What's the best approach to consolidate iPhoto and Aperture libraries in 2013 removing duplicate copies.

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What's the best approach to consolidate iPhoto and Aperture libraries in 2013 removing duplicate copies.

Hi there, I am just wondering what the best way is to consolidate ALL photo's where I have pictures distributed in multiple iPhoto and Aperture libraries. Plus they are strewn over 3 separate HDD one external. Do I have to coordinate via FINDER or is there some new indexing functionality which will dump all pictures using metadata to sort source date event etc ? Do I have to differentiate between masters and edited copies ?

Aperture 3, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 3.4 i7 8Gb

Posted on Jan 30, 2013 10:02 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,733 points

Jan 30, 2013 10:24 PM in response to Blinkanyamissit

Aperture and iPhoto now share a unified library format - iPhoto can open libraries created by Aperture and vica versa, see: Aperture 3.3: Using a unified photo library with iPhoto and Aperture

You can use Aperture to merge your iPhoto libraries into one new single library by importing your iPhoto libraries into an Aperture library.This way you can transfer all metadata tags and edits. Also you will not create duplicate images by importing edited versions and original images. See: Aperture 3.3: How to use Aperture to merge iPhoto libraries

This requires, that iPhoto and Aperture have been updated to the latest version. Open each Aperture library in Aperture 3.4.3 to upgrade, and each iPhoto library in iPhoto 9.4.2.

It is advisable to repair each library before merging (Repairing and Rebuilding Your Aperture Library: Aperture 3 User Manual, iPhoto 6 and later: Rebuilding the iPhoto library), also to unhide all hidden photos in the iPhoto libraries. These cannot be unhidden in Aperture.

Regards

Léonie

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