Aperture 3 and Previews

[digitaldave]

I've downloaded the trial of Aperture 3 to see if it's worth the upgrade from v2 which I bought ages ago but didn't actually use that much (I stuck with iPhoto). However, I'd appreciate some feedback on what to do with previews in v3.

I have a Canon dslr that can shoot JPEG, RAW and RAW+JPEG - would the best option be to get Aperture to use the associated JPEG as the preview (I think you can do that...), or can I just skip having previews all together? I never really got to grips with Aperture before, so I am not really sure about what previews are all about .

I am running on a 2.4GHz Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, GeForce 8600M GT graphics, running Snow Leopard.

Thanks,

Dave.

 

[Grimace]

Just shoot RAW and Aperture creates its own JPEG preview (at a variable resolution that you can set.) Shooting RAW+JPEG will still force Aperture to create a JPEG preview so you'll just be cluttering up space.

 

[digitaldave]

Thanks for the reply. Next question... Do I actually need to have previews for all files? For example, I will be storing all my images on my main drive, they won't be referenced, so the masters will be available all the time, so I suspect that this would mean I wouldn't need previews, but as I said, I'm not up to speed with what they are needed for.

Thanks,

Dave.

 

[dmsilva1]

Previews are taking far too much space for me too.

I would like to switch to Aperture 3 from iPhoto. I wanted to make the move to save disk space, since minor changes to photos, like rotating, red eye, etc. don't result in a completely new copy. Ironically after importing my iPhoto library with Aperture 3 I'm creating a 6GB preview folder. I'm still working with a 4M camera, so I fail to understand how creating a preview helps me.
Isn't there some way to turn OFF preview???

 

[ChrisA]

Thanks for the reply. Next question... Do I actually need to have previews for all files? For example, I will be storing all my images on my main drive, they won't be referenced, so the masters will be available all the time, so I suspect that this would mean I wouldn't need previews, but as I said, I'm not up to speed with what they are needed for.

Thanks,

Dave.

The purpose of the previews is so that the large raw files do not have to be processed. If it were not for previews then scrolling 100 images would required processing 100 images. The preview files searve as high speed stand-ins for the raw files.

Why do you want to avoid previews. They take up almost no space compared to the raw files and they make Aperture run 100 times faster.

 

[Westside guy]

Today I ran into an odd problem with Aperture 3 and previews. In the end you can blame my inattention, but...

I had launched Aperture with a library which referenced masters that were unavailable (the disk wasn't mounted - oversight on my part). I had called up the loupe to examine a photo, and was getting really blurry results - but when I zoomed the image itself (still full screen mode) things looked sharp. But then I eventually noticed that 100% zoom on the loupe wasn't the same size as 100% zoom of the photo - as far as I can tell, the zoom of the full photo brings the preview to its native size, but even with the masters unavailable the loupe tries to show the sample of the preview image as if it had the same resolution as the (unavailable) master!

When I realized the masters were not available, I mounted the disk - at that point all problems with the blurry loupe went away.

 

[ChrisA]

... I'm creating a 6GB preview folder. I'm still working with a 4M camera, so I fail to understand how creating a preview helps me.
Isn't there some way to turn OFF preview???

You can specify the size of the preview images. Make them 2X smaller and they will take up 1/4 the space. The smaller previews also load faster and are faster to read off the disk, more cache in RAM and so on. Much faster. But the smaller reviews do not look as good.

 

[Westside guy]

I would like to switch to Aperture 3 from iPhoto. I wanted to make the move to save disk space, since minor changes to photos, like rotating, red eye, etc. don't result in a completely new copy. Ironically after importing my iPhoto library with Aperture 3 I'm creating a 6GB preview folder. I'm still working with a 4M camera, so I fail to understand how creating a preview helps me.
Isn't there some way to turn OFF preview???

I agree with what ChrisA has said regarding previews. However you can turn them off if you really want to. Under Preferences, uncheck the "new projects automatically generate previews". Then, under the "Photos" dropdown menu, you can delete previews for selected files.

I find previews helpful, but I did change them to "half size" and set the quality to 8 (medium).

 

[HBOC]

i downloaded the trial of A3, but haven't opened it yet. I usually shoot in RAW, and PS4 has a nice RAW viewer. So i can just open up my CR2 files. I don't use the Canon utilities either. Does A3 do this as well?