Moving
back to iPhoto
Awhile
ago
I blogged about the reasons that
I stayed with Aperture, Apple’s
“Pro-Level” photo editing application even though I’ve
moved back to a
Point & Shoot, consumer
Camera and no longer needed its editing capabilities. The
main reasons centered around iPhoto’s lack of
hierarchical keyword structure, and the fact that it
creates duplicate files for each edited image, which
could theoretically double the size of your library
unnecessarily.
Well I brought this up in another photo-related
blog, and someone
turned me onto a program aptly named Keyword
Manager, which is a
plugin for iPhoto that organizes the keywords
hierarchically, and applies the entire set of parent
keywords to any photo that you select any child keyword
manually to be applied. I have played around with it and
it ain’t so bad honestly. It’s not as smooth as
Aperture’s handling, which doesn’t
really apply all the
keywords in the hierarchy, but manages them so that even if
you have applied “Redwoods” under Tree>Redwoods, even
though “Tree” won’t show up when you inspect the file,
searches for “Tree” will generate that photo. But who
cares, right? I keyword to make them easier to find later,
so I don’t care whether the image “technically” has all the
keywords applied or not, so long as it turns up when I
search for the right terms. So hey, this little plugin
makes iPhoto more legit.
There is of course still the problem of file duplication
with regards to any edited photos. Unfortunately, there is
no solution for this as far as I can see; iPhoto will
create a duplicate and keep the “original,” which is smart
for most people that way they can always get back to the
original file if they decide they have royally messed it
up. The editing engine under Aperture handles this much
better, so you end up with just a simple, low-size set of
instructions to
create the edited
image, without actually creating it and thus the
duplication.
I can sort of work around this in two ways. First is even
though my new camera shoots more “full-frame”, as in
“square,” it does have a 3:2 mode, which creates images in
the standard 4x6 size parameter, which I tend to prefer. So
simply using this mode on the camera I can cut out a lot of
edits I would normally have done. I don’t like “square”
photos; our field of vision is naturally wider than taller,
and the 4x6 ratios or 16x9 ratios (as found on HDTV’s) is
simply more pleasing. OK, I can do that though there is the
drawback of losing potential room for crops and edits, but
these are the limitations, right? And I can always turn
that mode off if I chose.
The other workaround isn’t so much a workaround as it is a
realization of fact. My Aperture Library is composed mainly
of RAW image files, which take up considerably more room
than equivalent jpeg images. For instance, a RAW file of a
scene might take up 9MB of space, but a jpeg equivalent –
shot on the same camera – would only take up 2MB. That’s a
substantial difference! So moving my library to Aperture,
exporting all the images as jpeg, I would actually
shrink my library
initially. Sure there will eventually be file duplication,
but even duplicating a 2MB file and ending up with 4MB
dedicated to that image is far less than the 9MB that the
RAW image would have taken, so the growth will still be
under control.
I think I can do this. But there’s some problems…
Lots
of tools to migrate; none in the “right” direction
I have looked
high & low for ways to migrate an Aperture library to
iPhoto. I have found nothing detailing how to go that
direction. Apparently this idea I’m having, this epiphany,
is not supposed to happen. Anyway. It can be done, I have
done it recently, but I had to work through it a couple
times to get it right, and there’s things that will simply
not come over like you want. Period. So if you’re looking
to move an Aperture library to iPhoto, I can show you how
best to do it that I have come across, and the issues you
will encounter.
PREPARING
YOUR APERTURE IMAGES
OK the crux of
the matter revolves around how you’re going to get the
images into iPhoto. There’s two options: you can export
your Aperture Library, or you can go to iPhoto and show
your Aperture Library and bring them over that way. There
are drawbacks to both approaches. If you try to export the
images (at least out of 1.5; 2.0 might behave differently)
out of Aperture, the files – either the masters or the
versions – will lose all the data you’ve applied to them.
Therefore, you’ll have the full-quality image, but you will
not have any of the ratings, keywords, or other data that
you applied via Aperture, as that’s all stored in
Aperture’s database, not in the image itself.
The other option as mentioned was to go to iPhoto, and
under File, select “Show Aperture Library. From here, you
can drag over albums, projects, whatever, and when they
come over, iPhoto will inherit all the information from the
Aperture database as well, with one exception. You will not
have the ratings come over. But that’s OK, I’ll show you
how to work around this. The #1 problem with doing it this
way is that Aperture & iPhoto do not work together to
import the actual file, but rather just the previews you
created in Aperture. So if, like me, you created small,
lower-quality previews to further save space in Aperture’s
database, you’re going to have to do some work to get
better-quality images. This is handled through Aperture’s
Preferences pane, so first we need to go to Aperture and
recreate all your previews.
Once you get the prefs pane opened up, you have to tell
Aperture to give you full-quality previews. This is done by
telling it to set “No Limit” in the Preview Size Limit box
at the bottom. And we also want to select the Highest
Quality setting on the slider just above this. This way,
Aperture will essentially be creating high-quality export
jpegs as previews, the kind you’d be proud to have in you
iPhoto library. Unfortunately, we’re not done yet. Aperture
will not apply this change retroactively to the photos in
its database, so we have to tell it to regenerate previews
for
all the images in
the library. This is easiest done by selecting “All Images”
in the library, and then selecting all the images
(Command+A). If you make use of stacks, be aware that these
changes will not apply to non-visible images in a stack.
So, if you want bring over all your images, even the
stacked ones – at highest quality, first select “Open All
Stacks” from the Stack menu,
then select all
images.
The next step is to force Aperture to rebuild all the
previews. We have to do this in a special way, as the
normal procedure will not work on images that already have
previews, even if they are not the newly-specified size. We
have to hold Option while clicking on Images, and the
second-to-last menu item should be Generate Preview. Now
Aperture will get busy rebuilding all the previews at our
specified size.
I wish I could say Aperture will fly through this process,
but unfortunately on my library – only 5,000-strong & a
“paltry” 22GB – it took about two hours. So select this
option, go to a play or something, bed the wife or husband,
get all showered, and sit back down to continue.
KEEP
THE RATINGS
Even though
importing them like we intend will bring over all the exif
data & keywords, it will
not – for whatever
reason – bring over the ratings as well. So to get this
taken care of, we’re going to do a few steps in Aperture to
prepare us to regain them once the images are imported to
iPhoto.
It will seem like such a “duh” moment once I outline what
we’re going to do, but it took me a day or so to think it
through, so I’ll save you the hassle. Create a library-wide
search, and select “Rating IS 5-star.” Since this will show
stacks, you can either “Open All Stacks” which isn’t wise
since you may not have the same rating applied to every
image in a stack, or rather you can check the box at the
bottom of the search box that says “Ignore Stack
Groupings.” This will bring up any image that meets the
criteria, regardless of whether or not it’s in another
stack that does not meet the criteria. OK, so once all
those come up, we need to select all, and then simply apply
a new Keyword, something like “5-star.” Yep, it’s that
simple. Then you just need to do that for all the other
levels of ratings.
The goal here is to have that keyword applied to the
images, since it will be brought over in the transfer to
iPhoto. Once you’re in iPhoto, you can simply search your
library for all of a specific-rated keyword, apply the
correct ratings. This very easily done by creating a search
for the keyword in question – say, “5-star” – and then
selecting all the images, then going to Photo>Rating and
applying the correct rating. Then once you’ve done this,
you can simply throw away the “-star” keywords.
BRINGING
OVER THE IMAGES ORGANIZED: THE REAL PROBLEM
The real issue
is not getting the images into iPhoto, you could easily do
that by just showing the entire Aperture library and
dragging it all at once. But the problem is that iPhoto
will create one “event” out of this. The other issue is
that iPhoto will not automagically bring over your albums
as well. You can either import the albums you have, or the
projects. You can even bring them BOTH over, but they will
not be linked, but duplicated. i.e., if you bring over a
project that contains image 1234.jpeg, then bring over an
album that also contains this image, iPhoto will not simply
link the photos, it will duplicate them and create a new
project.
This can again be gotten around by using the keyword trick
in Aperture first, selecting your albums and applying some
code or the whole name so that you can search and then drag
to recreate the albums in photo. Unfortunately, there’s
simply no other way.
I do not recommend bringing over the albums, just the
projects. Chances are not all your images are in an album,
but all of them are in a project, so concentrate on
dragging over your projects and recreating your albums.
This is the best way to tackle the issue that I have found,
I promise you.
The other minor problem is that when you do bring over the
projects into iPhoto using this method, the will all be
“untitled Project;” iPhoto does not respect the name of the
project in Aperture for whatever stupid reason, so be
prepared to rename your projects as well as recreate your
albums.
THE
OTHER WAY
I recommend
doing it through iPhoto rather than exporting your Aperture
library and bring it over. But there is one benefit to
doing it that way: when you export your aperture library,
you have the option to respect the file’s location in the
folder hierarchy. Aperture will create folders and
subfolders that are the project names, and when you import
this data in folders into iPhoto, it
will respect the name of the
projects. However as stated before, at least &
especially on version 1.5 of Aperture, you will lose all of
your keywords.
THE
OTHER
OTHER WAY
Alternatively,
you can try to simply download a copy of Aperture 2.0 as a
trial, and use that to export your library. Apparently
(though I cannot test this), 2.0 will append the
information to the file on export. The downside is that I
do not think that even though it appends the keywords to
the file, that importing them will bring that keyword data
into iPhoto’s database, so then you’ll have to recreate and
reapply all of your keywords.
So essentially, it’s six of one, half-dozen of the other.
You’re either going to be recreating lost metadata, or
recreating lost albums. For me it makes more sense to use
the metadata engines to recreate the albums & whatnot.
I type fast enough, I can rename the projects if I desire,
and the albums too. But having to go back through your
entire library and recreate the metadata seems much too
menial and time-consuming. I think you’re better off doing
as outlined, so that you keep your metadata, and just think
through how you can put that metadata to use before the
transition, so you can apply it to overcome some of the
obstacles to the move (ratings, albums, etc). This is the
better way in my opinion.
Good Luck!