previews, just like I described above. But Aperture will refuse to allow to connect the smaller previews as new originals, unless you hold down the options ⌥ key. This should make the reconnect buttons active.

For example: Holding down the ⌥ key will allow to reconnect to the smaller preview:

But If you have been taking about a different display of the filesize, 4MB, and found your originals somewhere else, please explain.

Regards

Léonie

I tried the procedure you described to reconnect the files, but the button stayed grayed out.

The button may stay grayed out, if the filenames do not match. But it would be a lot of work to rename all files.

So instead I deleted all the pictures in the Aperture project, and just dragged the new folder back into now empty project.

O.k., that will work.

If you have done plenty of tagging and adjusting to your old images you might consider to first import the previews back, lift and stamp any keywords, copy captions, etc. from the old versions, and only then delete the old image versions with the missing masters.

Regards

Léonie