Thursday June 5
 
13:19
 
Photo Organisation On Macs 2 – Corrupt Aperture

In part 1 I compared Lightroom 2 Beta, iPhoto 08, and Aperture 2.1 to see which would best handle importing and managing my 100GB photo collection. As much as I liked Lightroom, I had to rule it out due to the Smart Collection limitation of not being able to search folder names – if I used Lightroom then I’d have a 100GB library neatly organised into folders, but no way to smart search for the photos I wanted without spending weeks adding keywords.

I decided to look into iPhoto and Aperture further, specifically how they handle libraries spread across multiple disks.

Aperture 2.1

Aperture’s handling of multiple disks is pretty good. When importing photos, you can choose to import them into the library or leave them in the location they are in (you can also copy them to the Pictures folder, but I see no benefit in that).

The nice thing is that whatever choice you make, you can change your mind later. If you have photos in the library, “Relocate master for this project” will allow them to be moved elsewhere. If you want to move photos into the library, “Consolidate masters” will move them into the library. While the library itself can only be stored on one disk, using these functions you can decide what is stored in the library and what isn’t.

For example, I might want to keep the library under 50GB by only keeping there the projects I’m actively working on. Once I finish working on a project, I could relocate it to an external USB disk so that it is no longer taking up (as much) space on my internal hard disk (it will still take up some space due to thumbnails, but at least the originals wont be there).

When you view a photo which is on an external USB disk but the disk is not connected, Aperture will display the thumbnail or, if you have “previews” enabled, it will display the preview. Previews are smaller versions of the image which are stored in the library. The zoom browser (press Z) has a Quick Preview option which controls whether to display the preview when zooming 1:1, or whether to retrieve the master image from disk – if the disk is not available, Aperture simply scales up the preview or thumbnail.

Side note on Previews: Previews can be turned off by (1) deselecting “New projects automatically generate previews” in the preferences, then (2) in the Projects Inspector, clicking on Library and then clicking on the clog at the right and unchecking “Maintain previews for all projects”. If you want to delete all existing previews, you can right click on the library and select “Delete previews for library” – or previews can be added/removed on a project by project basis by right clicking on the project and choosing Delete previews/Update previews/Generate previews as appropriate. Preview size can be controlled in Preferences.

Using the vault feature, the Aperture library can be backed up to an external disk (this doesn’t back up any images which are held outwith the library though) – which means you are not completely reliant on Time Machine.

I also found something which makes Aperture infinitely more friendly to me: when zooming 1:1 on an image, holding space allows you to move the image around – rather than having to click on the stupid little mini-box to move around. The “nipple” on the mighty mouse also allows 4 ways scrolling around the image.

iPhoto 08

I soon found that iPhoto’s handling of multiple disks is almost non-existent. “Preferences -> Advanced” has the option to “Copy items to the iPhoto Library” or not when files are imported, but after importing them there is no easy way to move them into or out of the iPhoto Library. ie, if I import and leave the files in their original location, there’s no easy way to consolidate them into the library. Similarly if I import them into the library at the start, there’s no easy way to relocate the masters out of the iPhoto library but leave iPhoto managing them.

I can do a simple export or import – but that’s different. If I export, iPhoto still maintains the original in the library. If I export, then delete from the library, then import from the new location, I’ve lost all the metadata.

I thought I could achieve moving things in and out the library by burning a DVD (burn DVD of events; delete from iPhoto; import into iPhoto turning on/off Preferences -> Advanced -> Ensure “Copy items to the iPhoto Library” as appropriate). Sadly iPhoto doesn’t recognise the Library6.iPhoto file, so while the photos can be reimported, the tags/keywords are not. Extra software like the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager may help to merge the DVD library into the new library, but I think it lacks the option to leave masters outside the library. Really, iPhoto should recognise it’s own library files when merging – it did burn them after all!

If I do store a photo on an external drive and the drive is not connected when iPhoto is running, I get a very unfriendly blank and white exclamation mark – ! Yuck.

In use, iPhoto also seemed speedier than Aperture though. Scrolling through thumbnails is smooth on iPhoto – on Aperture it’s that little bit rougher, and sometimes there are slight delays before thumbnails appear. iPhoto feels like iTunes running on a 3.06GHz iMac. Aperture feels like iTunes running on a G3 iMac.

Conclusion – or so I thought

I liked the Aperture way of handling moving in and out of the library, and since it has better EXIF options and editing features, I decided to take the plunge and start using Aperture. So last night I imported in ~40GB of images.

Straight away, Aperture irritated me. In Windows land you get used to popups suddenly appearing and grabbing your attention – in Mac land, usually things are a bit more friendly. Not so with Aperture – the “I’ve finished importing now” popup was frequently annoying. Further, when importing projects, if you are editing the name of an album or another project, as soon as Aperture starts importing a new project (when importing multiple folders) it will take focus away from your editing, leaving the name half typed, and further keystrokes becoming commands to Aperture. So if you started to type “Daze” and Aperture did this after you type “Da”, then the name will complete after “Da” and “z” will become a command to Aperture – starting the zoom browser. Very very bad.

I finally resigned myself to not using Aperture while it is importing (bad for a multithreaded application). I stuck on a QuickTime movie and let Aperture continue its importing alone.

This morning I woke up and expected everything to be fine and dandy. Not so – my iMac was running like a pig in mud (worse than iTunes on a G3). I tried switching between applications and it took upwards of a minute, when it would react at all. I tried moving the Aperture window and was rewarded with a corrupt photo browser. Then it stopped responding again. What was it doing? I had switched off previews and it had had all night to do any tasks it had to do – my computer never sleeps. When I finally got into finder, I could see the library was about 47GB – about right. I switched back to Aperture and more corrupt screens:

I couldn’t get Aperture to quit. Eventually the only thing I could do was force off the power and reboot. I started Aperture again and then VMWare Fusion, to copy the photo above to Windows and then email it. Gmail hung on sending for 10 minutes and didn’t send. I tried again, it still hung. Coincidence that Aperture is running also? I closed down Aperture and immediately the mail sent.

I am not the only one who has experienced this “corruption” in Aperture, this forum post reports “my photos are also appearing as a ’scrambled’ graphic”. Some reckon it is caused by upgrading to 10.5.3 after installing Aperture – but I only installed Aperture after upgrading to 10.5.3 (because Aperture doesn’t work with Time Machine in 10.5.2).

The thing that concerns me is that although my library appears OK now, what if a few months down the line I will find a corrupt image caused by today? A couple of images could be corrupt in my library now without me knowing it – I can’t go through and check each one.

My choice to use Aperture was made – but today I’m revisiting that. I simply cannot trust my photos to an application that corrupts itself so easily. A brand new iMac – the most powerful available right now (3.06GHz Dual Core, 4GB Apple memory, NVidia 512MB graphics). A brand new install of Aperture (trial downloaded direct from Apple). The result? Corrupt screens and hanging my iMac on the first import.

Footnote: I did the iPhoto 08 vs Lightroom 2 Beta vs Aperture 2.1 test of part 1 on my LG Mac. During that test Aperture crashed the LG Mac frequently – I assumed that was simply due to the machine being a PC running MacOS X rather than an Apple. The 40GB test above was done on my new 10.5.3 iMac, on a completely fresh install of Aperture. Since that also had problems, it looks to me like Aperture is simply dodgy in general.