Comments on: Aperture 2 Quick Tip – Managing Previews

By: Iain MacDonald

Iain MacDonald — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:23:42 +0000

Thanks for the article – very useful. I was just looking to move from iPhoto to Aperture 3, and was trying to get my head around the difference in library size compared to the size of the original images.

All to do with Previews. Although having said that – I’ve been trying out a folder with around 500MB of photos.

Initially this gave me an Aperture Library of around 1GB.

But I don’t think I necessarily need previews, as I just have one machine etc.

So I switched off previews, and reimported.

That still gave me a library of around 900MB though – with the thumbnails folder in the library weighing in at around 400MB.

400MB worth of thumbnails for 500MB worth of photos seems an awful lot.

If that’s how it is, that’s OK – it would just be good to get my head around why it is!

Many thanks for any light shed.

By: RB

RB — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:15:39 +0000

Larry,

That’s how it usually goes – the manuals are okay but I find that somethings are not documented at all but even the things that are documented have no dots connecting them on how to use them together.

By: larry duff

larry duff — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:34:36 +0000

Excellent article, I wish I had found it 2 days ago… Spent a few hours trying to understand why my previews are not shared with iLife. That said, the solution (”maintain previews”) was right there in the Aperture User Manual, p. 202….

By: David Farquhar

David Farquhar — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:57:17 +0000

Excellent page, great tip about “Maintain previews for project”. My workflow now if I want to do lots of editing of files is switch this off, make the edits with nothing else in the background (so much easier) and then switch it back on again once complete. While Aperture goes away generating previews for a while I can then do something else off the computer. Less frustration, less time spent editing. Hooray!

By: Merlin71

Merlin71 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:05:02 +0000

And yes, anything getting more people to crochet is good, but really, what do you DO with them. ,

By: Phil Culhane

Phil Culhane — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:46:03 +0000

Thanks for solving a troublesome problem. I shoot onsite at sporting events; often 20-30K images a day – previews were killing me.

Greatly appreciated!
Cheers

By: cubemann

cubemann — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:11:01 +0000

My SBODs have greatly diminished. Thank you very much!

By: Adrian Harvey

Adrian Harvey — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:58:14 +0000

Portrait format preview fuzzy.
Hi RB
You seem to be a preview expert, so I wondered if I could ask you about a problem I am having, which no Applestore bod has managed to solve.

I set my previews to 1680, so I can whizz through them on my monitor. However, I’ve noticed that the portrait format shots are not as sharp. I press z to see them at 100%.
I tried a workaround; turning off autorotate in camera, then manually rotating images after the preview has been created. Doesn’t work because Aperture just generates a new preview.
I did a screengrab of the same image before and after rotation, and there is a big difference.
Any ideas?
best regards Adrian

By: RB

RB — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:52:19 +0000

Peter,

Sorry for the delayed response – got a little busy. I use something in the middle like 6 for my purposes. In my mind the only reason to use higher (bigger) is if you have noticeable compression artifacts when using the previews for your purposes. If you don’t stay with the smaller sizes, if you see compression artifacts that bother you when using previews then up the quality.

By: Peter Sidell

Peter Sidell — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:39:52 +0000

Your insights are very helpful. You mention the maximum pixel setting you use for preview. what is the quality setting that you use, and how do you choose that?
Thanks