Photos.app is as stupid about JPEG Export as iPhoto and Aperture.

Try this experiment.

1. Import a camera produced JPEG into Photos.app. Check the size. Let’s say it’s 6.8MB.

2. Don’t edit the image. Export it as maximum quality JPEG. Check the size. It will be something like 17.2MB.

Even though the image was native JPEG, and it wasn’t edited, Photos.app decompressed and then recompressed it. Adding 11MB of non-value.

Unchanged from iPhoto and, for that matter, Aperture.

There should be a better way. (No, unmodified original is not a better way — because if editing were done, or the original were not JPEG, then you would want the transformation.)

iOS 10 bluetooth problems: repairing with Pioneer DEH-X6800BT

After the iOS 10 update I lost bluetooth connectivity to my Pioneer DEC-X6800BT car stereo. I tried the usual remedies.

I think the real fix was initiating connectivity from the iPhone side rather than the Pioneer side. The DEH-X6800BT was never able to find my i6, but the fine print in the manual said the phone might see if it if “Visible” was enabled. I confirmed “Visible” was “On” for the Pioneer, the iPhone saw it, the confirmation number appeared on the Pioneer, I accepted that … pairing resumed. Now I’ll see how well iOS 10 car park detection works (requires bluetooth connection between phone and stereo).

Other things I tried (maybe they helped?):

• Usual wipe/delete connections on both sides.
• Reset Pioneer back to factory mode (not in manual, had to Google, trick is to power off, then push the menu button and look for reset).
• Reset network settings on iPhone

There are firmware updates for some Pioneer phones but not for the X6800BT. The stereo has an odd feature — if you cable connect an iPhone (any cable, don’t need their cable!) it will also Bluetooth pair transiently. Handy for phone of another family member.

Incidentally, I really dislike my DEH-X6800BT. Overloaded controls, too many poorly managed and weirdly distributed menus, processing pauses that make Siri unusable when car manages interaction, awful ideas like color shifting panel and “MixTrax” etc. The manual is seriously incomplete. Get something else.

iCloud Photo Library, Photos.app and my Aperture plan (plus Aperture Exporter)

I recently migrated my daughter to Photos.app and iCloud Photo Library. I ran into some minor issues and one significant bug, but I liked it well enough to pay $1/month for the 50GB tier. It did take hours for her few thousand images to upload. My hope is that she’ll start managing (deleting mostly) her images this way. The full res images are stored in a Photos.app Library in her account on my Air as well as in iCloud; the local Library gets backed up with offsite rotation.

So now I’m trying it for myself. I’ve never liked or used “My Photo Stream”, so I didn’t have to turn that off. I just enabled iCloud Photo Library with an empty Library then added the images from my phone. It’s impressive to see crops and burst select changes made on my phone update my Photos.app Library almost instantly.

Incidentally, turning this feature on disables iTunes photo sync. I didn’t even realize I had 125 orphaned images on my phone from when I used to do iTunes photo sync.

I’m not even dreaming of moving my 350GB Aperture Library to iCloud though. Here’s my current Aperture plan: 

1. Migrate the family Mac to El Capitan after next release and test my Aperture Library against that machine. I assume it will work well enough but I need to do my own testing. I know of a few problems with El Capitan.
2. Once I’m somewhat satisfied I’ll move my Mac to El Cap and stay there for two years unless (unlikely) Aperture runs in OSNext. 
3. Meanwhile I’ll be using Photos.app to work with my iPhone 6 images and perhaps RAW or JPEG images from my dSLR. I’ll “Develop” them there and, when they are “ready”, I’ll move JPEGs (not RAW) into Aperture and delete them from Photos.app on my Mac and my iPhone (replaces importing from iPhone). Yes, this appalls some photographers but I care about archives more than image editing options post initial work. 
4. Somewhere around 2018 I’ll flatten all my keywords (I use Aperture’s inheritance model queries -- which were too advanced for market really) and migrate to Photos.app 2018. Assuming Photos.app is still around in 2018.

Incidentally, while developing this plan I tried out my copy of Aperture Exporter. It didn’t go well. AE creates keywords in Aperture for things like image-album relationships; in my case that resulted in very large numbers of keywords. Probably more than Aperture was ever tested to handle, more than enough to prove the UI doesn’t handle scrolling. If I use AE on the future it will be with a temporary copy of my Library, not the original.

Note/Update: 

At least with Yosemite this seems to work, though it’s stretching the bounds of what Apple allows:

• My Photo Stream: turned off in iOS.Photos, OS X.Photos and Aperture. (It’s a useless feature.)
• iCloud Photo Sharing: turned off in OS X.Photos, on in iOS.Photos and Aperture.
• iCloud Photo Library: on in iOS.Photos and OS X.Photos, not available in Aperture. Download Originals to this Mac in iOS.Photos, Optimize in iOS.Photos.

Porting an H2O Wireless (AT&T MVNO) to AT&T

(Original 6/24/2015, updated 64/28/2019 when ported last number to AT&T)

When I last wrote about H2O Wireless, our kids dirt cheap mobile carrier, I mentioned that our daughter’s texting costs were bringing the monthly H2O fee close to the $25/month device fee on Emily and my AT&T account. 

The move has come sooner than I’d expected, because in the process of debugging her iPhone [1] with some SIM swaps we lost all data access. I tried contacting H2O wireless to see if they had a fix, but I couldn’t get through. I didn’t try too hard — the H2O web site is increasingly clear that prepaid plans aren’t supposed to have data access. I figured we were living on borrowed time.

Our first attempt at porting failed though. I did it at an AT&T retail store; they had the impression we couldn’t port an AT&T MVNO number to AT&T because the porting software wasn’t designed for that use case.

i was going to let things lie for a bit, but then my daughter started getting 2-3 AT&T texts a day demanding she finish her porting. When I called up to stop the bloody things I was transferred to the “porting department’, where I ran into one of those miraculous people who actually know how things work.

Turns out the problem was not the MVNO to AT&T port. The problem is that nobody knows what the account number is for an H2O Wireless prepaid account. H2O’s correspondence and web site imply it’s either the phone number for the H2O phone or my phone number associated with the master account and credit cards.

Wrong. The account number is the SIM Card number, known to iOS settings or iTunes as the ICCID number. In addition you need to know a “passcode”, which is typically the last 4 digits of the ICCID number (supposedly customers can change this, perhaps from an H2O SIMd phone).

An AT&T porting center expert told me when the port was authorized, then I went back to an  the AT&T store to complete the process (create a database relationship between IEMI (phone ID) and ICCID (SIM card ID)) and pick up a new SIM. Our daughter’s phone service continued until the AT&T rep complete the process. There are a few things you need to do before completion:

• Delete the H2O profile if you have one. This is hard to find in iOS 8; it’s in Settings:General then “Profiles”. You need the H2O profile to get data on an H2O SIMd phone, but if you don’t remove it you won’t have data posts transfer to AT&T. (You can remove it after transfer and you’ll get data.)
• Log out of Message and FaceTime — these have their own authentication mechanism and they may get confused by the SIM swap.
• If you’re using Google Voice for voicemail remove it. (Restore post switch or just use iPhone Visual voicemail — if Google’s directions don’t work see this page.)

On our no-contract mobile share account we were charged $15 $30 for adding the phone [Update: cost doubled between 2015 and 2019]

After you confirm voice and data services on the newly activated time enable Message, FaceTime and setup visual voicemail.

[1] An old 32GB iPhone 4S we fondly call the “DemonPhone”. It has been my primary tech support pain for years — possibly due to occult hardware issues, but also due to Apple’s bugs, DRM flaws, and hacked together online services. H2O hasn’t necessarily helped; adding a low quality and low service mobile carrier to a buggy phone puts the D in Demon.

Update 8/3/2015

Ting.com has a priceless resource on phone number porting, including H2O wireless.

• account number is the ICCID of the SIM card
• To find account number you need to call H2O wireless. Try 800-643-4296. They will provide you with the secret account number, it’s not available otherwise. You’ll need to provide the last 3 numbers dialed.
• PIN is the last 4 digits of the SIM card ID/ ICCID

Because AT&T usual porting tool doesn’t work with MVNOs, or perhaps because I’m on a corporate discount account, I needed to do this at an AT&T store. It took at least 30 minutes of rep time.

Incidentally, I’m separately looking at porting a CenturyLink number to a burner phone then to Google Voice — hoping that will also kill my CenturyLink service (really, Comcast may be better, if only because more people hate them). That information is harder to find. I’ve read two theories on the CenturyLink number porting (number security) PIN both from a single source (the lack of information is a rather strong hint that CenturyLink is quite dead).

• last four digits of account holder’s SSN
• the 3 digits that follow the CenturyLink phone number on a billing statement (not including a letter that may follow those digits).

My guess is the SSN, but I’ll write a post about what happens.

Update 9/4/2015: What happens when you screw up a port and the number gets stuck.

Months after I wrote this I had to port another number. Unfortunately I relied on memory rather than reading my old notes; I tried the port at the store and messed it up. I should have done it through my AT&T account and just gone to the store to get a new SIM. This resulted in a stranded phone number — H2O’s account system couldn’t work with it but AT&T’s port eligibility page said it could’t be ported.

I knew H2O couldn’t fix the problem (their support staff is hapless), so I called AT&T’s porting service directly (888-898-7685) and “Darlene” fixed it. She spent about 30 minutes on hold with H2O then called me back.

I took the phone to the AT&T store, but ran into a confused rep. He didn’t understand how to finish the process. The clue was to say something like “check port status”, from that he found the right screen and quickly completed the port.

Aperture and/or iPhoto had a nasty habit of emptying Facebook photo albums @2011 or so

For some time I've noticed some of the older Facebook albums I'd created from either iPhoto or Aperture showed with generic icons when displayed in Aperture's Facebook view. After a recent Aperture update to 3.51 I decided to investigate; I right clicked on the icons and navigated to the albums in Facebook.

Which had no images in them. It sounds like this bug, documented back in 2010 (as I write this I think Discussions has gone offline):

Xeep 11/6/2010

... I was pleased that the Aperture 3.1 update fixed a lot of bugs related to Facebook, however it seems to have introduced a new bug. When I started Aperture after the update, it brought in all my Facebook albums (about 10 of them), however one of the albums was empty. I went on Facebook to see that this album still existed but was also empty. It seems that Aperture deleted the contents since there were obviously pictures in it before the update. I created a new album in Aperture and uploaded it successfully to Facebook. The photos stayed intact until the next time I opened Aperture after which it deleted all the photos again. I repeated this 5 times before giving up. It only affected the one previous album (seemingly random) and any new albums I try to create. I've since disconnected Aperture from Facebook and only upload through Safari. Anyone seen something similar?...

I saw some similar comments in Apple Discussions, but not much elsewhere. Looking back at my albums the most last empty album was some time in summer 2011. So perhaps the bug, which might have belonged to Apple or Facebook or both, was fixed after that.

The photos are still in Aperture -- though I had a stomach ache moment when I thought they weren't. So this appears to be a synchronization bug, of the sort that have plagued me for years decades. Synchronization is tough, and Apple has failed at it more than once.

I could recreate the albums by exporting images from Aperture and uploading via Safari, but for now I'll leave them be.

If you used Aperture or iPhoto @2010-2011 with Facebook you should take a look at your albums.

iPhoto bug: black or all white photos when editing on MacBook Duo

I haven't used iPhoto on our white MacBook running Lion for years. I did so recently and I discovered I was afflicted by the Photo turns black while editing bug.

At first if I clicked the 'enhance' button the image vanished to be replaced by an all white icon. If I click Shadow or some other edit controls it went entirely black.

I upgraded to the very latest version of iPhoto (9.4.2) and repaired permissions/repaired database (cmd-opt-start). Now I have exactly this behavior:

iPhoto editing shadows makes displayed...: Apple Support Communities

... I am using a MB core 2 Duo at 2.16 MHz with 4 MB RAM with MacOS 10.7.4 and iPhoto '11 (ver 9.3.2) and have a problem with editing photos when I change the 'shadow or highlights'. The photo turns to black when I move the slider off the zero mark and the photo returns when I move the slider back to zero.

I had the same problem with the previous version iPhoto ('09 I think) and bought the new version '11 to try to fix the problem. The problem seemed to go away for a while but has returned. I have tried starting iPhoto using command/option and repairing the permissions, then rebuilding the thumbnails, then repair the database and then finally rebuilding the database. Each time I tried a repair, I tested the shadow/highlight edits and got the same black result. All other adjustments work fine. It is just the shadow/highlight adjustment that turns everything black ...

I moved the problematic library to my primary machine and, unsurprisingly, there were no problems at all.  I think there's a bug in iPhoto that renders it incompatible with my old MacBook's video processor. Apple is very unlikely to fix this.

Update: Aperture on the same old MacBook has no problems. If I adjust shadow in Aperture however, the image is all black in iPhoto.

This is a bug that affects rendering of at least some JPEGs following shadow/highlight edits on MacBook Duo with integrated Intel GPU.

Using iPhoto and Aperture together - and merging iPhoto Libraries

My first post on merging iPhoto Libraries was published on January 17th, 2004.

Gordon's Tech: Apple - Discussions - iPhoto 4: Consolidate multiple libraries

... Using iPhoto Library Manager or similar software, open Secondary Library. Adjust albums so all images appears in EXACTLY one album. (Apple has an AppleScript to find images not in any library, see AppleScript site for iPhoto.)
1b. OPTIONAL. In Secondary Library edit roll names to descriptive names.
2. Burn Secondary Library to iPhoto Disc from iPhoto.
3. Switch iPhoto to Main Library. Insert iPhoto Disc.
4. Expand view of iPhoto Disc. Select ALL albums. Drag and drop on Main Library icon.

Almost 9 years later Apple has posted an officially supported approach to merging iPhoto Libraries - using Aperture.

Nine years ... nine years ...

I could cry.

I did this the hard (hard, hard) way about 6 months ago. I am sure it works a hell of a lot better now. Album Descriptions are still a problem. Both iPhoto Albums and Events can have Descriptions, but only Aperture Events/Projects can have Descriptions. In my testing with iPhoto and Aperture's new unified Photo Library I can edit or create Album Descriptions, but they aren't shown in Aperture.

Maybe this will be fixed in an Aperture update -- but I'm not holding my breath. Apple's description of how they reconciled Aperture and iPhoto doesn't mention this gap (you can submit a request on Apple's Aperture Feedback form). It does list several other issues, these are the ones that seemed significant to me:

• Smart albums from each application are visible and fully functional in the other. However, the album settings must be edited with the application in which you created the album. 
• Photos hidden using iPhoto's Hide command cannot be accessed in Aperture.
• PDF files in Aperture libraries are not visible or accessible in iPhoto. (I remember when iPhoto supported PDFs btw)
• If you activate Photo Stream for a library in iPhoto and then open it in Aperture, that library is still linked to Photo Stream. Only one library can be linked to Photo Stream at a time, so if you subsequently open another library and activate Photo Stream, the previous library is no longer linked. (I try to avoid Photo Stream for now - feels like it needs several more iterations)

In keeping with Apple's deplorable documentation policies they omit mention of real issues. Besides the Album Description gap, I would be very careful about using Keywords. Aperture's Keywords use a fairly complex hierarchy model, iPhoto keywords are a flat list; true interoperability is mathematically impossible. On inspection iPhoto only shows the very top of the Aperture Keyword tree; unless you want to go to a flat keyword model don't touch Keywords in iPhoto. Interestingly Smart Albums defined against Aperture Keywords still work in iPhoto even though the Keywords can't be displayed in iPhoto.

Lastly, since the two apps support different numbers of 'Stars' the ratings mapping must be lossy.

I've started cautious use of both iPhoto and Aperture together. I liked iPhoto 9's Event Management tools, and even though they've been dumbed down in iPhoto 11 they're still better than Aperture's. I'd hoped to use iPhoto to export albums to Picasa, but Google stopped support on the Mac Picasa Web Albums exporter and iPhoto PlugIn. It still shows in my iPhoto since it was previously installed, and supposedly it still works if you can find it. (Proof that I am the proverbial dinosaur  -- few seem to care that this app was discontinued.)

I'll update this post with what I learn over time.

Photo gallery sharing is dead. Why?

E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e
rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the
bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
Monty Python, the Dead Parrot Sketch

Photo gallery sharing is an ex-parrot.

SmugMug is still around, but they recently raised their rates and started a wee twitter storm. Google discontinued support for Mac uploads from iPhoto. Flickr is a zombie. Apple killed their photo gallery service. A bunch of printing/sharing services have closed. Apple's Aperture pages have dead links to extinct sharing plug-ins. Old products like Gallery don't have Aperture or iPhoto plug-ins.

Facebook has some photo sharing, but albums are limited to 100 images and there's no full res download. Twitter and Photo Stream and Dropbox are different products.

The interesting question is - what killed photo gallery sharing?

I assume lack of interest. There just weren't that many people interested in sharing photo albums, and perhaps even fewer people interested in browsing them much less downloading their own images. The number of people willing to pay to share photo albums was even smaller. Now add in the considerable complexity of personal photo management ... (my Aperture consolidation project almost finished me)...

Now factor increasing costs, as image size grew faster than storage capacity.

What interest there was ended up being largely served by Facebook.

It's surprising the businesses lasted as long as it did.

I miss amateur web page technologies, and I will miss the online photo gallery.

Don't bother with the open source Aperture to Picasa export plugin

I decided to try the open source Aperture to Picasa export plugin.

It worked for about 100 images, then died. I couldn't get it to upload additional images; I got a range of cryptic error messages.

There are 24 open defects, it was lasts uploaded Nov 2010, 3 years ago.

Don't bother with it.

Ubermind used to make a plug-in, but it's gone (I wouldn't trust the versions I can find around the net).

Once I get time to upgrade to Mountain Lion I'll presumably be able to share the library with iPhoto, I think Google still maintains an uploader for iPhoto.

Update: Google has discontinued support for the Mac uploader. I'm so glad I pay for Google storage for my photos.

Aperture 3.3 is iPhoto Pro. At last. Sort of.

After years of false claims of iPhoto to Aperture migration support, and four months after I realized iPhoto was going down the wrong road for me, and three months after I began my extremely painful iPhoto to Aperture migration, Apple has released iPhoto Pro (aka Aperture 3.3).

Imagine my joy.

The only saving grace is that I might have saved a few people by advising them to wait for Aperture 4, which has now come in the form of iPhoto Pro 1.0/Aperture 3.3.

According to Apple's marketing claims, the latest (Lion-only) versions of Aperture and iPhoto  share a single database model. So, in theory, both apps can work on the database.

I doubt it works as advertised, but it has to be an improvement on my experience! I'd strongly advise waiting until September before doing a major iPhoto to Aperture migration. Now that you know the end is in sight the wait should be tolerable.

Personally, I'm looking forward to, at the least, using iPhoto's Picasa uploader and iPhoto's superior UI for Event/Project and many common image management operations.

Assuming the inevitable bugs get sorted out, this is an extraordinary conclusion to what must have been a formidable software effort. At one point Apple had two completely incompatible photo management products. One was a natural Mac app with an elegant UI and some infuriating limitations. The other looked like a port from NeXTStep [1]. They had almost nothing in common.

Slowly, painfully, Apple turned these two disparate products into iPhoto and iPhoto Pro. To do that they had to reconcile very different functional models and data models. It would have been a very hard, very long, glamor-free slog. I hope the team was at least paid well.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go cry in my Scotch.

[1] I was never able to learn where the heck Aperture came from. It's neither Windows nor Mac.

Update: I remembered my underused MacBook Air runs Lion, so I tested the new Aperture and iPhoto together. Unsurprisingly, they failed my first test.

First -- the good news. Annotations on an iPhoto Event are now visible in Aperture.

The bad news -- Album annotations (descriptions) are still not viewable or editable in Aperture.

Maybe in another year or two?

iPhoto to Aperture: Summary and managing the Event/Album problem

Apple's Aperture photo management software was a mistake.

I don't know what they were thinking, or where it came from. Obviously it was intended to be a "professional" alternative to iPhoto, but someone (Jobs?) never thought through how customers would move from one to the other. Migrating complex data between fundamentally dissimilar applications is an impossible problem.

Apple's customers wanted iPhoto Pro, instead we got Aperture 1.0.

Apple must know they made a bad mistake. Over the past three years they've been trying to turn iPhoto into Aperture-lite, and Aperture into iPhoto Pro. Despite the marketing claims, they're not there yet. They may never arrive -- it's almost impossible to change an application's fundamental behavior without producing a smoldering wreck.

Eight weeks after starting down this road I recommend waiting for Aperture 4...

iPhoto to Aperture: My experience: Apple Support Communities

... Several weeks ago I migrated three iPhoto Libraries from iPhoto 8 to Aperture 3.23. (In limited testing iPhoto 9 migration appeared to have similar results).  

.... if you are a demanding sort, wait for Aperture 4.1 and iPhoto 10.x.   My migration process was fraught with traps and errors that resulted in loss of 'metadata' (image descriptions, etc). Video migration was particularly problematic. I spent many, hours experimenting and testing. I had to repeat the imports several times to find the best path.

Some data loss cannot be avoided; Aperture does not store iPhoto Event or Album descriptions. Keyword consolidation is a tedious process.   At the end of the road Aperture gives me many new features, scalability, and a (relative) confidence that I'm committed to an application with a demanding and technical user base.  

On the other hand, I miss iPhoto's many clever features for managing Events/Rolls. Aperture is taking me back to the days of Albums...

It's too late for me though. I've paid the price and made the transition. 

Most of the transition that is. I'm still trying to work around edge issues. Consider the "Event" to "Project" migration.

The two concepts have quite a bit in common. Each photo belongs to exactly one "Event" (iPhoto) or Project (Aperture). Photos can be moved from one Event to another. By contrast, a single photo can appear in multiple Albums.

Even so, there are significant differences. Over the last few years Apple added a lot of clever workflow and UI affordances to Events. They became so easy to work with I came to use Events for many things I'd done with Albums. I went back in time and reworked older Events to fit the new model.

After the migration however, most of those conveniences are gone. Aperture "Projects" are only superficially "Event-like". They'e relatively awkward to work with. I'm back to using Albums again, and I'm looking for an AppleScript method to turn hundreds of Events into Albums.

I'm sure I'll work around a lot of the issues. I wish, however, that Apple had created a true iPhoto Pro rather than go down the Aperture road. I wonder if, in the Cook era, Apple will finally introduce iPhoto Pro, and quietly retire Aperture.

See also

• Gordon's Tech: iPhoto 8 to Aperture 3.23: Migration notes 3/2012
• Gordon's Tech: iPhoto to Aperture migration: movie support is weak in Aperture, but missing thumbnails are no longer a problem 3/2012
• Gordon's Notes: Lessons in Software: Aperture 3 and iPhoto 11 10/2010
• Gordon's Tech: Aperture Projects descriptions and iPhoto Event descriptions - what happens on iPhoto migration? 12/2010

Update: I did work around the issue -- in an illuminating way. In iPhoto Events and Albums live in separate UI views. In Aperture both can be contained in Folders. So I mix my Events and Albums now.

iPhoto to Aperture migration: movie support is weak in Aperture, but missing thumbnails are no longer a problem

In the final stage of my iPhoto 8 to Aperture 3.23 migration I imported my a 62 GB iPhoto Library of about 18,629 "Photos", of which, by keyword, 259 were actually "Movie".

Yes - iPhotos support of Movies is half-hearted.

In iPhoto all but one of the 259 videos displayed with a preview image.

After the 8 hours of importing and processing were done I had a 66GB Aperture Library. The first thing I did was check the Movies.

This time there were 270; 259 with the keyword iPhoto Original and 11 with keyword iPhoto Edited. Aperture stacks them as it does photos (option-;).

Of the 270, 36 showed icons indicating they could not be played within Aperture -- though they could play in QuickTime. Another 43 could play in Aperture, but they had no thumbnail (black thumbnail). There didn't seem to be anything different about these movies. Another two had incomplete thumbnails.

There's nothing to be done about the unsupported video formats -- they area  good reminder that the 2010 video format situation is a bloodymess. I will put these on my list of videos to transcode to a modern format -- hopefully without too much quality loss. [1]

The missing thumbnails seemed likewise intractable. I couldn't find any web resources on fixing them. Aperture Help was more ... helpful. Turns out there's now a menu command to generate thumbnails (new in 3.x), that took care of the problem.

Alas, there's no fix for a much more severe problem. Aperture imports iPhoto image Titles and Descriptions, but not iPhoto Movie Titles and Descriptions. The Aperture "Captions" for these movies were empty.

[1] The more I learn about transcoding video, the more terrible it seems. To do it well seems to be dark magic involving several pre-compression processing steps. Maybe I'll transcode to Motion-JPEG and be done with it.

Update 4/2/2012: The Title and Captions for the movies appears to be tied to the "Version Name" bug that can affect importing of iPhoto Titles from images. When I set Version Master = Master Filename on iPhoto import I got Aperture.VersionName and Aperture.Caption values from iPhoto. I also noticed that the Built in "Videos" smart album doesn't show videos Aperture can't manage internally -- so it's misleading (another bug).

The unsupported video format may be from our Canon SD camera, and there are some odd bugs there too. I can open the unrecognized video in QuickTime, save it as .MOV (same data, only the metadata changes) and import it back in -- and now Aperture will recognize and play it. So the problem isn't a codec issues, it's packaging/metadata problem. During the export/import process The Version Name was lost (not to surprising), but in addition the prior version name was set to the Date Created (bizarre beyond words).

Update 4/3/2012: I'm still trying to understand what Aperture is doing with movies imported via browser vs via iPhoto Library import. I think both methods are unforgivably unreliable and buggy, but they have different bugs. I'm experimenting with combining both, then reviewing metadata in list view to decide which to keep.

I recommend using the list view and adjusting metadata to show file size, project name, file name, version name, caption, rating, date and so on. I discovered that several videos were tagged as "iPhoto Externally edited", but they were in reality JPEG thumbnails.

See also

• Gordon's Notes: Why doesn't the world's richest company make better software? 4/2012
• Gordon's Tech: iPhoto 8 to Aperture 3.23: Migration notes 3/2012

iPhoto 8 to Aperture 3.23: Migration notes

I'm migrating my image and video libraries from iPhoto to Aperture. This is a long and tedious process since the fully automated importer doesn't completely work, there's no Aperture help file documentation and few web discussions or knowledge base articles. Unfortunately iPhoto to Lightroom migration is even harder.

If you have older iPhoto Libraries like mine, you need to understand how Aperture Stacks work. That's because in old iPhoto any edited images are treated by Aperture as 'externally edited' versions of an iPhoto original and they "stack".

I hope this process will improve with Aperture 4. It is one of the most miserable computer tasks I have undertaken since the days of hacking WordPerfect printer drivers with a hex editor.

Why now

• iPhoto 9.x (11) is a functional regression from iPhoto 8. I believe Apple has ceded the pro market to Adobe, and now markets Aperture to prosumers (that's me). That means iPhoto will continue to go downmarket even as it converges with iCloud and iPhoto for iOS. I don't want to go there.
• Aperture 3 is a better photo management tool with only one gaping omission -- there's no place to store album descriptions (only events have descriptions).
• I can work on Projects while traveling and integrate them.
• I'm tired of working around two different sets of bugs. [1]
• I need to be aligned with "power users" -- iPhoto users don't have much energy any more

What is lost

• If you are not very careful, you will lose all of your iPhoto Titles.
• Aperture is less stable than iPhoto. Aperture users learn to kill it and repair its database.
• iPhoto 8.x has elegant shortcuts for creating and managing Events that Aperture lacks (splitting, etc.). iPhoto Events display is also much better than Aperture Projects in many ways. In iPhoto it's easy to go from an image to the container Event, in Aperture I can't see how to do that (the columnar browse view does tell you the Event container name and there's probably an AppleScript workaround. It's a funny miss.)
• iPhoto 8 keyword entry is more efficient and better developed than in Aperture (though Aperture has other keyword features). I used the Command Editor to assign five keywords to numbers, I didn't like the default keyword modifier. (If you have a numeric keypad you don't need to worry about this.)
• You can quickly edit photo captions in place in iPhoto. In Aperture you need to use the metadata inspector. It's slower.
• In iPhoto when you select multiple photos you see a summary of the selection with a date range. In Aperture you only see metadata on the first photo selected.
• iPhoto 8 has smarter batch change options
• Aperture Libraries are about 25% larger than iPhoto Libraries for the same number of images. This might be partly related to how Aperture creates thumbnails for 'stacked' iPhoto images belonging to multiple Albums.
• Quick navigation from iPhoto to image file.
• I'd been processing raw images in Aperture but exporting JPEGs to iPhoto. I liked this as an archival strategy, RAW images won't be readable in ten years. I was, however, falling behind in processing images. Working only in Aperture will be faster even though the RAW images are significantly larger than the JPEGs. I've started shooting JPEG for less important jobs to reduce the storage consumed.
• "Keepsakes" like Books - though I recently discovered that iPhoto 8 can't render the books I created with earlier versions - the layouts are gone. Whatever new layout one chooses there is some likelihood of losing content. Aperture did import a 'book' as though it were an album.
• My iPhoto Slideshows (though I only ever did 1-2 of these) - UPDATE: I did get at least one when importing via iPhoto Library
• It appears Aperture cannot import even modern iPhoto contrast settings (may differ in iPhoto 9?)
• Aperture's video format support is weaker than iPhotos and it has video thumbnail creation bugs.

What I tried (and discarded)

I thought I could use IPLM to create a "clean" import Library while also allowing me to avoid the 'duplicate' image problem with older Libraries that have JPEGs for both current and revised images. I found, however, that Aperture does a better job importing an iPhoto Library than IPLM does migrating or merging libraries. In particular IPLM cannot recreate Smart Albums, but Aperture can. Also my IPLM migrated Library image ratings didn't import into Aperture, but the native iPhoto Library images do keep ratings.

What I'm doing now

I'm converting each iPhoto Library into a separate Aperture Library. This makes comparisons easier. Then, when i'm satisfied not much is lost, and I've moved over any missing Descriptions, I can start to combine the Aperture Libraries into one. Given the size of these Libraries and the backups needed it's wise to budget for some big disks and something like OWC's Newer Technology Disk Dock.

• Prior to migrating an iPhoto Library I first reorganize it to be closer to the Aperture Model
  
  • Consolidate Events into Larger sets. For > 100 events/month I set up an event for each month and use that for most photos. Special 'events' stand alone.
  • Set a Key Photo for each Event and move Event Descriptions into the Key Photo Description. (I'm not certain, however, that Aperture preserves Event Key Photo when it turns Events into Projects.
  • Eliminate Albums that can be represented as Events, and move Album Description to Event Description. If an album is retained, set a Key Photo and move Album Description to Key Photo Description. If necessary create an Album Specific Key photo (you can assign these to a special "Album Event". For example
    
    • Take a screenshot of the description, save as PNG. Then copy the Description textDrop PNG into Event/Album and set date time so it's earliest by a minute.
    • Paste Description text from Event/Album into Image Description field.
• Backup the iPhoto Library
• repair iPhoto Library if using iPhoto 9.x or later. I run recover orphaned photos (backup first) in iPhoto and I compress the database.
• Create a new Aperture Library for the import with these settings
  
  • Turn off Facebook synchronization
  • Turn off sharing photos with iLife (no preview generation)
  • Disable Faces
  • Disable Places
• Choose Import iPhoto Library
  
  • You must set Version Name to Master File name. If you do this then your iPhoto Titles will become Aperture Version names and iPhoto Descriptions will become Aperture Captions. (The Aperture Title field is not used.) If you do not do this your iPhoto Titles will be lost. (It's ok throw your head back and scream now. I think this is a bug [2].)
• From empty Aperture Library import iPhoto Library. Let it run. On my 27" iMac a large Library took about 8 hours to import (but I'd forgotten to turn off preview and Faces, that about doubled the time). Be sure this completes before doing anything else. Activity view should be empty.
• Validate the the import succeeded
  
  • Filter on iPhoto Original, number should match number of items in Original iPhoto
  • Spot check for errors - confirm image counts match (keyword 'iPhoto Original', confirm event counts match.
  • Make sure Moview counts agree. Run a sample of Movies.
  • I spend a week or two on validation before I go to the next step.
• When the import Library has been validated it's time to import it into the Master Aperture Library. I back up my Aperture Library prior to this step.
• Prior to import process run repair Aperture Database on the Master Library to remove Aperture errors.
• Import the Aperture Library you just created into the Master Aperture Library.
• To show iPhoto metadata appropriately, change all metadata settings (at least six places!) to display Version Name, Caption, Keyword and Ratings in that order.
• Keep old iPhoto Library onto an old hard drive for safe keeping for a year or two before deletion.

Working around Aperture's video import bugs

Importing videos from iPhoto was grueling. I've addressed this in a separate post. This goes beyond mere bugginess into realms of "never tested". I was able to move all my videos, including version names, captions, descriptions and so on -- but it took a lot of work. I had to combine iPhoto Library import with a separate import process using the iPhoto media browser, then use a range of Aperture views, queries, metadata inspection and so on to get a complete set with no extras.

Managing the botched video import made me an Aperture expert.

Keyword cleanup

It seems that Aperture is turning Project/Event names into keywords - at least under some conditions. No photos are assigned those keywords. They make quite a mess of the Keyword view. I'm deferring major keyword cleanup until I complete iPhoto Library import. I consider this one to be a bug.

Be very careful about rearranging the keyword hierarchy. Aperture assigned the keyword 'iPhoto Original' to over 18k images. When I moved that within the hierarchy the rearrangement pegged all my CPUs and seems likely to run overnight (or crash).

Reviewing Mistakes

Once you think you've managed your migration it's time to look for problems. You need two monitors, one for iPhoto, one for Aperture. Initially my photo counts matched but I had one extra Project/Event in Aperture.  On inspection a Facebook thumbnail had leaked into Aperture, perhaps related to Aperture's quirky Facebook support -- and it created an extra Project. I deleted that, but now my image counts were off (I'd collapsed the stacks, otherwise there are many more images in Aperture than iPhoto). I lined up my images so I could compare end-of-row images, then did a simple split-set search until I discovered a bizarre little iPhoto image that OS X couldn't recognize -- but it somehow rendered as a thumbnail. Aperture had been unable to import it (an error message would have been "nice").

Next is using Aperture's list view to look for abnormally small images (accidental thumbnail import), inspect by camera type, etc. There's no way to inspect tens of thousands of images for errors, so if my counts are correct I proceed with sampling by image type, camera type, etc. See above for the nighmarish task of resolving video import bugs.

Understanding Stacks and Splitting

If you've been using iPhoto for years then some of your imports will include two images -- original and 'externally edited'. (Externally edited is how Aperture classifies images edited in old versions of iPhoto).

During import these pairs are "stacked" and the "externally edited" is marked as the "key photo" in the stack.. Some things you need to know:

• These images are stacked by Aperture, not auto-stacked. If you split the stack Aperture can't automatically unite it again. In my experiments a 2-5 sec auto-stack rule did stack most such images after I split them, but not all. So don't unstack recklessly!
• Option - ; and Option-' will collapse and expand all stacks.
• You may want to delete one member of the stack, perhaps the edited one, and redo the edit in Aperture. Unfortunately, the 'externally edited' one may belong to an Album. There's no way in Aperture to determine what Albums an Image belongs to.(I found an AppleScript that claimed to produce a list, but it didn't seem to work when I tried it.) In my testing it appears that if one member of a Stack is in an album then both are, even if the stack is later split. So it seems to be safe to delete either the original or edited version as desired.

The best guide to using Stacks is to browse the keyboard shortcut pamphlet or PDF.

Combining Aperture Libraries

• I chose to convert each of my iPhoto Libraries into a single Aperture Library, then I combined those into a single Aperture Library. I discovered that merging Aperture Libraries is a risky business - in particular merging two smaller Libraries crashed Aperture. Expect frequent crashes.
• I recommend backup the target Library prior to the Combination step (in addition to the usual backups).
• Be sure no iPhones or other mountable devices are connected
• Reboot your machine prior to attempting a merge
• Consider repair Database prior to merge.
• You can choose either "add" or "merge", the default is merge. I think the Import Aperture Library with Merge resolves duplicate photos (which is only safe if the developers are competent). More importantly, I think it tries to combine keywords rather than create separate keyword taxonomies (trees). That's a big plus.

See also

• Lessons in Software: Aperture 3 and iPhoto 11
• Metadata: time zones in Aperture and iPhoto
• iPhoto 9.2.1 to Aperture 3.2.1 - it doesn't actually work
• iPhoto '08: don't embed metadata in JPEG originals
• Stuck in Apple's photo management Limbo
• Time Machine backups of Aperture are not reliable?!
• Migration of metadata from Aperture to iPhoto and Google's Picasa web albums
• Aperture Projects descriptions and iPhoto Event descriptions - what happens on iPhoto migration? 12/10
• Possible to import BOTH Raw file and...: Apple Support Communities 1/2012
• Aperture Loses iPhoto Edited Images: Apple Support Communities 1/2012
• Aperture 3: "Invalid iPhoto Library" alert when importing an iPhoto Library
• Aperture: Some images duplicated when importing from iPhoto (the issue was "not resolved" of course, but the technique for removing the edited iPhoto images still applies)
• Aperture 3: Contrast edits do not transfer from iPhoto to Aperture 3 (works "as expected" *cough*) 2/2010
• What does the keyword "iPhoto...: Apple Support Communities
• A reference on iPhoto 8.x to Aperture...: Apple Support Communities 3/2012 - references this post
• Aperture 3 User Manual: Repairing and Rebuilding Your Aperture Library
• Import iPhoto Title as Aperture Version...: Apple Support Communities
• How to move from iPhoto '09 to Aperture 3 | Macworld 2010 - one of the few discussions online, but unfortunately incomplete

- fn -

[1] It's easy to find Aperture bugs btw, though usually restarting the app clears them. I thought I'd found a very nasty bug with iPhoto events, but it turns out it's simply very easy to accidentally select and merge multiple events when only one is wanted.

[2] Aperture handling of iPhoto Title data depends, mysteriously, on the iPhoto Version Name import setting that Apple documents as: "... choose Master Filename from the Version Name pop-up menu to have your files stored using the current master filenames from your camera or card". (Since we're importing from iPhoto, and not a camera or card, this documentation is misleading.)

In reality, during iPhoto import, setting Version Name = Master Filename does nothing of the sort. Instead, this is what happens:

• The filename is equal to the filename used in iPhoto
• Aperture.Version name is set equal to the iPhoto Title.

I don't know what Aperture would do if we set Version Name = a Custom name where one of the custom name components was "Master Filename". Would it still treat iPhoto.Title as "Master Filename"?

I think there are two bugs here. I think Aperture "Version Name=Master Filename" was supposed to set Aperture.Version to the file name, and that there was supposed to be ANOTHER drop down (and a custom name tag) that of the form "Version Name=iPhoto Title".

I've submitted this bug to Apple's developer bug reporting system as 11163418.

Metadata: time zones in Aperture and iPhoto

I learned one photo lesson during a family trip to DC - set all cameras to local time.

Aperture has some time zone support, but it's inconsistent. For example, time zones don't appear in the adjusting date/time dialog, but they do show in metadata.

iPhoto (8.x) has no time zone support. So 9am CT photos show next to 9am ET photos. If Aperture photos with different time zones are displayed in iPhoto date sort they can be out of sequence.

Time zones are evil, but iPhoto is eviller.

I wish I could get rid of iPhoto.

Update: The combination of end-of-life for iPhoto as we've known it (iPhoto '11 is a big regression) and this latest mess pushed me ever the brink. I've stopped using iPhoto as my image repository.

I'm going to use Aperture going forward, while slowly, painfully, migrating old images from iPhoto. It may take a year of tedious rework; Aperture doesn't import iPhoto event or album descriptions [1] for example. I'll have to copy/paste annotations from iPhoto Events to Aperture projects. Where I can't move an Album Description to an Event I'll create a sort-first 'key photo' and put it in the photo Description (wish there was an AppleScript way to automate this. [2]

[1] Aperture could store iPhoto Event descriptions as Project Info Descriptions (shift-I), but the import doesn't do this.)
[2] Possible hint:  AppleScript to store Album Descriptions

iPhoto 9.2.1 to Aperture 3.2.1 - it doesn't actually work

Apple promotes Aperture's seamless import of iPhoto content.

I've been skeptical, but I gave it a try on a plane flight. I added 21 images to a brand new iPhoto 9.2.1 Library and I created albums and events. I then gave descriptions to images and to both albums and events. Then I imported the images into Aperture.

The iPhoto.Events became Aperture.Projects. The iPhoto.Albums became Aperture.Albums. iPhoto.Folders became Aperture.Folders.

Eventually. At first the iPhoto.Albums were missing. They showed up minutes later on reopening Aperture. This took so long it feels like a bug.

Image metadata seems to have been preserved - titles, captions, etc. I've written about this previously for iPhoto, Aperture and Picasa Web Albums.

That's the end of the good news. All of the descriptions I added to Albums/Events were lost. Aperture Projects/Albums can't have annotations. So that description you wrote in iPhoto about the family reunion? It's toast.

Aperture's iPhoto import is feeble - and Apple's marketing of Aperture's iPhoto import is deceptive.

Apple does stuff like this though. I'm not surprised they did a crappy job on iPhoto import.

What's truly weird however, is that nobody besides me seems to care. That means Apple isn't going to fix this.

There are times when I know I live in the Twilight Zone. This is one of those times.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: Lessons in Software: Aperture 3 and iPhoto 11 10/2010
• iPhoto '08: don't embed metadata in JPEG originals 12/2007
• Stuck in Apple's photo management Limbo 5/2011 - still stuck today
• Apple Aperture: iPhoto replacement?: 10/2005 - seven years later, it's still not a full replacement
• Migration of metadata from Aperture to iPhoto and Google's Picasa web albums

OS X opens Aperture every time I start

Every time I logged into my Lion machine, Aperture started up.

I checked the Login items option on my user account. Nothing there.

Then I figured it was a bug with OS X 10.7 Lion resume. I deleted all the saved states, including Aperture's (Delete Specific Application Saved States from Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Resume).

Didn't help.

Finally, something clued me. This wasn't a new Lion problem, it was the old 'launch Aperture when iPhone connected' bug. Same thing can happen with iPhoto or Image Capture or Preview or "Auto Importer". This particular machine is connected to a USB hub that had some iPhones attached.

I don't know the proper place to control this peculiar OS X behavior, but I do know it can be controlled through Image Capture. I opened that app, and clicked on the iPhones icons on the left side. For each one I set 'Connecting this iPhone' to 'No application'.

Problem solved.

Migrating MobileMe family accounts to iCloud

I've started migrating family accounts to iCloud. This explanation from Apple Discussions is helpful ...

With a Family Pack, the master account holder and the sub-account holders can each migrate to an individual iCloud account by going to http://me.com/move and entering their email address and password (not www.icloud.com). The order they do this in is immaterial; if the master account moves first it can no longer administrate the sub-accounts. If a sub-account moves first the master account cannot create a new sub-account to replace it. Once migrated each account becomes a full iCloud account entirely separate from the others. The master account holder will get the 20GB storage upgrade free until June 30th 2012; the sub account holders will not, and will have only the basic 5GB.

I began with #2, currently using a SIM-less iPhone 4. He's got almost no data to lose.

I want him to continue to use my Apple ID however ...

... iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch must have iOS 5 or later. Note: When you are asked to provide your Apple ID during iOS setup, use your MobileMe email address and password. To use a different Apple ID for iTunes and iCloud, just go to Settings > Store on your iOS device after you've finished the iOS setup assistant...

... Inactive and expired MobileMe accounts do not need to move to iCloud. Simply use your inactive or expired account to sign up for an iCloud account and follow the onscreen instructions. See this article for more information...

and

When you first set up your iOS 5 device, enter the Apple ID you want to use with iCloud. If you skipped the setup assistant, sign in to Settings > iCloud and enter the Apple ID you’d like to use with iCloud.In Settings > Store, sign in with the Apple ID you want to use for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match). You may need to sign out first to change the Apple ID.

Following this path I learned that #2 will still have MobileMe Gallery, iDisk and iWeb Publishing through 6/30/2012 -- even after moving to iCloud. Better than I'd expected. No keychain sync though. I hope that comes back in some form.

I had to enter his iCloud (same as MobileMe) credentials to setup Facetime and iMessage on his SIM-less device. Although the phone doesn't need a SIM for this, it can't be in Airplane mode.

So far, it has gone better than expected.

Update: Thinking this over, I realize I need to update my machines to Lion before I move Emily and I. So this will take a while ...

Migration of metadata from Aperture to iPhoto and Google's Picasa web albums

There can't be more than one person in a million who cares about this.

This post is for you. Please comment so I know I'm not alone. (Just joking, I know I'm alone.)

I've been curious about how metadata (title, comment, etc) passes between Aperture 3 and iPhoto 8.1.2 [8]

I ran an experiment today to find out. I started with a RAW image. I exported a JPEG version to the desktop then dropped it into iPhoto. I also, for the heck of it, used iPhoto's Aperture browser and dropped an image in that way. [5]

Here's what I found (see [6] below for a note on the table).

• n/d means not displayed
• e- means it can be seen in the EXIF details on Picasa Web album

Aperture Attribute Name	iPhoto Name		Picasa [4]
	File	Media browser	File
Version Name	n/d [3]	title	n/d
Caption	description	[2]	n/d
Rating	none	n/d	n/d
Keywords	keyword	n/d	Tags, e-keyword
Title	title	n/d	Caption, e-object name
Event Name	n/d	n/d	n/d
Image Location (text)	n/d	n/d	e-location
State/Province (text)	n/d	n/d	e-state
Image Location using Places	n/d [1]	n/d	yes [1]

So if you, for some strange reason [7], edit in Aperture but store in iPhoto, don't bother rating photos. You can, however, use the following attributes and see useful information in iPhoto 8:

• aperture.Title -> iPhoto.title
• aperture.Caption -> iPhoto.description
• aperture.Keyword -> iPhoto.keyword
• aperture.Version Name -> file name if specified during export
• aperture.Places -> not rendering for me in iPhoto 8, but it's stored correctly and Picasa Web Albums can use it.

When exporting from iPhoto to Picasa only iPhoto.title and iPhoto.keyword are used.

Based on this experiment, I crated a custom Aperture metadata set that included Title, Caption and Keywords. I also customized my Grid View - Expanded metadata (cmd-J) to include Title, Caption, Keywords and Version Name.

Update 9/7/11: It appears that the Aperture Project Name is written to JPEG EXIF during export and read by iPhoto during import. Most surprising.

-fn-

[1] This really surprised me. In the past this metadata had been preserved. I wonder if an Aperture update made it incompatible with my older version of iPhoto. Although iPhoto 8 couldn't read the location metadata, it was in the EXIF header because Picasa could read it.
[2] Something odd happened here. I'd assigned a Caption on Import and that's what showed up in iPhoto. I suspect it was IPTC metada from the RAW image.
[3] This can become part of the file name on export from Aperture. The iPhoto.title attribute can be set equal to the file name by batch update. So there's a way to pass this to iPhoto if desired.
[4] Exporting from Google to Picasa Web Albums using Google export
[5] This isn't something you'd normally do. It just saves a @500K JPEG Aperture uses as a preview images. Still, it's interesting to see what happens with the metadata. 
[6] When I tried to create this table I again mourned the passing of FrontPage, Windows Live Writer (all but gone) and the great wysiwyg editors of old. Neither MarsEdit (this tool) nor iWeb do tables. So I downloaded SeaMonkey (88MB - once that was a lot). Since I remembered Netscape Composer I had a major flashback with fascinating visuals.
[7] I'm stuck in iPhoto until Apple changes Aperture's iPhoto import to include more metadata. Also, I don't trust RAW for archival storage. I save JPEG and discard RAW.
[8] I haven't updated to iPhoto 9, the dead fish smell has been offputting.

PDF services and Send to iPhoto - an album of JPEGs

I recently enjoyed this 2010 article on using OS X PDF services to send websites and docs to iBooks (Mac OS X Hints). All Mac geeks should give it a read, and the excellent comments as well.

Reading the hint made me take another look at the options on the handy PDF menu found at the bottom left of every print dialog. The list includes Save PDF to iPhoto, which is a bit odd since iPhoto won't import PDFs. (I have a memory that it once did, but Google disagrees). If you drop a PDF into iPhoto, you get a not supported dialog.

So I gave it a try. The results are interesting - iPhoto gets a JPEG for every page of the PDF. It's even documented ..

Mac OS X: About the Send PDF to iPhoto feature

... This feature uses an Automator workflow to create a PDF printout, and then convert that PDF to a JPEG. The JPEG is then sent to iPhoto. This workflow is installed by Mac OS X and is stored in /Library/PDF Services/...

It's an obscure but handy feature. Alas, Automator never lived up to its 10.4 promises, it's languished ever since, despite the best efforts of Nyhthawk Production's curious site ... Mac OS X Automation (curious because it's not an Apple site, but Automator links to it).

Stuck in Apple's photo management Limbo

I suspect there aren't many of us stuck in Apple's photo management Limbo. Maybe a few hundred geeks. Perhaps we should develop a secret handshake?

We are early iPhoto adopters who have our images distributed across several Libraries. Sometimes we did this deliberately because iPhoto was pretty wimpy in the old days; it couldn't handle large numbers of images. At other times Library multiplication was the result of travel or partnerships (ex: marriage).

We, the Lost, would like to put all the images together in one place. Once upon a time we thought Apple would add Library import to iPhoto, but about four years ago we realized that wasn't going to happen. Since then some of us have used iPhoto Library Manager to merge iPhoto Libraries but others are too chicken.

For years we thought we might join libraries in Aperture, or that Apple would create an 'iPhoto Pro' with Library management. By this time price had become irrelevant, but instead Aperture languished.

More recently Apple reinvested in Aperture, and dropped the price dramatically ($80 via App Store). It is clearly intended to be iPhoto Pro. iPhoto itself is becoming simpler and losing features.

The problem is, Aperture 3 doesn't really import iPhoto Libraries. Yes, I know it claims to do it. I know many people say it works. Wrong both times. The import process has not only been buggy in the worst possible way (indetectable loss of very valued data), it can't work correctly. Aperture 3.x doesn't even have a place to store some of iPhoto's metadata, such as comments on events. In other cases Aperture 3 does have a place to store iPhoto metadata but, astoundingly, the import process ignores this.

So we're in Limbo. Even if Apple tries to fix Aperture, it might be years before they succeed. I have a bad feeling they won't bother -- there aren't enough geeks like me. Most of us own Aperture anyway.

I'm guessing I'll have to stay with iPhoto and use IPLM's merge feature. I'll be approaching that with the same enthusiasm as juggling antimatter. Merging iPhoto's monstrous data structure would be a hard problem even if Apple tried to help ...