I will admit that I have no idea how to really use Aperture, at the moment I have about 71000 photos - I recently upgraded to Aperture 3.
When working with my photos, I noticed that a bunch - at least 5000 or more have lost their “file” size, all of these photos were no less than 1.5MB at minimum, so for example a picture that has a Pixel size of 1704x2272 (3.9MP) shows up as 961KB.
On some of these file if I drag them to the desktop they regain partial file size - some can go from a 376KB file up to a 1.5MB, while others may only double KB size, and some no change at all.
I have no idea where to even begin - I have tried to relocate masters, and referenced files and this has been to no avail…
Has anyone had this happen?
Aperture creates a version of the file to work with. So you are not really looking at the master file but at the version. This version will change whenever you edit the image. The master file is always untouched.
By dragging the photo from Aperture to the desktop then you will drag this version of the image. Now the size of the version is not full size as this will take up a lot of diskspace and will make Aperture slower to respond. You can set the size of the version files in the preferences.
But in order to use a photo somewhere else, it is better to export it. Right click on any picture and choose export. You will get some options on how you want to export it. And one of the option is to export is full size. This will then generate a new version of the picture but then in full size that is available in the master photo.
When I click on the file to export, it gives me the following : Version Master Metadata or project as a new library - on one pic I tried to export the Master and even tho the pixel size is 1600x1200 (1.9MP) it exported as a 304KB file
Linda,
Here’s a very basic overview of how Aperture handles your files, which may help to understand what your’e seeing. I am going to highly recommend that you read “In-Depth Getting Started with Aperture 3” as this will explain all these topics in detail.
But here’s the summary version:
Your camera creates a file that’s a JPG or RAW. This is the Master.
You import the file into Aperture, and whenever you look at it or make an adjustment, this is calculated on the fly, every single time.
When you need to send a file to someone, you Export > Version, and Aperture creates a JPG (or whatever you like) at the size you determine.
If you ever want to get the original file that came off the camera, you can choose to Export > Master but there’s rarely a reason to do this.
While in Aperture, it creates Preview files, which are low resolution JPG version of your images. This makes browsing faster and sharing possible. If you drag an image out of Aperture, it’s the preview that your’e dragging out.
In your last post, you said you exported the master and it’s only a 304k file, but is this master a JPG? 1.9Megapixels isn’t very big at all so that could be right, and if you did export master, then that is right.
If you think that this master isn’t the right file, then perhaps you have duplicates imported into Aperture; the original larger master, and a smaller version that you created somewhere along the way and imported as well. You said you upgraded; was that from iPhoto?
Anyway I do encourage you to read that ebook, or if you prefer video training, there’s this http://jal.bz/Video2Brain and there’s the Live Training as well.
@PhotoJoseph
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