wlaidlaw Posted July 8, 2011 Share #1 Posted July 8, 2011 Advertisement (gone after registration) Having used iPhoto pretty happily for the past few years as a photo library application, along with iPhoto Library Manager, it is going to have to go. When Apple updated iPhoto 11 to I think 9.1.2, they introduced a very nasty bug. If like me you keep most of your photos as TIFF's, any TIFF's imported after the update, can no longer be edited in an external editor such as Photoshop, as iPhoto appends a .JPG suffix, when exporting them for editing. Apple are aware of this issue, as I was somewhat curtly told, when I reported it in my capacity as an Apple Developer. This was a couple of months ago. There has been no movement since or update to iPhoto. I would like to get this all fixed before I start on the learning curve of Lion OS 10.7. I had hoped that Media Pro from Phase One would do the job but sadly it does not currently import event names from iPhoto. Phase One say they are hoping to add this at some point but not in the immediate future. I have tried to get on with Lightroom but somehow me and it just don't gel. My question therefore to members is does Aperture make a good library application for Mac? I am not looking for it to be a RAW convertor, as I am very comfortable with Capture One. Nor am I looking to use it as a photo-manipulation tool, as I am very comfortable with PS CS5. Is there perhaps another library tool out there that just does the library viewer function and will import events from iPhoto? Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted July 8, 2011 Posted July 8, 2011 Hi wlaidlaw, Take a look here iPhoto going to have to go. Does Aperture make a good library application. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
k-hawinkler Posted July 8, 2011 Share #2 Posted July 8, 2011 Hi Wilson, I use Adobe Bridge for that. It comes with CS5. I hate separate libraries and rely on the finder to manage my images. If I misunderstood, please ignore. Best, K-H. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
richfx Posted July 8, 2011 Share #3 Posted July 8, 2011 Aperture has been an excellent PP software application for me. I also use it for RAW conversion. Its intuitiveness and user friendly architecture make using it extremely straightforward and enjoyable. It's also extremely robust in terms of its features. I'm not a pro, so I can't opine whether it's up to the task there, but many pros swear by it. Rich Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted July 9, 2011 Author Share #4 Posted July 9, 2011 Hi Wilson, I use Adobe Bridge for that. It comes with CS5. I hate separate libraries and rely on the finder to manage my images. If I misunderstood, please ignore. Best, K-H. K-H, I have looked at Bridge. There are two problems. It does not drill down into the packaged iPhoto Library (I am sure it used to) and if you unpack the iPhoto library, the sub-folder names assigned by iPhoto at import are not the same as the event names. In the biggest of my 5 libraries, I have over 250 events with 20,000+ images. I just would not be able to find images if I did not have the event titles. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stunsworth Posted July 9, 2011 Share #5 Posted July 9, 2011 Why not download the free 30 day trial... Apple - Aperture - Download a 30-day trial of Aperture 3 If you like it you can buy the software from the app store for £45. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybarton Posted July 9, 2011 Share #6 Posted July 9, 2011 Forty five quid is a real bargain, when some paid over two hundred for it... That's about half a tank of petrol, Wilson, and a free trial too... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted July 9, 2011 Author Share #7 Posted July 9, 2011 Advertisement (gone after registration) Thanks guys, I did not realise the free trial was still available, after the transfer to the App Store. I agree Aperture is good value but if it does not work as a transfer library, it would still be money thrown away. I am told that Aperture will stack the original, master and modified of each photo. Also you need to go through all your Events in iPhoto before and change say "Birthday Party Brighton" to "2008 Birthday Party Brighton" or it will sort events alphabetically rather than by date of image, like iPhoto does. I know what you mean about a tank of petrol though. About three weeks ago on the Tour Britannia Rally, we filled up our two team cars at the same station, when it was my turn to pay. Around 205 litres of Super unleaded between the two of them - gulp! Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie Johnson Posted July 9, 2011 Share #8 Posted July 9, 2011 It's an excellent piece of software. Great for use as a library and the highlight recovery on it leaves Adobe standing. £45??!! I have had versions since version one and paid considerably more! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted July 9, 2011 Author Share #9 Posted July 9, 2011 I downloaded the trial version and checked how it imported the iPhoto events. Just fine was the answer as long as you put a year at the beginning of each event name. Surprisingly, Apple are still trying to sell you an activation code for the trial version at three times plus what they are selling the App Store version, which as you all have said, seems very good value. I have now deleted the trial version and re-downloaded from the App Store. I have bitten the bullet and re-named all 250 odd events with the year they were taken at the beginning of each event name. They have reference perfectly to Aperture and I am currently running Auto Stack to stack the originals, masters and modified versions of the same image. All seemed very seamless. I have set PS CS5 as my external editor and thank goodness, Aperture exports an un-mucked about with 16 bit TIFF to PS on pressing CMD-shift-O. Thanks again for the advice guys. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
swamiji Posted July 11, 2011 Share #10 Posted July 11, 2011 It depends on the power of your machine, I used it on a MacBook Pro 13" w/4 gig of memory. After a few thousand pics in a library it slowed my machine down to be almost unusable. Aperture just can't handle large quantity of large files! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted July 11, 2011 Author Share #11 Posted July 11, 2011 It depends on the power of your machine, I used it on a MacBook Pro 13" w/4 gig of memory. After a few thousand pics in a library it slowed my machine down to be almost unusable. Aperture just can't handle large quantity of large files! I think you may need to have your Mac in top class condition. All sprung clean with Onyx or SL Cache Cleaner, caches kept small, few icons on desktop, permissions regularly repaired and disk defragged. Check in Application Monitor for memory hogs and turn them off. I am running it on an early 2007 20" iMac 2.16 GHz core 2 Duo machine with only 3 GB of RAM (the max this machine will address). I have 21,000 images in 254 events and it seems to be running just fine. Maybe it is because I am running it in referenced rather than imported memory mode.The only change from standard on that machine is that it has a 7200 RPM 1TB hard drive installed. I keep hoping that Seagate will bring out the hybrid drives in 3 1/2", as I would then put a 1.5 TB hybrid drive in, having seen how much the 500GB one has speeded up my 13" MacBook Pro. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-hawinkler Posted July 11, 2011 Share #12 Posted July 11, 2011 Hi Wilson, What's a hybrid drive? Thanks, K-H. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
eprom Posted July 11, 2011 Share #13 Posted July 11, 2011 I´m a big fan of that company and like the way Apple lets work their software together that´s the reason why I bought Aperture a few years ago. I work as a pro and do a lot of pictures. As my library grew to some GB the app slowed down that it was a pain in the a... to work with it. Also buying a new and faster computer with more Ram didn´t change much so I switched over to Lightroom and I´m still happy. So, if you want an advice from somebody who loves Apple - do your self a favor and get Lightroom! All the best, Peter__ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-hawinkler Posted July 11, 2011 Share #14 Posted July 11, 2011 Peter, What you are describing is really a scaling problem. I ran into s similar problem with iTunes when I had many tens of thousands of songs and thousands of Playlists. Entering new items came to a screeching halt. So, I just do without Playlists. I believe Apple is focusing on the majority of their users and not the 3 sigma off the normal heavy users. Best, K-H. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted July 11, 2011 Author Share #15 Posted July 11, 2011 Hi Wilson, What's a hybrid drive? Thanks, K-H. K-H, It is a part solid state part rotating hard drive. Momentus XT | 7,200 RPM | Seagate It gives about 50% of the speed advantage of a 100% solid state drive for about 10% of the price. I was a little sceptical about it but at £80, it was a risk worth taking. I was more than impressed by the result. I now rarely see our old enemy SBBOD (spinning beach ball of death) and then only for a couple of seconds. This is on a 13" 2.53 GHz MBP with 4GB of RAM. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
eprom Posted July 11, 2011 Share #16 Posted July 11, 2011 My itunes library has 9995 songs and 73,somewhat GB at the moment and I had never problems with it - also in former times when I had slower computers. For me Aperture is still a beta-version, sorry. Lightroom is so much better and faster and brings much more fun because you can work with it .... even when you have only a few photos;-) All the best, Peter__ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-hawinkler Posted July 11, 2011 Share #17 Posted July 11, 2011 Peter, I believe you. Well try 70,000 songs and 2,000 Playlists. That requires about 1 TB. You'll see. Best, K-H. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted July 11, 2011 Author Share #18 Posted July 11, 2011 I´m a big fan of that company and like the way Apple lets work their software together that´s the reason why I bought Aperture a few years ago. I work as a pro and do a lot of pictures. As my library grew to some GB the app slowed down that it was a pain in the a... to work with it. Also buying a new and faster computer with more Ram didn´t change much so I switched over to Lightroom and I´m still happy.So, if you want an advice from somebody who loves Apple - do your self a favor and get Lightroom! All the best, Peter__ Peter, I have tried all versions of Lightroom from the original free beta version that was handed out with CS2 to the V.3 that I got from Leica. Somehow Lightroom's way of library management and working just does not gel for me. I have even bought and read a couple of instruction books but still we don't get on. Within a day or so, I am wholly comfortable with the way that Aperture works. I feel that the speed of Aperture may be impacted by having a huge single monolithic imported library. If you split the library up into say separate libraries for each year and run them referenced rather than imported, it seems to work OK. My iMac is close to as old and as slow as you can get on an Intel machine (due for replacement soon) and it seems to manage with the library set as above. Does anyone know if Aperture 3 will run on a G5 machine? When I get back to the UK, I would like to copy it to our dual G5 2.3 GHz PowerMac family server, which is a great machine. Now been running for nearly 7 years 24/7 with not a single problem. I have changed the RAID 1 HD's every three years as a precaution (gradually increasing the size to now 2 x 1.5TB) and blow all the dust out then but other than that and standard software maintenance, do nothing at all. It has 2 x 22" Lacie Electron Blue Mk.IV CRT screens, which are first class for photo work. You can pick up these wonderful screens for pennies now and if you have the room, they are better than all but quite expensive LCD screens. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-hawinkler Posted July 11, 2011 Share #19 Posted July 11, 2011 K-H, It is a part solid state part rotating hard drive. Momentus XT | 7,200 RPM | Seagate It gives about 50% of the speed advantage of a 100% solid state drive for about 10% of the price. I was a little sceptical about it but at £80, it was a risk worth taking. I was more than impressed by the result. I now rarely see our old enemy SBBOD (spinning beach ball of death) and then only for a couple of seconds. This is on a 13" 2.53 GHz MBP with 4GB of RAM. Wilson Hi Wilson. Many thanks. That's looks very very interesting. When I bought my MacBook Pro slightly over 2 years ago, I bit the bullet and got an APPLE SSD TS256 with it. I am also using several 5 bay PortMultiplier Firmtek enclosures with either up to 2 o 3 TB SATA drives in each bay. My 17" MacBook Pro has an ExpressCard slot. I use the Firmtek SeriTek/2SM2-E v. 5.4.1 card in that slot. That gives me 2 SATA cables at 3 Gb/s burst speed each. So I can hook up to 10 drives simultaneously. So, I do all work on the SSD and store on the SATA drives at day's end. That way my enclosures stay powered down almost all the time. The smaller or newer MacBook Pros don't have that slot. It will be interesting to see what Thunderbolt has to offer in terms of external devices. Best, K-H. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-hawinkler Posted July 11, 2011 Share #20 Posted July 11, 2011 Peter, I have tried all versions of Lightroom from the original free beta version that was handed out with CS2 to the V.3 that I got from Leica. Somehow Lightroom's way of library management and working just does not gel for me. I have even bought and read a couple of instruction books but still we don't get on. Within a day or so, I am wholly comfortable with the way that Aperture works. I feel that the speed of Aperture may be impacted by having a huge single monolithic imported library. If you split the library up into say separate libraries for each year and run them referenced rather than imported, it seems to work OK. My iMac is close to as old and as slow as you can get on an Intel machine (due for replacement soon) and it seems to manage with the library set as above. Does anyone know if Aperture 3 will run on a G5 machine? When I get back to the UK, I would like to copy it to our dual G5 2.3 GHz PowerMac family server, which is a great machine. Now been running for nearly 7 years 24/7 with not a single problem. I have changed the RAID 1 HD's every three years as a precaution (gradually increasing the size to now 2 x 1.5TB) and blow all the dust out then but other than that and standard software maintenance, do nothing at all. It has 2 x 22" Lacie Electron Blue Mk.IV CRT screens, which are first class for photo work. You can pick up these wonderful screens for pennies now and if you have the room, they are better than all but quite expensive LCD screens. Wilson Hi Wilson, From the App Store, Aperture 3, Requirements, Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later I guess that is your answer. Isn't the latest version for the G5 10.5....? You have to check. Best, K-H. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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