Photos is the first native Apple application, that lets you store a photo library in iCloud and sync it across all devices. It is a successor to iPhoto, and its editing tools are now more versatile than they have been in iPhoto (in Photos 3.0). The support for metadata and projects like Books or slideshow ist still very limited. (Welcome to Photos - Apple Support)(Get started with Photos for OS X - Apple Support)
how do i backup my aperture library
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While the new Photos application has not much to offer for professional users accustomed to Aperture's tools to manage a large library and customize the tools and metadata presets for an efficient workflow, you may want to upload a subset of your photos to iCloud for easy access on all devices. To do that, export selected albums and project from your main Aperture library as a new Aperture library with "File > Export > xxx as new library".
Don't delete your old Aperture Library in a hurry. It does not need much space, and you may need to revert to it, if the migration will not succeed. Photos will need additional storage during the migration that will be released later.Photos will migrate the last Aperture Library you opened before the migration automatically. So switch to the library you want to migrate, before you open Photos for the first time.Photos does support referenced files, but photos with referenced originals cannot be used with iCloud Photo Library. Photos has no tool to reconnect referenced originals like Aperture has. If an original is missing, you have to find it without a reconnect window like Aperture had. You can consolidate originals, but not relocate them.Photos does not support the merging of libraries. If you want to merge several libraries into one, do that in Aperture before you migrate your libraries, (Aperture 3.3: How to use Aperture to merge iPhoto libraries). See also: Notes on Merging Photos Libraries Apple Support Communities
Aperture actually works both similar to iPhoto with some important differences. Aperture has two ways of managing photos - the iPhoto way of importing photos into its own library (known as Managed Files), or where only a link to a photo is imported but the original photo is actually kept in a folder somewhere on your Mac (known as Referenced Files).
As professional photographers, we constantly have to consider how to protect the image libraries that we have poured so much time, energy and expense into building. As software, hardware, bandwidth, file sizes and business models evolve, so do our backup needs.
When I first started shooting professionally 6 years ago, a backup of my photo library would easily fit on a single DVD-ROM (4-5 GB). Later, I switched to a 16 GB USB thumb drive, which I carried everywhere on a keyring with my house and car keys! I enjoyed the comfort of keeping my data attached to the two things I would want to escape with in case of a fire or earthquake. That comfort was short lived, and I quickly outgrew those 16 gigs.
As my collection grew, I started backing it up to an 80 GB USB hard drive that stayed connected to my desktop PC. Over time, I upgraded to faster, larger USB 2.0 drives, which ended up costing the same as the 80 GB once did. I also tried the many online backup services that have popped up over the last few years, including iDrive, Mozy, Carbonite, Backblaze etc.
I use managed images (stored within the Aperture library) and cannot get Time Machine to work correctly. Every time I make a change to the library (such as adding a single photo), Time Machine tries to backup the entire library. Are you using managed or referenced images in your Aperture library? I last tried the Time Machine backup when first upgrading to Aperture 3. Has the bug been fixed in a later version of Aperture 3?Thanks!
I created a 2-Gb Aperture library (exported a few projects as a new library), and then included this library in my TM backups. After the first TM backup, I would edit a handful of photos and run TM a second time. The backup would tack on an additional 2-Gb to my TM backup file.
I have about 53GB of photos in my Aperture library which is stored on my internal HDD. I would like to move this library onto an external hard disk and continue to use Aperture without any loss of images, etc.
tl;dr: 600 GB photo library, took 3 weeks to migrate, some things are awesome (access to all my photos everywhere, on any device), some things less so (faces don't get synced, no loupe, no five-star rating system, no pro-level editing/batch workflows). All-in-all, I wish Apple didn't ditch Aperture... but it's not the end of the world moving to Photos.
So I finally did it. I abandoned my loupe, my tens of thousands of star ratings and labeled 'face' data, and started the process of moving all my photos from six separate Aperture libraries into one Photos library, synced to my iCloud Photo Library. I had to bump my iCloud plan to a 1TB plan, since my entire consolidated photo library (with 40,000+ 20-40 MB RAW files, JPEGs, and short video clips) is a hair shy of 600 GB. As long as Apple doesn't screw up the library or have frequent downtime, I'm okay with the $9.99/month for this service.
After you do that like 20-30 times, you just need to wait days and days for all the photos to upload. It's a good idea to not be doing crazy things with your photo library on any other devices until the library is fully synced.
One thing that was unclear to me was why Photos seemed to take its time trying to scan my library for faces. I relied heavily on faces in Aperture, and always had faces as keywords on all my photos, so it was really sad to lose that data when moving to Photos (the keywords remain, but Photos is rescanning everything for its own 'People' section).
But before you can start labeling 'People' Photos identifies, you have to wait (and wait, and wait) for Photos to scan your library for faces. You can start tagging as the scanning is happening (e.g. if it's only scanned 5,000 of a 10,000 photo library), or you can wait for the scanning to finish. During the whole process, there's a photoanalysisd process that runs in the background (and only while Photos is quit) if your Mac is connected to a power source.
Unfortunately, since my photo library is 600 GB and growing, there's no way to fit it entirely on my MacBook Air's internal SSD, and storing it on an external drive is quite annoying, since I would need to carry that drive with me anywhere I wanted to view or manage my photos! One of the best things about iCloud Photo Library is the fact that I can set 'Optimize Mac Storage' and have access to my entire photo library even on my paltry MacBook Air's 256 GB SSD, anywhere I have an Internet connection!
The only way to grab a full (and always-updated) backup of all the photos and videos in your iCloud Photo Library is to have one of your devices set to 'Download Originals'. Realistically, if you have a reasonable collection, that won't be possible on an iOS device which maxes out at 128 or 256 GB total storage. Plus, trying to recover images from a damaged photo library on an iOS device would be awkward at best.
So the only real solution is to have a Mac running somewhere that would always be downloading original files to a local hard drive. And then to preserve history (photos that were deleted, etc.), you would also need to have something akin to a Time Machine backup on the local hard drive, so you could go back in time and find old files.
The Mac mini is set to download all originals from the iCloud Photo Library (this runs in the background), and it also has iTunes running, and set to download new media files whenever available (that way I have backups of all the music and movies I've purchased or stored in my iCloud Music Library as well... and with Home Sharing enabled, I can access my entire music and video library on the local network without having to download anything through the Internet!
For completeness, I also have my Dropbox configured on this Mac mini, so I have an extra Time Machine'd backup of all my most important documents and projects (about 120 GB worth) that are stored in Dropbox. (For my Dropbox files, that means I have 7 separate complete backups, 3 with snapshots, and 2 that are remote (not in my house)... so unless there were a countrywide EMP attack or the worst stroke of coincidence ever, I'm sure I'll never lose files stored in my Dropbox!
So I exported everything from Aperture (this took a few days), uploaded everything to my iCloud Photo Library (this took a few weeks), then set up a robust full local backup solution with hourly snapshots that stores an archive going back about one year.
The most painful aspect of the change is the fact that my tens of thousands of 'Faces' I labeled in Aperture didn't migrate (except as IPTC keywords) to Photos. And my editing and batch processing workflows aren't as optimal as I'd like. But the convenience of having my entire photo library available anywhere (as long as I have an Internet connection), along with Photos' simpler but mostly-adequate editing tools, means I'm not as disappointed as I thought I would be at the outset.
Hi Jeff, thanks very much for a really helpful article. Like you, I have, reluctantly, decided to move from Aperture to Photos and uploading to iCloud is a very long winded process - I'm managing about 9Gb a day - so much slower than your experience. I haven't selected Optimise Mac Storage because I have plenty of space on my 1Tb iMac. I am rather mystified though as to exactly how big my library is - and I wondered if you might be able to shed some light for me: the library was migrated in one go from Aperture - according to Finder the migrated Aperture Library is 364.22 Gb, whilst the equivalent Photos Library is 426.87 Gb (I know Photos is using the Aperture files so they are not duplicated) - and the Photos Library that is being uploaded says it's 290.68 Gb. To complicate the issue my Aperture Vault says it's 330.5 Gb. Give or take the odd few photos these libraries should all be the same size - any thoughts? 2ff7e9595c
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