Should I Uninstall Aperture and iPhoto? warning-long and complicated!

It would be unusual for the problem to be in the program files. It is likely to be in your Libraries, which are corrupted. If you have backups, then delete everything you did since your workflow last trickled, restore your backed up Libraries, and start from there.

You can check that iPhoto and Aperture work by launching either and creating a new Library and importing some test files.

One area of concern, though, is your Originals. Are they all intact and where they were before your cluster went buster? If not, then you will have to restore them, as well.

Once you are back to where you were, start a thread detailing what you would like to do. I'm sure you'll get some helpful advice.

Start by moving any Aperture and / or iPhoto libraries on the internal hard drive to the desktop.

Assuming you have both Aperture and iPhoto listed in the Mac App Store on the 'Purchased' tab, then drag both programs from your Applications folder to the Finder trash and empty the trash.

Create a folder on the desktop 'Temporary' and then use the 'Go' menu in the menu bar above desktop and press the 'Option' key to show the 'Library' folder option. Select that 'Library' option to view contents of that folder.

Drag anything with the name 'Aperture' or 'iPhoto' to the new Temporary folder on desktop from the following folders in Library:

Application Support

Cache

Containers

Preferences

Note - those are all folder names under the 'Library' folder you accessed via the 'Go' menu.

Also drag any 'iPhoto' folder found in same 'Library' folder to the same 'Temporary' folder. This concludes removing any possible user files that might be corrupted specific to those programs.

Run the Mac App store and download both iPhoto and Aperture.

Once downloaded, run iPhoto first without replacing any library. This will check to see if the program runs correctly as a clean install. If successful, close iPhoto and then run Aperture to check for the same. If successful, then you can delete the empty libraries from your 'Pictures' folder.

Copy over your backup libraries from your backup to the 'Pictures' folder.

Double-click the copied 'iPhoto' library (now in your Pictures folder) and check on functionality. If good, then quit iPhoto.

Double-click the copied 'Aperture' library (now in your Pictures folder) and check on functionality. If good, then quit Aperture.

At this point, if all is well, I would probably suggest trashing the temporary folders on the desktop since they might be corrupted. If you had any Plug-Ins that were installed in the user library as opposed to the root library, then I would re-install from scratch rather than try to replace them.

If you have a problem anywhere along the process, stop there and post back as needed. 😉

Final note - I forgot to mention the libraries you moved to the desktop. If all is well after the re-install then you may have corruption in one or more of the libraries. At this point, you need to decide whether the contents have dearly needed items or not. If so, you could try double-clicking one of those to load and see if all is well, or you could manually look at contents to remove and then re-import. The latter is a bit of a process, but may be needed if contents are critical.

Message was edited by: CorkyO2 to add final note and change 'Library' to 'Temporary' in one paragraph.

1macprincess!

It really doesn't matter how you get there, just that you get it working.

The folders I mention located in your user library (typically listed as '~/Library') are where Aperture stores your user specific settings for the program. You can try leaving them in place or you could control + click (right-click) and run the 'Compress....' command on them if needed to keep them in place but not available to Aperture if you feel they might have been corrupted somehow. Leaving them in place as is would be ideal if there is no corruption. You can always compress them after closing Aperture after first launch if things go sideways to force new files to be created in the needed locations in your user library folder.

Any files in the '~/Library/Application Support/Aperture' folder hold specific settings you have made for things like Export settings, Import settings, etc.. Ideally, it would be great if they are not corrupted and you would have them in place once you successfully launch Aperture.

Aperture 3.3 and beyond stopped using the '~/Library/Caches' folder, so any 'com.apple.Aperture' folder located there would be a left-over from any version you were running before that. When Aperture 3 was released, this folder created a number of performance issues for many people updating from Aperture 2 to Aperture 3. I suspect performance issues may be one of the reasons Apple dumped that type of programming, but of course I don't know for sure.

The '~/Library/Containers/Aperture' folder contains alot of aliases to Aperture specific files in other locations. It has something to do with the new sandboxing, but not being a developer I do not know the entire function of those files. I do know that removing that folder when Aperture is not running won't harm anything as a new fresh one will be created on the next Aperture launch.

The '~/Library/Preferences' folder of course simply holds the settings you select in the 'Aperture>Preferences' menu item, which would need to be reset again if you removed them.

As far as the clean Aperture library goes (I am assuming you mean the known good backup), you would simply copy (via drag or keyboard commands) to your Pictures folder. However, I would suggest first launching Aperture which will allow it to go through it's normal first launch sequence and includes creating a new empty library in your Pictures folder. Once you successfully launch Aperture with that empty library - and perhaps import an image or two and see if all works as expected - you can quit Aperture and then delete that library. After that, do the copy of the known good backup library to your Pictures folder.

Once the good library is copied over, simply double-click it to both open it with Aperture and set it as the default library for Aperture.

Hope that helps. 😉

1macprincess! wrote:

thanks corky! since i'm such a novice, a little of that was over my head, but i love to learn new things! 🙂

Sorry if I gave too much detail. In a nutshell, the user library folder (which is hidden by default in Lion and Mountain Lion) simply holds settings for any given program including settings the user can change in the program. All of the files in that folder are recreated either automatically by the program when launched again, or by the user making setting changes in the program again. Leaving them in place for a re-install is fine as long as none are corrupted.

Well, i kinda jumped ahead, and hope i didn't make it worse. I already put the corrupt AP library in my trash and it's emptying right now. i didn't see the need to keep it, plus with as many files as it contained (over 300,000 as i said), I felt like i needed to get it off my hd. kind of like smelly old food! (bad analogy, i know!)

Not a problem since you have a known good backup library on the EHD.

So, that said, if i understand correctly, i will open Ap after, import a few images-from where? I won't have a library any more. 😕 Then if i works correctly, I would drag the good backup from my EHD, to the PIctures folder in the Finder window, and then import to Aperture from there? Just do "import", and then that's it, or is it more complicated than that?

Once you launch Aperture for the first time after re-install, import any pictures you have to test with. Take a couple pictures on your camera and then import those. Make sure you can import successfully and that you can add adjustments. Then export them to anywhere you want (Desktop, Pictures folder, or any other folder) to make sure the export function works correctly. If all is fine, quit Aperture and then delete that library (which should be quite small and quick to delete).

Connect the EHD and then drag your known good backup library to the Pictures folder and then double-click it to load it. You should then be back to square one before everything went sideways (assuming the backup is a managed library with the Master (Originals) in the library).

Note - if you were running a Referenced library (where the Masters (Originals) were located outside the library package in Finder folders) - then you will need to make sure the Masters (Originals) are located in their correct locations before launching the good library so the library will locate them automatically. I mention this because you said in your opening post that you were combining libraries and relocating Masters so I am not sure what type of library the known good backup library is.

FWIW, the default library type for Aperture is a Managed library where the imported images are stored inside the library package. 😉

The easiest way is to open Aperture and then in the left pane make sure the 'Library' tab is selected which is technically called the 'Library Inspector' and lists your projects. In the upper section called Library select the 'Photos' item. This will show all images in your library in the main pane on right.

In the upper right corner of the application window, you should see a collection of icons with a section title called 'Browser'. Click the left-most button so you can view all thumbnails of your images in the main pane.

Below that same collection of icons with the Browser name, you should see the search field and an icon that looks like a dark rectangle with a magnifying glass in it's lower right corner. Click that to bring up the filter dialog.

In the filter dialog, click the 'Add Rule' button at upper right and select 'File Status'. This will add a File Status item at the bottom of the filter dialog, which should have the File Status check box marked and a drop-down menu to the right. Use the drop-down menu to select 'Referenced'. If all the photos disappear, you are good to go and have a fully managed library loaded. If some photos are still showing, then you need to use the 'File menu > Consolidate Originals for Library' command to bring those originals into the library. Once you have consolidated the originals, you will have a fully managed library which you can copy to and from any drive to backup or run at your command.

Note - consolidating means locating the originals via the Aperture dialog boxes and letting Aperture do the work. The most important thing with a database is to allow the program in control of said database (in this case Aperture) do all the work from within the program. This way the program knows where all the assets are and can allow access to them at will.

If you have referenced images and run into problems, post back and I or some of the other advanced helpers will try to sort any issues. 😉

Just an enthusiast photographer with significant experience with Aperture, Photoshop and Illustrator.

Learned the PC Windows environment on DOS before Windows 3.1 and then moved to Mac platform at home around 2008. Love the interface and stability of Mac, but still on Windows platform at work (where I run the Adobe Design CS5 suite) for publishing internal assembly and inspection documents (as well as illustration art for various labels and publications).

Thanks for the kind comments and as always, I hope my efforts are of value to others. 😉

No problem, 1macprincess!

It sounds like you are in good shape. Have fun! 😉