Photofocus

Copyright Scott Bourne 2004 - All Rights Reserved

Here are three quick Aperture tips for you…

MULTIPLE LIBRARIES

If you want to have a managed library, Aperture currently requires that all photos in a single library are stored on the same drive.

But there is a workaround. You can in fact have multiple libraries that are selectable from within Aperture. You can create a “personal” and a “work” library and switch between the two by selecting the desired library in Aperture and then restarting.

LIBRARY REBUILD

I am not sure why, but it appears that after prolonged or heavy use, Aperture Libraries can bog down. The symptoms range from slow scrolling to occasional thumbnail rendering and overall slower performance. When this happens, rebuilding the Library is often the fix.

Before you rebuild your Library, back up everything to your Vault. Then, quit Aperture.Press and hold Option + Command and launch Aperture by double clicking on the application icon. Follow the prompts to start the rebuild.

It will take some time for the rebuild to be complete. I have my images stored in multiple Libraries of 100,000 images. Rebuild time is about 40 minutes on average.

At the end of the process, you should see snappier performance. This can also be a fix if things are just going haywire without reason.

When you are confident that you haven’t lost any images, back up this newly-rebuilt Library to your Vault and you’re finished.

I recommend that you do this every three months or so and more often if you are a heavy Aperture user or have very large Libraries.

HIDDEN FILES REVEALED

Want to see your hidden Aperture Library documents? Just ctrl-click on the project file and browse through it just like any other Mac folder.

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This post sponsored by the Digital SLR Store