Aperture - yellow warning triangle and can't edit

[msjhaffey]

I've just discovered some photos in Aperture that I can't edit. Al the Adjustment choices are grayed out and there is a tiny yellow warning triangle in the bottom right of the picture.

Does anyone know what causes this and how I can fix it? It's affecting several of my photos.

TIA

[bobtomay]

It means that Aperture cannot find the original Master.

You can go to the File menu and try Relocate Master.

[msjhaffey]

Trying to Relocate Master doesn't work.

However, I run Time Machine every week so I'd guess that the masters will be backed up somewhere. I just can't figure out the steps needed to get the masters restored from the backup of the library without overwriting my newer images.

Can anyone help?

[Del]

No from memory "re-locate master" is only used to move a master (that you can find) to a new location.

There is another menu option (that i cant remember at the moment) that will show you all file reference in your library that Aperture can not find masters for and allows you to update Aperture to the files actual location.

[bobtomay]

Have not had this issue myself (yet).

From the searching I've done, the other option to try would be 'Manage Referenced Files'.

What I've found doesn't really give a lot of help either. But here are a couple of things that may give you some ideas.

referenced images Images whose masters are stored outside of the Aperture library.

offline Images whose masters are currently unavailable to Aperture. Offline images
appear in the Viewer and Browser with badge overlays displaying a red slash through
them. Images may be offline because the media containing the masters, such as a CD,
DVD, FireWire drive, or server, is not connected to your computer or the original
filenames have been modified in some way. To bring the images online, you must
reconnect them to their corresponding masters.

Hope it helps. But, I'm clueless as to how Aperture would have pics in it that had not been imported into the Library. Not enough experience with it yet.

[Del]

Hope it helps. But, I'm clueless as to how Aperture would have pics in it that had not been imported into the Library. Not enough experience with it yet.

The reason is that the actual files are referenced and the low res preview images sit in the library.

That way you can have a preview in your library of your images, whilst your referenced images sit in a hard drive which may not even be connected to your computer at that time. This is great for anyone using a laptop, you can bring your laptop to a client to let them see the previews of your images without also having to cart along the external hard drive containing all the images that aperture references.

Hope that makes sense.

[msjhaffey]

Fortunately I had taken regular Time Machine backups.

Somehow I had the masters in a directory which I had deleted - I don't remember how. But when I looked up the Reference (File - Managed Referenced Files) I could see where the files had been and then recover that directory.

It seemed to take Aperture a few minutes to recognise all was well again but it now has and I can edit them as before.

[bobtomay]

Pretty sweet, thanks for reporting back.

Now I'll know what to do. That's a slick trick, you can delete a pic through Finder, but Aperture will still have a preview of it available.