01-21-2011, 02:02 PM

So, in the past I had tried using Aperture for personal use as an editor and DAM in general. Never worked out for me for a few reasons, mainly because of it being so resource hungry and not being efficient enough. I was told that the latest updates have taken care of a lot of the bugs, beach balls etc.. so I'm trying it again.

I'm not switching from Lightroom, but I have an interest in learning the ins and out's of Aperture for 'other reasons'. That said, after a very slow import process (over a couple of days) it is finally ready to go. However, I can not move forward unless I have a very good understanding of why exactly the Aperture Library file is so large by default ,and whether or not a person can delete certain files without affecting the overall speed or performance of Aperture in general.

The two main folders within Apertur's Library file which are causing the bloat are these:



Compared with Lightroom's Catalog and Preview files:






I understand what Aperture is doing, in essence, and hate it for the same reasons I hated iPhoto. It is creating redundant files for different sizes, as well as creating preview thumbnails, according to the size I set in preferences. I think it also created duplicates every time I create certain types of edits such as burning and dodging, correct? I know it used to do this, not sure about the present however.

My question now is, is there a way to delete most of the redundant files, and only have Aperture create duplicates if I want it to? I personally see no reason to have duplicates all over the place when I'm not using them.

If I do delete certain files, will Aperture want to re-create them for the purpose of caching etc ?

In Lightroom, I set aside 10 gigs for caching purposes, but this is something that I chose to do and not something that LR forced upon me. I also am able to clear that cache either manually or automatically, at a time determined by me.

So, Aperture gurus, what are the possibilities here? How can I shrink that library file down and not sacrifice speed or efficiency. I don't want Aperture to constantly try and re-process everything just for the sake of previews and such. Seems very counter productive.

I guess if I had a larger scratch disk (I'll likely get a new internal HD soon) I wouldn't be as bothered as I am. But I still think that this is an awful lot of space to be hogged up in general, unless I have a say in the matter.

Help is appreciated !

Doug

01-22-2011, 04:29 PM

So, no one is up to the challenge eh? Ya'll just sit back and take it like that? For shame fellows !

d

01-22-2011, 04:38 PM

Sorry Doug...if I had a clue...I'd be on it in heartbeat!

- Nick

01-22-2011, 05:10 PM

Haha... I know, thanks Nick. Do you use Aperture at all?

Doug

01-22-2011, 09:39 PM

Ok I'll take a go at it some questions having once used Aperture 2.
I now use Lightroom for mainly because of the fact that Aperture doesn't support my cameras RAW images

To stop Aperture from creating duplicates for each adjustment:
Aperture Preferences>Advanced> uncheck "Create new versions when making adjustments"

The size of the "Previews" folder reflects the settings in Aperture Preferences>Previews
Depending on what is set (Photo size/quality) there it will make your Library folder giant, I know that the Apple default is pretty big.
Or turn off automatic previews completely, Aperture Preferences>Previews "New projects auto generate previews" This only for new projects, old ones still have their all their Previews which need to be manually deleted.

What you cannot do is delete previews for an album, at least by control-clicking on the album. You can select the album, then select all the images, and then delete the previews.
Bagelturf - Managing Aperture Previews

There isn't much you can do with the Thumbnails.

According to this apple article, Aperture thumbnails are 1024x768 resolution JPGs, and I know of no way of disabling their creation. For low resolution images, this is obviously pretty silly/redundant, since the speed-up will be minimal. Other than complaining to Apple (that "fixed size thumbnails even for low resolution images is stupid"), I'm not sure what you can do here.

I have a library of 34,000 photos which has produced 22 GB of thumbnails, an average of 680 kB per thumbnail. For your 12,000 photos 4.9 GB of thumbnails its about 430 kB per thumbnail. This overhead doesn't really bother me, because my 12 megapixel JPG images are 2-5 MB each (and RAWs are more like 20 MB), but for a library of smaller (say 2 to 5 megapixel) images, the thumbnails aren't that much smaller than the masters...

Just a warning, that according to posts like this one, Aperture will slowly regenerate your thumbnails, so while you can delete them to save space, they'll slowly come back.

If you've only tried with your smaller photos from an older camera, and your newer one has bigger files, then you'll see a big improvement in the amount of space "wasted" in thumbnails once you put the larger photos in. 280 GB of 288 kB photos seems unlikely (1.3 million photos?!) so I'm guessing you've got some much larger images in there... in which case it might be okay in the long run...

Should be easy enough to calculate the Aperture thumbnail waste from the total number of images multiplied by about 500 kB per thumb.

Also, Aperture doesn't delete any Thumbnails when you Trash a picture,
Aperture 3 Maintenance: Decreasing library size (Didn

01-22-2011, 10:25 PM

McYukon, my gratitude to you for scrounging up this info for me! I had read similar things about Aperture in the not too distant past, and I suppose that I was hoping for some of those things to change in future iterations of it. Ah well... But I might go ahead and delete as much as possible manually, as well as change some of those not so obvious (to say the least) preferences.

I'll never understand Apple's logic behind wanting to develop a database structure that makes its self so bloated, when it's not even remotely necessary. They do this very same thing with iPhoto, which to me is a shame because, aside from the bloat, iPhoto is a fantastic photo viewer with some really great features.

So, thanks again for the help and for the new reading material !

Doug

Edit: I forgot to ask. Which camera do you have, that they don't have the profiles for?

01-23-2011, 12:22 AM

It's the Panasonic FZ35 (FZ38 in Europe), good size, portable and the zoom range is also handy at times.
No idea why they can't or don't support it, but oh well. I've become quite used to LR so it doesn't bother me that much.