Best Aperture library etiquette?

[mojitomax]

Hi all.

I'm running out of space on my hard drive in a MacBook.

Currently all of my raw images are in a managed library in aperture. I delete the really rubbish pics and then have possibles, and keepers tagged red and yellow.

My thoughts are to copy the entire library to an external drive and on my MacBook, delete everything apart from the keepers.

Then when I have a new event I can copy all the raw images to a new event, categorise and edit them and then copy them all to the USB library and keep only the keepers on my MacBook?

In practice how would it work? I've heard of merging libraries but am worried about loosing data on the 'master USB' library.

Thanks for your help

[crmcatee]

I normally run for a year - then make a complete copy of the library externally and rename it to Aperture Library 2012.

Load it up into Aperture to check it and then load up the original and delete the folders I no longer want/need. Repeat on Jan 1st each year.

[V8LM]

I'm interested in this too. All my photos are in one library on the internal disk. This is getting full, yet I have umpteen TB of Time-capsule, NAS, and other near-line storage.

[crmcatee]

I should add - I was going to setup a Vault to back up the images - but couldn't find out if I backed it up, then I deleted a folder in Aperture would that also delete the folder in the Vault backup.

If anyone knows I'd be interested in knowing.

[mojitomax]

crmcatee said:

I should add - I was going to setup a Vault to back up the images - but couldn't find out if I backed it up, then I deleted a folder in Aperture would that also delete the folder in the Vault backup.

If anyone knows I'd be interested in knowing.

Yes. The vault will be a copy of your current aperture library do deletions are deleted from the vault too.

[crmcatee]

Thanks. Pity it doesn't work like Time machine.

[mojitomax]

crmcatee said:

Thanks. Pity it doesn't work like Time machine.

The time machine will restore previous libraries though.

[mojitomax]

it tunrs out that's it's quite easy to do.

http://support.apple.com/kb/VI159

1. simply copy your master library to a usb drive.

2. delete and trim the macbook working library as required.

3. import new photos and create projects. edit photos etc.

4. export the new photos as a new library.

5. import the new library into the USB disk master library and merge them

6. in the working macbook library, delete the photos from the new import that aren't required.

it sounds like a bit of a faff but should be quite straightforward in practice.

[Craikeybaby]

My tactics with Lightroom are to copy all the images I import to a separate drive, then do picks and rejects in Lightroom, getting rid of the rejects.

Then I have a smart collection set up, to find pictures that I haven't exported in the last 6 months. If I haven't done anything with an image in 6 months, the chances are I won't do anything with it at all. So these get reviewed then deleted. If I ever need to get back to the raw file it is on my external hard drive. This keeps my Lightroom catalogue fairly lean, I assume the same sort of thing would work on Aperture.