What causes some Aperture 3 photos to be duplicated with different (usually 2x) file sizes?

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Level 1

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What causes some Aperture 3 photos to be duplicated with different (usually 2x) file sizes?

I have a number of projects where, for reasons I can't fathom, duplicate photos exist with different sizes. In some cases, the one of the dupes was imported and renamed, and the other file will have the original (camera) filename; in other cases, dupes exist with exactly the same name but different sizes. There are more than a few of these--like 15% of some projects.

Either I'm doing something wrong, or the photos are spawning.

Also, I have looked at high magnification with the loupe, and cannot tell any quality difference between these duplicates (such as one file that'sl 3.3MB and another that shows as 6.6MB. That makes no sense.

Using Aperture 3 with (nearly all) managed files.

Would appreciate any help--thanks!

Aperture 3, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 23, 2014 11:52 PM

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Answer 1

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William Lloyd

Level 7

21,311 points

Mar 24, 2014 11:10 AM in response to CMNDC

Are you editing them in an external editor? Are they versions?

I've used Aperture since it was released in 2005 and I've never seen an issue like you describe...

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

194,889 points

Mar 24, 2014 11:20 AM in response to CMNDC

I have a number of projects where, for reasons I can't fathom, duplicate photos exist with different sizes. In some cases, the one of the dupes was imported and renamed, and the other file will have the original (camera) filename; in other cases, dupes exist with exactly the same name but different sizes. There are more than a few of these--like 15% of some projects.

Have you by any chance imported an iPhoto library or Aperture library as files from the Finder and not as library? Then you may now have for each image three versions - a thumbnail, an edited preview, and the originial file.

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Answer 3

CMNDC Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 24, 2014 7:16 PM in response to William Lloyd

William, I have done almost zero editing external to Aperture, so don't think that's it.

I have only been using Aperture for about a year--previous photo management was file-by-file with ACDSee Pro on PC--so I'm still not a virtuoso. When I "show original image" for the apparent dupes that show up in the browser, the image size shown in the File Info field of the inspector is the same as before showing the original.

Per léonie's question, above, I have imported both iPhoto and Aperture libraries (from a MacBook) - but thought I did it using the import command, not through Finder.

When I look at the duplicate files, the import date is always different for them.

I use an app called "Photosweeper" to find and delete duplicates. It doesn't consider these files duplicates using a byte-by-byte compare, but if I have it look for time & histogram, it will consider them dupes. In some cases, I renamed the files during an import session, but only started doing that consistently a few months ago--so sometimes they show with the same filename, sometimes they don't. In addition, some that have been captioned have the captions in BOTH versions that show.

I'm probably not as precise in my info or my questions as I should be, but appreciate your help and look forward to any additional insights as to why this is happening and which files (versions?) to keep!

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