Wrong preview images in APERTURE

[holgerf]

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In the grid view mode of Aperture I some preview images are wrong, IOW they show another image. Switching to the Viewer shows the right image again.

 

I did two things to solve the problem:

 

(1) I opened the Aperture library package but found that the original file there was accompanied by the right preview image.

 

(2) I rebuilt the Aperturte library - nothing changed.

 

Anybodys help welcome!

 

Thanks

Holger

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[Eoin]

Holger,

 

I presume your talking about the thumbnails. There has been some issues about this and mainly related to referenced images rather than images within the Aperture Database.

 

One fix for it is...

1. Navigate to the Aperture Library.

2. Choose menu item “Show Package Contents”.

3. Navigate to the file with an ending .approject which has the name of the Aperture project with the wrong thumbnails.

4. Again, choose “Show Package Contents” of that file.

5. Delete the file “AP.Thumbnails”, which contains the wrong thumbnails.

 

Next time you open this project in Aperture, Aperture will generate new thumbnails

 

Another fix is to make a slight adjustment to one image... say boost saturation by .01 then lift and stamp just that adjustment to the other images in the project and aperture should rebuild the thumbs taking into consideration the adjustment.

 

Let me know if this works for you.

 

Eoin

[nryn]

I seem to recall this issue being discussed in the Aperture discussion forums on Apple's site. Did you have a look there yet?

 

Updated to add: figures Eoin would have the answer handy

[holgerf]

Let me know if this works for you.

 

Eoin

 

Glad to report: worked fine! Thanks a lot!

 

BTW, did you ever be able to read a documentation of the Aperture database?

 

Best

Holger

[Eoin]

Holger,

 

I'm delighted that it worked for you, I do read the aperture forums (and most aperture sites for that matter) from time to time and copy interesting bits of info I come across, you'll never know when you'll need them.

 

In answer to your question regarding the internal DB of aperture, no I have neither the time or desire to go hacking within. I develop in databases in my spare time but mainly for work related production systems using touchscreen data entry and I am fully aware of the damage that can be done without a full working understanding of the structures within. That being said I've had no real reason to go that deep into aperture, it just works for me from the HMI and metadata/keywords within smart albums.

 

Anyway, glad your sorted, lets hope M8 support arrives soon eh!.

 

Eoin

[nryn]

Eoin,

 

I'd love to get some expert tips from you on how you organize your Aperture library. I'm moving over from iView and just getting started with Aperture by trying to come up with different ways to go about organizing before retroactively going through my whole library of tens of thousands of images.

 

I know that's a huge ask, but even just a screenshot of your library structure and a few sentences of description would be pretty helpful if you have the time.

[Eoin]

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Believe me when I say "you don't want to see my library" LOL.

 

The key to aperture is the keywords and the smart albums. Once you understand the power of keywords & nested keywords that you can apply to your images on import or within an existing project you can combine this with the power of the smart album to filter your selection. You can place smart albums within a project or within the wider library to effect a global filter on all projects.

 

Spend some time in the button sets and keyword library and set up some useful sets for yourself. Don't forget nesting kewords e.g. sport,watersport,wind powered, with children of say wind surfing, sailing, kite boarding as a very simple example

 

If you used a smart album with the keyword of wind powered it would find all the children below, you could then combine another exif tag within the same smart album criteria to filter by date for example, combine this with ratings to find your best images of a given subject

 

My advice is take some time and view the videos on the apple aperture page to get an idea of the internal power within aperture. Even invest in a good book to walk you through.

 

I'd hardly call myself an expert but thanks for the complement anyway. LOL

[nryn]

I've read all the material, believe me, and have a book and talked with Joe Schorr and have been to several presentations by pro photographers. The UI is deep but fairly intuitive, and I'm not having any problems getting around the program at all.

 

I guess the bigger hurdle, as is always the case with this sort of thing, is figuring out with all this flexibility how you want to work. Other programs tell you this. I'm used to Apple's pro apps--Logic Audio Pro is the same way--and in the end no two users implement the same system. What I'm lacking, though, is a set of examples of library setups which work for individuals and the rationale behind setting those libraries up in those ways.

 

So yeah, I'd like to see your library, but I understand your reluctance. There's a screenshot of a pro photographer's library on Inside Aperture (O'Reilly) right now, and I got to talk to him a bit at an event not too long ago, but didn't get into any specifics.

 

Anyway, plug away I shall.

[Eoin]

Projects and lots of them are the way to go IMO then you can manage them with folders when the UI becomes too cluttered. for example projects for various clients(I'm no pro so it doesn't apply to me) and then when you get more work from the client you can create a new project for the new work and create a folder for in the top level library for clients and then within that folder create a folder for that client's name, then drop both the projects into the clients named folder. Large single projects seem to bog Aperture down (slowness) so plenty of small projects are the way to go IMO

 

If you get to grips with the keywording and nested keywords, retrieval should be very straight forward. I don't know iView, but you've obviously been using some sort of structure within that, now that your thinking about moving over to Aperture you need to think about the shortcomings you had (if any) within iView and see if you can improve that for Aperture.

 

Nothing is set in stone, you can always tweak the structure later to meet needs overlooked. You can batch apply or remove keywording. You can also move images from one project to another or even have tabbed views of many projects in the viewer. The DAM is very flexible and only limited by ones understanding of the power of keywords and nested words.

 

Perhaps my understanding of databases has helped me, but then again I'm not you or understand your need or structure that would best suit your needs.

 

The key here is it's not cast into stone, you can amend, re-order, move as you wish.

 

I know it's not much but I hope it helps.

[Eoin]

Here is a very useful site you may know or may not, I find his articles very informative and it may help you understand some of the functions available within

 

Bagelturf - Aperture Articles

[nryn]

Thanks, Eoin, for the tips.

 

As of this morning I've got about 500 projects contained in a single folder (the mass import), and 6-10 projects outside that folder (all the photos I've taken since the mass import). I'm working primarily on those 6-10 projects before working through the mass import. As I work through the mass import, I'll move those projects out of the mass import folder, and probably make them referenced files. I think in the process I'll end up deleting about half my images, which is a good thing, and many, many images will be stacked, which is also a good thing, since it dramatically reduces the number of images one browses through.

 

The conceptual challenges I have left are mostly surrounding keyword structure. For example, like many amateurs a bulk of my images are travel images. I've tried different things--using the "location" ITPC field for travel destinations and "sublocation" ITPC field for specific buildings or places. That has since moved to keywords (Travel->Germany->Heidelberg->Hauptstrasse), if only out of convenience. And I'm finding it useful to create a button set for each project I'm going through. I vacillate between using the keywords in the structure they provide for you and creating my own structure, and my level of OCD when it comes to rating and keywording tends to vary wildly based on a number of parameters (time I've already been on the computer that day being perhaps the most major).

 

Hotkeys are a godsend.

 

The bagelturf site was one of the first I hit. I've since found Inside Aperture on the O'Reilly site a good one as well, and I think the movies on Apple's Aperture 1.5 site are very well done.

[barbican]

Because of the type of photography I do, I use a top level folder per country. Each of those folders contains one project per year. (Beware you can only have 10,000 images per project). Inside those projects I give a separate album to all import sessions (eg, '20070426 - Kids on the beach'). If I needed to create a project or portfolio of photos spanning the countries (eg, 'Polaroids of dogs') I'd have to use smart albums. I wouldn't get too hung up on it, as everyone uses something different and you won't know until you fiddle around. You can always move things. A lot depends on whether you do event based photography (weddings) or subject based photography.

 

I second everything Eoin said, especially re Smart Albums and Keyword hierarchies. Everything important has smart albums. A good primer on keywords is found on Brett Gross' blog.