Aperture 1.5: Relocate and Consolidate
2006-10-06
Now that Aperture 1.5 is here, it is possible to store the masters outside of the library. For some this is just perfect: their library is huge and big parts of it could be put on Firewire drives, or a server, or on DVDs. Right-clicking on an individual project shows the two new options that take care of this: Relocate Masters for Project and Consolidate Masters For Project:
You don't get these options for albums or blue or brown folders, just for projects and selections of thumbnails (to manage selections of thumbnails you will have to use the menu bar and select the File menu: the control-click menu does not show these options). Masters for the entire library can also be relocated and consolidated.
Relocate means move the masters from where ever they are to somewhere else and reference them.
Consolidate means bring the masters back from where ever they are to the library and manage them.
It's only the masters that are affected by these operations, so there is still data left in the library: thumbnails, adjustments, versions, keywords and other metadata. But the masters are usually huge in comparison, so moving them out makes the most difference when library space is at a premium.
A project can contain a mix of referenced (masters outside the library) and managed (masters inside the library) images through failures during relocation or consolidation, imports to projects, or selections of images being moved in or out of the library. If you edit an image in an external editor, the new image is always put into the library and managed. So if you want it somewhere else, you will have to do that manually.
Lets break up my library by relocating the masters for my Vacation project. Relocate Masters for Project brings me to this dialog:
I've chosen a folder called Media on a volume called Turkey that is on a server. Using the Subfolder Format pop-up I can choose the way that the individual master files from the project are stored in the Media folder. Choosing None gives me this organization:
And the masters (my masters are all JPGs) are stored flat. But I actually had a problem doing this relocate. For some reason Aperture thought there was insufficient space to store some my files on that volume and so left them in the library. Three of the thumbnails don't have the badge that shows they are referenced. You can see one of them below:
That one doesn't have a badge, but how would I know if I had thousands of images which ones were managed or not? It is easy because I can filter on the file status:
By picking File Status and then selecting Managed, I can see the three that were not relocated:
The other options here, Online and Offline refer to the volumes that are storing the referenced masters. If I had a closet full of Firewire drives and only three of them plugged in to my machine I could easily see which images were on those drives and which were in the closet by using those filter selections.
I can still work with my referenced images exactly the same way I can work with my managed images. I can create versions, do adjustments, crop, rotate. It might be a little slower in my case because my master is on an aging G3 iMac at the end of a 100Mb network, but otherwise the experience will be the same.
I will consolidate the files that were relocated and so make them managed again. By selecting the project and Consolidate Masters For Project I get this dialog:
The warning here is because I could have other Aperture libraries that also reference the same masters. If I move them, they will not be usable from those other libraries. I click Continue, move them all back, and the badges all disappear. My Media folder is empty again.
Relocating again and selecting Image Year/Month/Day for the subfolder gets me this organization inside the Media folder on my server:
This corresponds to the date the images were shot. I can also use Relocate Masters For Project to relocate the masters at any time without consolidating them. They are simply moved from one place to another. If I now choose Project as the subfolder name, then they are all moved out of the year/month/day folders and into a folder called Vacation without coming back into the library over the network. So this is very fast on a remote server:
It's very flexible. Not only can I move the masters about willy-nilly, but I can also make my own structure out of building blocks by selecting Edit... from the subfolder pop-up. Here I have redefined the preset Project Name:
That results in the following organization:
There is more. Because Aperture keeps a lot of information about the referenced files in the library, the referencing is very robust. It will even find them if you give them new names or move them somewhere else on the same volume. If the project contains master files that have the same name Aperture renames one of them like this:
Note that relocate and consolidate operating on a project don't take account of any filtering: they work on all the masters in the project at once. Filtering can be used though: just filter, select the images, and use the File menu to relocate or consolidate.
You don't get these options for albums or blue or brown folders, just for projects and selections of thumbnails (to manage selections of thumbnails you will have to use the menu bar and select the File menu: the control-click menu does not show these options). Masters for the entire library can also be relocated and consolidated.
Relocate means move the masters from where ever they are to somewhere else and reference them.
Consolidate means bring the masters back from where ever they are to the library and manage them.
It's only the masters that are affected by these operations, so there is still data left in the library: thumbnails, adjustments, versions, keywords and other metadata. But the masters are usually huge in comparison, so moving them out makes the most difference when library space is at a premium.
A project can contain a mix of referenced (masters outside the library) and managed (masters inside the library) images through failures during relocation or consolidation, imports to projects, or selections of images being moved in or out of the library. If you edit an image in an external editor, the new image is always put into the library and managed. So if you want it somewhere else, you will have to do that manually.
Lets break up my library by relocating the masters for my Vacation project. Relocate Masters for Project brings me to this dialog:
I've chosen a folder called Media on a volume called Turkey that is on a server. Using the Subfolder Format pop-up I can choose the way that the individual master files from the project are stored in the Media folder. Choosing None gives me this organization:
And the masters (my masters are all JPGs) are stored flat. But I actually had a problem doing this relocate. For some reason Aperture thought there was insufficient space to store some my files on that volume and so left them in the library. Three of the thumbnails don't have the badge that shows they are referenced. You can see one of them below:
That one doesn't have a badge, but how would I know if I had thousands of images which ones were managed or not? It is easy because I can filter on the file status:
By picking File Status and then selecting Managed, I can see the three that were not relocated:
The other options here, Online and Offline refer to the volumes that are storing the referenced masters. If I had a closet full of Firewire drives and only three of them plugged in to my machine I could easily see which images were on those drives and which were in the closet by using those filter selections.
I can still work with my referenced images exactly the same way I can work with my managed images. I can create versions, do adjustments, crop, rotate. It might be a little slower in my case because my master is on an aging G3 iMac at the end of a 100Mb network, but otherwise the experience will be the same.
I will consolidate the files that were relocated and so make them managed again. By selecting the project and Consolidate Masters For Project I get this dialog:
The warning here is because I could have other Aperture libraries that also reference the same masters. If I move them, they will not be usable from those other libraries. I click Continue, move them all back, and the badges all disappear. My Media folder is empty again.
Relocating again and selecting Image Year/Month/Day for the subfolder gets me this organization inside the Media folder on my server:
This corresponds to the date the images were shot. I can also use Relocate Masters For Project to relocate the masters at any time without consolidating them. They are simply moved from one place to another. If I now choose Project as the subfolder name, then they are all moved out of the year/month/day folders and into a folder called Vacation without coming back into the library over the network. So this is very fast on a remote server:
It's very flexible. Not only can I move the masters about willy-nilly, but I can also make my own structure out of building blocks by selecting Edit... from the subfolder pop-up. Here I have redefined the preset Project Name:
That results in the following organization:
There is more. Because Aperture keeps a lot of information about the referenced files in the library, the referencing is very robust. It will even find them if you give them new names or move them somewhere else on the same volume. If the project contains master files that have the same name Aperture renames one of them like this:
Note that relocate and consolidate operating on a project don't take account of any filtering: they work on all the masters in the project at once. Filtering can be used though: just filter, select the images, and use the File menu to relocate or consolidate.
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