Adobe has just released their first Aperture/iPhoto to Lightroom Import tool. They’re going to continue refining the plug-in and will include it in a future Lightroom update and it’s now included in Lightroom 5.7 (updated 18 November 2014), but if you’re itching to convert your Aperture library (3.5.1 or later) or iPhoto library (9 or later), you can try it right now. So what do you need to know?
What’s Included in the Transfer:
- Metadata
- Flags
- Rejects (files designated as Rejects in Aperture will be imported into Collections > From Aperture > Photos Rejected in Aperture)
- Star Ratings
- Color Labels (Aperture has more color labels than LR, so Color Labels will be mapped to keywords: Red, Orange, etc…, including support for custom label names)
- Keywords
- Faces will be added as keywords in Lightroom (note that the box around the face doesn’t translate to a Lightroom 5 feature)
- Places (GPS Data)
- Info panel metadata (i.e. IPTC, etc.)
- Hidden Files (files designated as Hidden in iPhoto will be imported into Collections > From iPhoto > Photos Hidden in iPhoto)
- Organization
- Aperture project/folder/album hierarchy and iPhoto events/folders/albums hierarchy will be mapped as closely as possible into Lightroom collection sets and collections
- Stacking (Aperture Only — stack groupings will be mapped to keywords in Lightroom as they don’t map cleanly between the programs)
- Aperture Versions will translate into Virtual Copies in Lightroom (metadata only – no Develop adjustments)
- Edits
- You can import ‘Full size’ previews from Aperture/iPhoto (optional, off by default) to help you remember how you edited the file in Aperture, provided that they are up-to-date. Lightroom can automatically stack the preview with the original photo.
What’s NOT Included in the Transfer:
Some Aperture/iPhoto features don’t have an equivalent feature in Lightroom. As a result, some settings aren’t transferred. They include:
- Develop Settings don’t translate to Lightroom’s settings, so you have a few options:
- Edit the files again using Lightroom when you need them.
- Keep Aperture around to export those photos when you need them.
- Use Aperture to export full resolution edited photos and store them with the originals.
- Smart Albums don’t quite translate to Smart Collections.
- Custom Fields have no Lightroom equivalent (except for certain plug-ins)
- PSD Files can only be imported into Lightroom if they’re saved with ‘maximize compatibility’ enabled.
- Anything else not already listed is probably not imported into Lightroom.
What about File Management?
Aperture offers two ways of storing your files – managed or referenced.
- If your files are managed by Aperture, Lightroom leaves them where they are and duplicates them in your chosen location.
- If your files are referenced by Aperture, Lightroom gives you the option of leaving them in their current location, or duplicating them in a new location.
- If Lightroom duplicates the files, it places them in dated folders. YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD
- If you only want to transfer part of your library into Lightroom, you can export those photos as a new Aperture Library and then run the importer tool on that.
Installing and Using the Plug-in
Let’s take the instructions one step at a time. We’ll use the Aperture Import tool but the same principles apply to iPhoto too:
- You need to be running Lightroom 5.7 on a Mac. You can check your Lightroom version by going to Help menu > System Info. If you’re not using 5.7, you’ll need to update using Help menu > Check for Updates.
- (Instructions for plug-in installation now removed, as it’s now included in Lightroom 5.7 by default – updated 18 November 2014)
Download the plug-in from here: aperture_iphoto_importer and save it somewhere safe, such as your desktop or downloads folder. (link updated to 1.0.1 2014-11-05)Double-click on the downloaded zip file to extract it.Open Finder and hold down the Opt key while selecting the Go menu. That makes the User Library folder visible. Select Library, then navigate through Application Support > Adobe > Lightroom.If a folder called Modules doesn’t already exist, create it inside that Lightroom folder.Copy the extracted aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin file to the Modules folder.- Launch Lightroom and then you’re ready to get started.
- Create a clean Lightroom catalog (File menu > New Catalog) or at least back up your working Lightroom catalog.
- To back up on demand, go to Lightroom menu > Catalog Settings and select When Lightroom Next Exits from the pop-up at the bottom and quit Lightroom to run the backup., then open Lightroom.
- Go to File menu > Plug-in Extras > Import from Aperture Library or Import from iPhoto Library.
- That displays the Import from Aperture dialog.
- Next to Aperture Library, press Select to choose your library. It selects the default location automatically.
- To the right of Copy images/videos to, select where to store copies of the photos. (If the photos are all referenced, you can choose to leave them in their current location in Options).
- The number of images/video files, disk space required and disk space available are for information only. Obviously ensure that there’s enough space available on your chosen drive!
- Press the Options button to select your preferences. The options are:
- For images which have been adjusted in Aperture, import full size previews from the Aperture library (if they are available and up-to-date).
- Import only applied keywords from Aperture (or import the full keyword list even if they’re not applied to any photos)
- Create Lightroom keywords for color labels from Aperture (or ignore the color labels)
- Create Lightroom keywords for stacks from Aperture (or ignore the stacks)
- Leave referenced files in your Aperture library in their current location (this avoids duplicating files and taking up double the hard drive space, but if you move them in one program, the other program won’t be able to find them again).
- Place preview copies in the same folder as the master images to allow automatic stacking only appears if For images which have been adjusted in Aperture, import full size previews from the Aperture library (if they are available and up-to-date) is checked.
- Press OK to return to the main dialog, then press Import.
- A progress dialog displays while it’s working.
- When it gets to the end, press Done. An information dialog displays. You can show it again later by selecting File menu > Plug-in Extras > Aperture Info.
- Now it’s time to survey the results.
- If you imported managed files, all of those new folders are listed as a flat list by default. To change it into a folder hierarchy, right-click on a folder and select Show Parent Folder. A new month folder appears with a solid triangle to the left (see the red arrow), showing that the folder has subfolders. Right-click on that folder and choose Show Parent Folder.
- Lightroom then displays the year folder. Repeat on that year folder so it displays the LightroomMasters folder (or whatever you called your folder), with the year folders listed indented below, like this:
- The import also creates a series of From Aperture collections in the Collections panel, including Most Recent Import, Photos Adjusted in Aperture, Photos Rejected in Aperture and a hierarchy of Projects based on your Aperture Projects list.
- In the Keyword panel, you’ll find your keywords, plus some that are created by the import tool. Those are Aperture Color Labels, Aperture Stacks and Faces from Aperture.
- You can then filter and select those photos and apply a Lightroom setting. For example, click on the arrow to the right of the Green keyword count to filter photos that had that Aperture color label. Select the resulting photos and press the 8 key to assign the green Lightroom color label.
You’re done! As with any transfer between software, there’s probably some cleanup to do, but you can now call yourself a Lightroom User! If you’re new to Lightroom, don’t forget to download my free Lightroom 5 Quick Start eBook.
Update 14 December 2014 – some people are reporting problems with the Import button being unavailable. We’re not sure of the cause yet, but if you don’t want to wait until Adobe tracks it down, you could try this app that Tom mentioned in the comments below (thanks Tom!)
Ken Poulton says
I’m trying to migrate 67,000 photos from Aperture to Lightroom Classic. I can run the Adobe plugin, but it hangs about every 1000 imported photos. This is, shall we say, tedious.
I have tried exporting to smaller Aperture libraries first, but this does not change the 1000 photo per import limit.
The limit might be caused by the plugin failing to clean up. macOS Activity monitor shows 2042 threads and ~12,600 ports for the LR process when it hangs.
Any suggestions for how to do this in fewer than 67 runs?
LR Classic 8.1
macOS 10.12.6
Victoria Bampton says
Oh that does sound tedious. We don’t get many requests for LR 8.1 these days. And is that High Sierra? Are the files managed by Aperture or or referenced? If they’re not already referenced, that might be a good place to start.
Jim McClune says
Hi Victoria. I am finally going to migrate my Aperture library to Lightroom CC after using Lightroom since 2014. I’m using Lightroom Classic on the monthly plan.
While experimenting with test projects to test out the migration, the original photos and the jpg previews do no stay together when migrating to Lightroom. The originals are in the proper collections, but the matching Jpeg previews can only be found in the ‘Photos Adjusted in Aperture’ Folder.
Do you know of a way to keep them together on import to Lightroom, or is there a way to reunite them after import into Lightroom?
Victoria Bampton says
Hmmmm that’s a good question and I’m not 100% sure of the answer as I don’t have a suitable Aperture library to test. As far as I remember, you can’t control whether they stay together on import.
That said, depending on the folder structure you end up with for the originals (e.g. if it’s dated), you could potentially drag the previews into the same folder structure next to their originals and then auto stack by capture time to try to group them together.
Helene says
Dear LightroomQueen. I am late. I know. But didn’t dare before now.
But right now I am ready to leave iPhoto ver 9.6.1. into LR ver 2015 CC.
Is it possible the way you teach here?
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Helene, sorry, I missed your comment. Yes, CC2015 will do fine using the same instructions. It only fails if you try to migrate from the newer Photos.app.
Steve says
Hi, Victoria,
I wish to convert all those collections that were created when I migrated to light room to folders. How do I do that?
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Steve, apologies for missing you. There isn’t a way to convert collections into folders automatically – that’s a manual job I’m afraid.
Paul says
Hi Victoria,
I’ve read as much as possible to find a solution, but cannot seem to find one. I’ve been importing my 329GB of photos from Aperture Library and Lightroom (via the plug-in) and currently at 42%. Unfortunately my computer went to sleep and seemed to have halted the import. How can I restart the import? Can I start and stop fairly easy to accommodate the long import times? If so, how?
Thanks, Paul
Victoria Bampton says
I don’t think it’ll pick up where it left off, I’m afraid, but I don’t currently have a big enough Aperture Library to test the theory. If you need to break it up, try splitting your Aperture Library up into multiple smaller libraries – there are instructions in the comments above.
Steve says
I have two folders of photos on external drive. One called iphotos and the other called LR photos. I have two catalogs on the main computer hard drive the correspond to the two folders on the external drive. My goal is to combine the folders of photographs into one and leave them on the external drive and combine the two catalogs and leave that on the main hard drive. I think I understand the procedure for combining the catalogs. I’d like to know the very best way to combine the photo folders. Is it simply a drag-and-drop? Also should I combine the catalogs first then the photos or vice a versa?
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Steve. Yes, drag and drop should work work. I’d combine the catalogs first, personally. And backup, of course!
Richard says
I am one of a few members of our CC preparing to move from Aperture to LR and feel very uncertain and trying to do a lot of reading before starting. I have read through a lot of the comments and need to ask,
1) A reply from “NAZ” suggests breaking down the transfer package to about 5-10GB. Do you agree with this? How do you recommend breaking down the existing library (I have about 130GB/19000 photos). Does this mean we should create new Aperture libraries of say 10GB before starting? Or does the plug in allow a user to restrict the transfer to a portion of the db? How do you do this
2)Would you recommend doing an Aperture “repair” before starting
3)Are there any common attributes of photos which have caused problems to users which we can avoid or repair before starting
4)I am using Aperture faces and understand that LR doesn’t read these across. Are there any problems with using keywords to do move the information across to Adobe and can it be used to group faces once the photos are in LR.
Thanks for the site which is very useful.
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Richard.
1. To split the library, you’d use File > Export > Items as New Library.
And yes, you’d need to do that before running the importer tool on the new smaller chinks. The plug-in isn’t smart enough to allow you to do it without first using Aperture to split it.
2. Yes, good idea.
3. Nothing specific, other than the large libraries.
4. Keywords work fine for faces, and filtering by a face keyword does help to narrow down the Faces view in Lightroom, if you want to assign the face boxes again (or you can just leave them as keywords).
Naz says
Hi – I recently went through the incredibly painful process of importing my Aperture library into LR. I believe my issues were driven by four factors: 1) size of photos is 100,000, 2) size of aperture library was 500GBP, 3) I stored my aperture library on a Synology Network Attached Storage (“NAS”) and finally 4) my Aperture library had some “data integrity issues” in that it constantly needed to be repaired and rebuilt.
After a month of trial and error, largely driven by the fact that each trial required at times a day or more for the computer to finish processing to trouble-shoot, I finally managed to muddle through it. Here is my advice followed by a question:
1) If you haven’t read through all the comments on this site, do. What you’ll find is that people have had more success breaking their large aperture libraries into smaller ones which made the import easier. First I tried to import the entire 500GB library. Failed. Then by year as suggested herein. Failed. Then I broke them into “large projects” and “remaining years” which seems to work, but not without multiple computer crashes and freezes. 5-10GB seems to be the sweet spot.
2) When you click “Import from Aperture library”, note that LR is supposed to open a dialog box to allow you to select your aperture library. i’ve found that it doesn’t. It just automatically picks one and starts “thinking”. In my case it always picked the 500gb library and “thought” for a day. I managed to stop this by exporting my aperture library to an external drive, breaking it into smaller pieces, and then unplugging the external drive prior to each import after pointing the aperture dialog box to that external drive. The dialog box will open b/c it will not have found a aperture library since the drive is disconnected. Connect it and select. Repeat.
3) Synology – Only makes things more difficult. I can only suggest considering an external drive as stated in #2 to manage the process.
4) Repair and Rebuild – If you have problems with your library, consider importing it into a new library before starting this process, or trying “repair and rebuilt” function. I had issues so bad at times my Aperture library ceased to open. Repair and rebuilt can take ages and you have no way to monitor progress.
5) I also received a pop up box that the import only works with certain versions. It ultimately worked just fine.
I finally have a fully imported Aperture library in Lightroom that looks exactly as it did in Aperture with one frustrating exception I’m hoping someone can help with. Under the “Albums from Aperture” section, it appropriately contains the selection of photos from my “Aperture Projects”, however, they are unadjusted. In order to view the adjusted version, I need to right click on each photo and select “Photos adjusted in Aperture” – and it will take me to the adjusted photo in a collection called “photos adjusted in Aperture”. However, this prevents me from browsing my albums to just view the adjusted photos, i.e., I can only browse the original photo and have to right click to get to adjusted. Also would prevent me from exporting the entire album of adjusted photos. How do I go about just viewing the Album with adjusted photos. So as an example, if I have “Iceland Photos – 3rd Cut” as an album with just 50 pictures which pulls from a Project with 1000 pictures, I want to browse them adjusted. Thanks for the help. Great site. Couldn’t have done it without reading through all of the comments.
Victoria Bampton says
Great tips Naz, thanks for sharing!
For combining your edited photos into the originals projects, my first thought is to use the Syncomatic plug-in to assign collection membership from the raw files to the edited JPEGs (assuming the file formats are raw/jpeg). I haven’t tested it, but in theory it should work, and you could try the trial first. http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/lightroom/syncomatic/
Manfred says
Hi Victoria,
after importing files from iPhoto I have got the following file structure: YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD
I like this folder structure, but if I want to import new photos to Lightroom this option is not available 🙁
Do you have a workaround to define a destination folder with this date format YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD?
Victoria Bampton says
Yes, it’s possible. Instructions are in my main book or here: http://www.lightroomforums.net/showthread.php?21293-How-to-create-a-custom-folders-date-format-during-import
JimBo says
I just tried my first Project import from Aperture to LR, as I have over 15,000 photos in 80 or so Projects to do. I wanted to test one first.
It seems to go well, but when done, all of my photos in LR5 are in dated folders named YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD. Since some of my projects involve photos from quite a few dates, I ended up with dozens of hatred sub-folders. I’m trying to figure out how to move all of these photos into a single folder to simplify the LR5 organization.
Can you help ? Is there an easier way than moving all the photos folder at a time ? Thanks !
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Jimbo. Look down in the Collections panel – you should find all of your projects there. While it’s possible to move the files into other folders, the folders are just a way of holding them on the hard drive. Collections are better as an organisational tool, just like Projects in Aperture.
Crispin says
Hi Victoria,
Is there a plug-in available for older versions of iPhoto? I’m using 9.4.3 (iPhoto 11). As the warning states, this plug in is for 9.5.1 or later. Without updating my OS to the dreaded El Capitan, there’s no way to update iPhoto to a newer version. The plug-in does actually import photos with captions, but not GPS locations or Faces to Keywords metadata. Don’t care about stars/ratings, but GPS/Faces/Captions very important.
Victoria Bampton says
There isn’t a plug-in available, but if you can’t update to 9.5.1, there are probably manual workarounds. The first that springs to mind is to export a small JPEG of each file complete with metadata, and then use the Syncomatic Lightroom plug-in to sync the metadata including GPS, keywords, stars, from the small JPEGs onto the original photos.
Faces don’t appear to be exported from iPhoto unless you go through Aperture or using something like this app: http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ Or you could manually select all of the photos with a face and tag all of these photos with a keyword, and repeat for each of the faces, before exporting the small JPEGs from iPhoto.
Victoria Bampton says
Actually, googling around a little further, it looks like Phoshare might be able to export your iPhoto photos complete with metadata https://code.google.com/p/phoshare/
Steve says
Hi, Victoria,
Taking your advice, I created an empty catalog called “iphotopix” on a new external drive, then used the LR CC plug-in the get all my iPhoto ’11 images to LR. The migration seems to have been flawless with 16320 images moved in a few hours.
When I open the external drive in finder “iphotopix” is listed, but its size is not specified, showing “–“. When I open the file, I see the hierarchy you describe. (2010, 2011, 2013>…1,2,3…>etc. In addition, the following files are listed:
iphotopix Previews.lrdata
iphotopix.lrcat
iphotopix.lrcat-journal
iphotopix.lrcat.lock
Notimported
When I go through the hierarchy tree in finder, the images will become visible.
In LR, the images are visible. Under collections, I see:
from iPhoto
most recent import 16320
photos 16320
adjusted in iPhoto 82
photos hidden in iPhoto 16320
Smart collections
Five stars 1
past month 3
video files 32
without keywords 7355
my photo stream_1 996
Under catalog settings> file handling , it shows the size to be 717mb
On the surface, it seems that all is well, but I can’t help thinking that something is wrong. I want the photos on the extternal drive as well, and I am not sure that happened. Also, how did the smart collections come about?
Any advice and/or reassurance is much appreciated!
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Steve. Sounds great.
The Smart Collections are the default ones, so nothing to worry about there.
For the photos, right-click on one of the folders or photos and choose Show in Finder. That’ll show you where they’re stored. If they’re on the wrong drive, it’s easy enough to move them.
If you’re just getting started, you might want to grab my book while it’s up to 40% off, as t’ll help you understand exactly what you’re seeing there.
Steve says
Thank you so much , Victoria, for all you do!
Still not sure why “iphotopix” in finder does not show a size or why the catalog size in file handling seems so small, but it appears all the photos are on the external drive.
Next up for me is to move my original LR catalog to the external then merge the two together, then move the whole thing to my new MacBook Pro.
It is hard-but not impossible-to teach this old dog new tricks. I’ve gotten a lot out of your free e-book, but the “Missing FAQ will soon be on the way!
Victoria Bampton says
The iphotopix folder will probably update when you reboot. It’s just Finder not calculating the size. The catalog itself is only a text database containing links to the photos, so I wouldn’t expect that to be any bigger.
You’ll be fine Steve. You’ll find moving the catalog on page 486, merging the catalogs on page 511-513, and moving to a new computer on page 488-491 (or there’s a blog post under the Articles section for moving to a new computer).
Thomas says
Hi Victoria, after my first import from iPhoto, I have 2 questions. 1. As new photos are added to iPhoto, when I do another import to LR5, will it import duplicates? 2. For the first import, LR created “collections” very much based on my “events” in iPhoto – all except a few. When I tried to create the “missing” collections using the event name on iPhoto, I got an error from LR5 saying file name already exist. But I did not see that collection at all. Any idea what might have been wrong or just a LR bug? Thanks, and by reading your site and the posting so far I learned a lot!
Victoria Bampton says
You’d be best to import future photos directly into LR and skip iPhoto, as you’ll create confusion trying to use both.
Assuming you’re using the LR CC or LR6, there’s a search box at the top of the Collections panel, so you could search for the missing event name.
Victoria Bampton says
In reply to your email, if you’re using LR5, you’ll simply need to check through the whole Collections panel to find the duplicate event name.
Steve says
Hi, Victoria,
This may be a dumb question, but when I click on the plug-in in LR, I’m told “disk space required 109557 MB” and ” disk space available 41474″. What is the best work around here?
Victoria Bampton says
Set the detonation drive as an external drive with plenty of space instead. You can easily move them back to your main drive once you’ve removed your Aperture catalog, if you wish to do so.
Noel says
I am absolutely terrified to begin moving into Lightroom. I have all my photos in iPhoto libraries on older computers or on back up external hard drives, in older versions of iPhoto all the way back to iPhoto 4.
My question is, when I learn how to import to LR4, will it import the jpegs in my “Modified” folder with all the edits as they are, or will LR only import the “originals,”, so that I wind up losing all the work I have already done? Same question about my NEF files, since I have been shooting raw with my Nikons for the last two years.
Here’s what I want to do. I have done as much editing in iPhoto as that semi-worthless program will allow. I want to continue working on images that I have improved, not start over from the original. Is that even vaguely possible?
Thank you
Victoria Bampton says
Lightroom won’t understand any non-destructive edits done by iPhoto, but you can export edited copies (perhaps as JPEGs) to import alongside the originals. That way you’ll have a choice of which version to use.
Noel says
Thanks, Victoria,
Unfortunately, that is what I was afraid you’d say. So changing over to shooting RAW for the last three years, and moving to LR means I might as well have shot jpegs all this time.
I am going to go scream and cry somewhere, but before I do, do you advise changing all imports to DMG files? I watched a B&H video on LR and the speaker said he recommends this. What is the advantage of that in terms of being able to get “artistic” with post processing, if any?
Much thanks for answering my question, even though it is really horrible news for me–not your fault! So strange to find a real human being to talk to on a help site!
Sincerely, Noel
Victoria Bampton says
Nooooo, shooting JPEG is like shooting polaroids instead of negative file. Raw gives you a lot more latitude for adjustment. Just export JPEGs and store them in your catalog along with the raw files (and do the same with your edited and unedited JPEGs). You can stack them automatically so you only see one of each photo. For your ‘best’ photos, I’d go back and re-edit the raw file when you come to need it, but at least you’ll have your existing edits as well. You’ll find your skills have improved since you edited them in iPhoto, and the tools are definitely better in Lightroom.
DNG has nothing to do with how artistic you can get – it’s just another file format. There are pros and cons outlined here: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/convert-dng/
Noel says
Thank you, Victoria. My camera will not export images as a dng. I read the article on the link you posted, but do not understand all of it yet. I will have to study the pros and cons. I don’t know if I want to get into that sidecar business.
I will do what you suggested with the jpegs and raw files. I have not been shooting both raw and jpeg at the same time, because I thought I would never need jpegs again. I do have to convert images to jpegs to get them on flickr, so at least I know how to do it. I understand the argument about NEF possibly not being supported in the future, but since I am almost 70 years old, I am not going to worry about that one. 🙂
Thank you and have a good day. Sorry for the typo above about “DMG” files.
Noel
Victoria Bampton says
Good plan Noel. DNG is something you could come back to later, if you found you did want to switch. Stick with your NEF’s until you’re absolutely certain either way.
Philipp says
Hello Victoria,
I like to leave Aperture and tested a lot in the last months. Now I found your beautiful tutorial.
Maybe do you know is Lightroom changing the file type (maybe to DNG) from the pictures or will Lightroom reduce the file size? I tested around with Aperture and have one big problem. If I import a picture to Aperture it has maybe 5 to 6 MB. If I export it as an original it has also 5 to 6 MB. But if I export it as a working copy it has 12 to 15 MB. But the only thing I changed was a GPS tag and a copyright information. I wondering why Aperture needs so much space for this small information. If I add a GPS tag with another program it has not this effect. So Aperture is very bad in this case.
So I like to export my entire Aperture library in any way but without losing my GPS tags and hopefully with reduced file size (More or less the file size from the original picture). Maybe do you know is this possible with this import plugin? The best way is if Lightroom can import the original pictures (not the working copy) and add the GPS tag direct into the picture data.
Thanks for your helping hand, Philipp
Victoria Bampton says
Can you explain what you mean by ‘export it as a working copy’? You should just need to write the metadata to the files, if you don’t want to use the plug-in – however the plug-in should transfer your GPS tag and copyright information, so no need to export.
Colin says
Victoria, do you know the procedure to delete the Aperture library as well as the images. I have imported the images into LR and now want to free up the disk space used by the Aperture masters. If I just delete the Aperture library will it delete the images as well. I have deleted some of the Aperture libraries but am concerned that the images may have remained hidden. If so how can I access these now the library has gone.
Cheers,
Colin
Victoria Bampton says
Were your photos managed or referenced Colin? If they were managed, deleting the Aperture Library should have done the trick.
Steve says
I am getting ready to make the switch from iPhoto 11 to Lightroom cc 2015 using a Mac and Yosemite operating system. About 13,000 photos. I think I have the answer to checking or in checking the box about referenced files. (Uncheck). I have two questions. First, is it smarter to make the change with a brand-new catalog and then merge that with my existing LR catalog or is it better to bring them in directly to my existing LR catalog?
Second, is there anything I should do to prepare my iPhoto catalog for the move? I’ve already backed everything up. Thanks.
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Steve. I’d use a clean catalog and merge it later, just because it’s easier to undo if you run into any trouble. I’d check your iPhoto catalog for any missing files, to be on the safe size. It’s worth noting that the Titles field doesn’t transfer correctly from iPhoto whereas it does from Aperture.
Raymond Dalen says
Thanks for a comprehensive guide. Looks very promising if I only could get access to the import add-on. 🙂
The import iPhoto library add-on is missing in the menu: “File > Plug-in Extras > ” Actually there are “none” add-ons listed. Lightroom was installed just a few days ago, and is updated.
You mention this is a known issue. Do you know if they have tracked it down yet?
It seems to have been a problem for at least ten months and I guess it is not unreasonable to expect Adobe to come up with a solution by now.
Lightroom version: CC 2015.1.1 [ 1032027 ]
License: Creative Cloud
Operating system: Windows 8.1 Business Edition
Version: 6.3 [9600]
Victoria Bampton says
It’s a Mac-only plug-in as iPhoto and Aperture are Mac-only… you’re on Windows?
EricSeale594 says
Hi there — newbie with a question:
I’m trying to move over from Aperture to Lightroom, and when I attempt to do the “File > Plug-in Extras > Import from Aperture Library” thing, find everything listed in “Plug-in Extras” is grayed out. I double-checked that the Aperture importer isn’t disabled, so don’t know what I’m missing in order to make LR happy.
FWIW, I’m running Lightroom CC with all current updates.
Victoria Bampton says
Which Aperture version do you have installed Eric? And which OS version?
Roy Liberman says
I just updated my iMac to Yosemite and found Aperture no longer usable. So, I migrated to Lightroom 5.7.1. I follow the exact instructions for importing my Aperture library, but when I get to the Aperture library select screen, it and previous iPhoto libraries are grayed out and cannot be selected. Any solution to this problem?
Victoria Bampton says
There should be an Aperture update in the App Store that still works in Yosemite – and I’m wondering if that needs to be installed for the plug-in to work. Not sure on that. If that doesn’t do the trick, post the problem on the forum (link on the menu bar) and we’ll help you troubleshoot.
Roy Liberman says
Thanks, Victoria. I bought Aperture on CD directly from Apple. So, the 3.6 update is not available to me in the App Store. I’ll need to contact Apple to see if they can accommodate my needs. Meanwhile, I posted in the forums to see if there are any other suggestions.
Victoria Bampton says
Which version are you running at the moment? It needs to be 3.5.1 or later. If you’re on an earlier version, it would certainly explain it, although there might be workarounds.
Roy Liberman says
I contacted Apple this morning and, as a result, was able to download Aperture 3.6. Once 3.6 (which is the only version of Aperture that works in Yosemite) was installed, Aperture was functioning again and my Aperture Library was no longer grayed out in the Lightroom Import select screen. So, Victoria, it looks like your original thought on the matter was exactly right. Thank you.
Victoria Bampton says
Great news, thanks for the update!
Quora.com says
I don’t know whether it’s just me or if everyone else encountering issues with your website.
It appears as if some of the written text on your content are running off the screen. Can somebody
else please provide feedback and let me know if this is happening to them too?
This could be a issue with my browser because I’ve had this happen before.
Cheers
Victoria Bampton says
I can’t replicate it on any of the browsers I have here, but if you email me a screenshot and a note of which browser and device you’re using, I’ll try to find and fix it.
Sarah says
I switched from Aperture 3 to Lightroom 5 at the beginning of 2014, and it was the best decision I ever made, other than marrying my husband. I’ve mostly ignored all the old photos in Aperture as clients have not asked for them, and I have not needed them much. Now that Aperture is no longer supported (I had trouble updating the version on Mac OS Yosemite a few weeks ago), I wanted to start porting everything over to LR for the day when Apple no longer allows you to even open Aperture.
I was stupid in my earlier photography days and had miserable file organization, moving files around (at least I re-referenced them in Aperture!) and storing JPGS with RAW files — Nikon DSLR user here. All of my image files now live on an external drive (rather than within Aperture’s library) but this means I’ve had to move files from the internal drive to an external drive.
I have a decent sized file library (the Aperture library was 72GB on my hard drive), so due to recommendations from the comments here, I broke it up by year to minimize hangups. This allowed each year’s library to import fully, no pauses or hang-ups.
However, the import process has sucked away my entire weekend and then some due to what my husband and I have determined are two bugs:
1. We’re calling it “ghost paths” — for some reason when LR tries to import some (not all) photos from Aperture, it is referencing the original file path — I moved folders on my drive and then re-referenced the location in Aperture — rather than the re-located file path for some but not all photos. This gives me hundreds and hundreds of errors “Failed to find the file”. Is there a fix in the works to ignore original file paths from Aperture and go with current file paths? All file paths were up-to-date before I started this process, so LR really shouldn’t have been quite so particular.
1.a Slightly related: when LR couldn’t find the file path, it created the folders it thought the image files should be in, though this did not re-create the actual files (no way!) This is disturbing that a plug-in can create folders in places on my computer I did not explicitly tell it to create.
2. When I exported JPGS from Aperture in my early days, I stored them in the same folder (not a sub folder) along with the RAW (NEF for this Nikon user). When LR went looking for the NEF photos I had imported into Aperture, it saw the JPG with the same file name and flipped out, throwing out errors in the LibraryImport.txt file. However, when I looked into the newly created collections in LR, the correct NEFS (mostly) were where they were supposed to be. So something about the coding in the plug-in caused an error when it hit the JPG file, but then it “found” the NEF so the correct files were imported.
I don’t know if I’m asking for help, or noting some issues, but either way, I’m ready to be done with this!! (I’m currently importing my last and largest of the libraries, but I was a little smarter with file structure for this one).
Sarah says
And it gave me hundreds of the following errors. “Failed to import [filepath/filename.NEF. (Possible reasons include asset offline or unsupported asset type.)” Sigh. I’m going to have to go through the individual client collection and figure out what didn’t make it.
Victoria Bampton says
Isn’t there a tool in Aperture to show which files are offline? If you fix them and then re-run the tool, it should just add any it missed, as far as I remember.
Sarah says
The files aren’t actually offline, which doesn’t make sense.
Victoria Bampton says
Very strange Sarah. So Aperture can edit them ok? They were definitely NEF’s and not perhaps PSD files stored without maximize compatibility?
Sarah says
Definitely not PSD… I almost never use photoshop. It’s super frustrating! I’m going to try one more thing and do another import over the weekend and see if it works better.
Nicola says
Hello,
I am completely new to Lightroom, and the main reason for me to start using it, is the mucked up filing management in iphoto (or now the photo app in yosemite) – as well as the fear not to be able to use my photos from the apple photo library should I ever want to change back to windows.
I have 120 GB of photos in the iphoto library (which surprised me a little bit…it is only 10 years of pictures and I am only an amateur photographer.). Anyways, I tried to import the iphoto library into lightroom (trial versino) using the plugin, however, after about 8hrs of importing, I still had only 30% imported, with the fan going crazy. So I stopped it, to just see what I`ve got in there. I noticed that I had a whole list of folders with dates in the “folders” tab, and then my iphoto albums in the “collection” tab. I don`t quite understand why I have a folder for every single date when I made a photo – in addition to the albums I had created. Are these all duplicates?
Also, is there a way to only import the albums into LR?
And: Would you suggest to break my seemingly huge photo library into smaller ones (e.g. for each album) in order to ease the import using the plugin?
I appreciate any answers/help on that matter.
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Nicola. The folders are just a way of storing the photos on the hard drive – iPhoto did the same but hid all of the folders – and the collections are your existing organization.
Breaking the iPhoto library down may well help with the import, although I’d aim to end up with them all in a single Lightroom catalog at the end of it.
If you continue to have trouble with the plug-in, you might try something like instead.
Brian Karl says
Hi Victoria. I landed in LR about two months ago as a refugee from Aperture. I have been busy learning my way around LR & PS and only exporting a few CR2 files from Aperture to a folder, importing them in to LR and setting up how to best organise things. I am very pleased with the editing capabilities inside LR and can get a lot more out my images. PS will take me a while to learn but it all looks great.
The part that is a real bear right now is importing my Aperture library into LR. I tested this on three very small libraries (<50 images) and while it was slow it seemed tolerable. Now I have created a 2,200 image library of CR2 files with previews using the same settings that I experimented with but the progress is ridiculously slow. It is now 23 hours later and only 67% of the process is complete. My iMac has the 4-core i7 processor so there are 8 virtual CPUs but LR appears to be using only one of them and it's at 100%. The machine has 20GB RAM and there is 6~7 GB free, 400GB of free HDD. LR is able to use the GPU. I don't think the machine is being overly taxed by the task. In the meantime I can't even use LR and because I inserted an SD card to copy some files to Finder, LR now has the import screen displayed and I can't dismiss it and can no longer see the file count progressing. This whole process is extremely frustrating. I have about 60,000 images in Aperture that I had planned to transition but at this rate of progress I probably won't live long enough to see it completed! ;-(
Another issue I have already noticed is that GPS data is not always preserved. All my images are geotagged either by the camera (iPhone, 5D3 with GP-E2, Sony HX9V, etc); or, by using GeoTagr on the iPhone to create a track which is correlated with the image capture time and the metadata written accordingly; or, manually by dragging and dropping on the map in Aperture. Everything shows up just fine in Aperture, iPhoto, Photos. Before importing to LR I always use Aperture to write IPTC metadata to the original files and force the generation of new previews. However, many images are missing GPS when they arrive in LR. It seems that the previews created during import to bake-in the Aperture adjustments do contain GPS but many of the the associated CR2 files do not. For CR2 files that have not been adjusted some have GPS and some do not. iPhone images seem to transfer OK. I haven't figured out all the permutations yet. Any advice?
I am looking forward to having more powerful editing tools but this process of importing and it's propensity to drop metadata is just awful. In fact it is so awful that I am thinking that I must be doing something very wrong. Surely Adobe didn't unleash something that performs this badly. Can anyone detect what I have messed up?? Please!
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Brian. The Aperture import tool is pretty basic, although that does sound like a ridiculously long time for 2200 images. It’s tough to say why that’s going wrong, but I might be tempted to cancel it, try another small library, and if that doesn’t work, switch to using the app from https://apertureexporter.com and a basic Lightroom import instead. It might not be worth the stress! With the ones that haven’t imported their GPS data, try going to Metadata menu > Read Metadata from Files and see if that pulls it in.
Neil Gallagher says
In Lightroom CC, how do I import selected photos from the new Apple Photos application [successor to iPhoto]? Is there a new Plug In, or what?
Victoria Bampton says
Nope, that’s back to being a manual process. By default, the new Apple Photos app wraps up your photos in its own library, which isn’t easily accessible. To access the original photos, go to Photos app > File menu > Export > Unmodified Original. Check Export IPTC as XMP (this allows Lightroom to import some metadata) and press Export, then navigate to a location for the photos. Finally, import into Lightroom.
Kate Thomas says
I’ve just bought Lightroom 5 and updated to 5.7.1 which, I inderstand, includes the plug-in. I’m running the latest version of Yosemite. When I click on the import button the choices I’m given in the side menu include all the pictures in my Pictures folder except my iPhoto and Aperture libraries. What am I doing wrong?
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Kate. I think you’re looking in the wrong place… the Import button is used for normal imports. For Aperture/iPhoto import, you want the File menu > Plug-in Extras.
Susan Welch says
Hi
I am happy to learn about the plugin for iphotos in lightroom. On my mac, I have all of my pictures under pictures in the folder. Within pictures, an iphoto file lives and now with mac’s update, a photo file lives. In addition, I have a number of other picture files that I keep organized in elements. I want to stop using elements and move all photos to Lr, including my iphoto/photos pictures. So when I import for the first time and select the pictures folder, how does it discriminate between iphotos and the other files? Any tricks I need to be aware of?
thank you,
S
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Susan. So they are different photos in iPhoto to the ones that are in Elements? And are the Elements ones organized in the Elements Organizer?
If so, I’d run it as two steps – the File menu > Plug-in Extras > Import from iPhoto and then File menu > Import from Elements.
When you later come to import any other photos stored in the Pictures folder, it’ll skip any photos that it’s already imported from the same name and location. The normal import dialog won’t be able to see inside your iPhoto file anyway.
Lorraine Hornby says
Hi Victoria,
I’ve imported some of my iPhoto images, and have discovered that the “title” field is missing in LR. My understanding is that this is part of the metadata that would transfer. My caption information is there, though. The title field is very important to me, do you know if it should have been transferred, and what might be done about the fact that it was not?
Victoria Bampton says
You’re right, the import from iPhoto seems to be missing the title unless it’s written to the file. Googling around a little, iPhoto seems to like to hang on to its title contents.
There may well be a simpler option – I’m not that familiar with iPhoto – but there’s definitely one solution that would work. This would be to export all of the photos from iPhoto, just to a low res JPEG in a temporary folder, making sure the Include Title and Keywords is checked. You’d import those into LR after running the iPhoto Importer, and then use the Syncomatic plug-in (http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/jbeardsworth/syncomatic/) to copy the Title field from the low res JPEG to the original file. Then you could delete the low res JPEGs. It would need a bit of testing with the trial version first to make sure it definitely works, but the theory’s solid.
Lorraine Hornby says
Thank you, I will look into that.
Jeremiah Moore says
Did anyone try this? Did it work? I’m very stuck trying to import (1) Titles and (2) Event Names into Lightroom from iPhoto. Everything else works wonderfully.
I’d thought to import Titles as text using LR/Transporter, but my filenames are not all unique, and some unique match field is required…. (after years of digital photography, several cameras including Fisher Price kids cameras, there are about 30 images called IMG_0001.jpg in my library 😉
Mikael Behrens says
Thanks so much Victoria! I am using your suggested technique of using the Syncomatic plug-in to set the titles on the photos from my imported iPhoto library. The plug-in isn’t all that intuitive and took some experimentation before I figured out the best way of using it. I could not rely on matching based on file names. (The iPhoto exporter and the Lightroom importer were not consistent enough creating them.)
What is working for me is to export the small jpg photos from iPhoto to a directory by themselves (making sure to include titles). Then import-in-place the photos in that directory into Lightroom. Then tell the Syncomatic plug-in that the source files are in this directory and to match based on capture time. I’m halfway through restoring titles to about 15 years of photos, working one year at a time.
Victoria Bampton says
Well done Mikael, thanks for sharing your solution!
MILLIE says
I have just bought a new iMac and want to transfer my Aperture(3.2) Libraries from my old iMac computer to Lightroom on my new computer. I also have Lightroom 4 on my old computer as well. I have 28,000 photos to move across, can you suggest a easy way of doing this for someone who is good at photography but sucks at computer know how.
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Millie. I’d do it as a 2 stage process. Either:
1. install LR5.7 on your old computer temporarily, transfer everything into Lightroom and then move to the new computer using these instructions https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-move-lightroom-to-new-computer/
or
2. installer Aperture on the new iMac, transfer the Aperture Library (might have to google that bit!) and then run the Lightroom importer tool.
Lorraine Hornby says
There is a software product call “iPhoto Library Manager” – http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ – that might help users wishing to import large (or otherwise problematic) iPhoto libraries into Lightroom. It allows you to divide your iPhoto library into multiple libraries, so you have the option of importing into Lightroom in a more controlled way – you don’t have to do everything at once. Additionally, it can open a problematic iPhoto library even when iPhoto itself cannot. In my case, I was using an older version of iPhoto, and the Lightroom plug-in required that I first upgrade to a newer version. My only option from Apple was the current iPhoto, version 9.6. However, after the upgrade iPhoto could not open the library. Apple support told me, eventually, that the problem could not be fixed. Not true! iPhoto Library Manager opened the library, and I am now working my way through importing my 48GB iPhoto library into Lightroom.
Victoria Bampton says
Thanks for sharing this tip Lorraine!
Krzysztof Matula says
I’m trying to do the import from Aperture using the plugin available in LR 5.7.1 and I’m having the following issues:
1. The order of images is not preserved. After import the collections representing projects, albums, and slideshows have random image order when I try to sort by “added order” or “custom order”… I’d expect the original order is preserved here. Not sure if Adobe is going to fix this. Tech support doesn’t seem to be willing to forward the problem to the engineering group…
2. The previews for images having adjustments are imported as additional masters, yes. But they are only visible in folders view and in the “Photos Adjusted in Aperture” collection. I’d expect the adjusted versions are visible in all other collections as well. In collections representing albums and slideshows actually having the adjusted images visible is even more desired than the original RAWs…
Are there any known work-arounds to overcome the above problems?
I’m new to LR and I appreciate any help.
Victoria Bampton says
I’m not convinced that Adobe will fix the custom sort order either, although I’m happy to pass the request on.
For the collections, there is a plug-in called Syncomatic which can copy collection membership (among other metadata) from a raw file to a JPEG with a matching name or capture time. That would be a useable workaround for the collections. http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/jbeardsworth/syncomatic/
Krzysztof Matula says
Many thanks, this looks promissing!
Provided that all jpegs with adjusted images are visible in collections the next step will be to batch remove the corresponding RAWs from the collections they belong to. Syncomatic doesn’t seem to help me here. Is there another way to achieve this? I can’t find a way to tell Lightroom to remove the selected images from collections they belong to.
Victoria Bampton says
Assuming you have JPEGs for all of the raw photos, you could just use the Metadata filters (top of the Grid) to filter for the raw files and then hit the Delete key to remove them from the collection. (If you’re in a collection, the Delete key only removes from the collection, not from the catalog or hard drive. In a folder view, it asks whether you want to remove from the catalog or also the hard drive.)
Brian Wilson says
Hello Victoria,
In your ‘Move on….’ guide under ‘Development Settings’ you say : ‘Use Aperture to export full resolution edited photos and store them with the originals.’
Could you explain exactly what you mean by this please . I’m very new to LR btw.
I have done a trial conversion of part of my APLibrary into LR. Everything went fine. However I need to bring in TIFFs of the AP adjusted photos (and keep close to the duplicate masters (+previews) set up by LR in the conversion process). At the moment the TIFFs of the adjusted photos are now exported by AP to a separate location with a similar structure to that created by LR (naming different though).
I believe I can store the TIFFs in the Masters folder, manually. But these will not be included in the Catalog as part of any Collection as LR does not know about them. Can it be done please?
Brian
Victoria Bampton says
I’ve dropped you an email Brian!
Günni says
Thank you very much for all
Günni says
no any accented characters anywhere in the file path,
Victoria Bampton says
I’m running low on ideas I’m afraid. If you’ve tried repairing/rebuilding the Aperture library, and you’ve tried exporting a bit of the library to a small library to see if that’ll import, I think the last thing I can suggest is posting it at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://clkuk.tradedoubler.com/click?p(265883)a(2791170)g(22913796)url(http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family)
Wade says
Thanks for this post. Very helpful. I have an iMac (v 10.7.5) with iPhoto (v 9.4.3). 9,000 photos which I had recently moved onto an external hard drive. I followed your instructions and was able to import all of them into Lightroom. I did get a warning message that the Importer only supports iPhoto 9.5.1 or later and that errors may result. In spite of that it seems everything went smoothly and all the photos are now in Lightroom. Now I just have to get more familiar with Lightroom. Thanks again for your helpful post.
Victoria Bampton says
Excellent, glad to hear it Wade!
Günni says
Hi,
I want to import my photos from Aperture, and I have used the path described by LR (LR> File> Auxiliary Module Options> Import from Aperture library). It all seems to be set correctly, but the “IMPORT” – Button “flashes” in a short time and is grayed out from then on, it is not possible to import. What do I do?
Thank You
Victoria Bampton says
How big’s your Aperture library Günni? And is Aperture closed at the time? Does the rest of the dialog populate correctly with file paths and numbers?
Günni says
Thanks, my Library is 32GB and yes Aperture i closed.
the number of images and required memory place is not displayed, the file paths is correct,
Victoria Bampton says
How many photos in that 32GB? Some people have been reporting problems with very large catalogs, which they’ve solved by exporting their library out into smaller chunks. You could also try repairing/rebuilding your library to rule out any database issues that it might be falling over. One last thought… I note the accented character in your name… does the file path or individual file names include any accented characters? There’s a chance that could be causing trouble.
Günni says
There are 5000 photos in the database, I have also tried with a small database, also does not, this is the name of my library: Aperture Library.aplibrary,
Victoria Bampton says
What’s the full path to the library, e.g. Macintosh HD/Users/Gunni/Pictures/ – are there any accented characters anywhere in the file path?
Chess Edwards says
I have all my photos managed in Aperture. So, within the program I see properly named projects, folders and albums.
It seems that when I import into Lightroom what gets created on my hard drive are folders by year.
And what shows up in Lightroom are also a series of folders named by year.
Unfortunately this makes it terribly difficult to find images on my hard drive’s file structure.
I believe that when the import is done that I will have mapped folders in the “Collections” area that mirror my Aperture structure pretty closely.
However, is there any way to have the folders on my hard drive show up as named folders rather than just years?
Perhaps there is a way to change from managed to referenced in Aperture before making the migration?
I hope there is a solution. I can’t imagine trying to work with photos that are catalogued by year.
Thanks.
Leanne says
Chess I have the same thoughts as you. I hope we get an answer to this.
Thanks
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Chess & Leanne. Yes, the Collections panel shows the project structure you’ve been using in Aperture, so you could just ignore the Folders panel. After all, for all this time, you’ve never cared how Aperture filed your photos on the hard drive, so why start now? Until now, you’ve navigated to the photos from Aperture, opened them in other software, etc… you can do exactly the same thing with Lightroom.
But yes, the alternative is to convert to a referenced library before you import into Lightroom – the Relocate Originals command is the one you’re looking for. If you skip back to my reply to Luxpig, there’s a bit more info on that.
Alex says
I have opened the import from Aperture dialog, clicked on the Aperture Library (I have only one under Pictures), clicked on the default destination (LR Masters), and nothing happens. I have tried fiddling with options, and still nothing. Can you please help?
Victoria Bampton says
How big’s your Aperture Library Alex?
Alex says
8,000 photos now. I’m trying to cull the library down even further.
Victoria Bampton says
8000 should be no issue. Take me through the exact steps and what you can see? Or feel free to email me with screenshots and we’ll try to figure out what’s going wrong. Oh, one more – I assume you’re on the latest Aperture and OS versions?
luxpig says
I have a feeling Im making this more difficult than it actually is, but here goes…
I want to make the import from Aperture to Lightroom as smooth as possible, keeping my current folder hierarchy as close to what it is now.
My photos are already sorted into this structure, in Aperture, as a managed library:
PHOTOGRAPHY (main folder)
– PROCESSED (sub)
GROUP A (project)
GROUP B (project)
GROUP C (project)
PROJECTS (sub)
PROJECT 1 (project)
PROJECT 2 (project)
PROJECT 3 (project)
– WORK IN PROGRESS (sub)
GROUP D (project)
GROUP E (project)
GROUP F (project)
First, how can I make this into a referenced library? What is the appropriate sequence of settings to use (based on my current structure shown above), when I get to the “edit” panel of the Relocate Originals function in Aperture? Or is this changing to a referenced library not completely necessary?
Totally confused. And scared to muck it all up before even starting up my new LR journey.
Victoria Bampton says
One of these lovely Aperture users might be able to confirm, but I’ve just done a couple of quick tests. In the Relocate Originals dialog, I created a folder called Photography (to match yours) then I picked Project Name as the subfolder name in the pop-ups, and all of my projects became folders. The subs were still existing in Aperture as projects, so the Lightroom Import plug-in would turn those into Collections for you, without creating duplicate photos on the hard drive.
Steve says
When I use the Aperture Importer, as you mention, all the images show up by default in date format (ex, 2014-04-15). That can be really cumbersome as some of my libraries have literally hundreds of dates, and the date format is pretty meaningless for me. I would prefer to structure my catalog by names (travel, sports, people) instead of dates (2014-04-15). How can I work around this? Say for example I took a 100 day trip around the world, I would have 100 folders (one for each date). Is there a simple trick to selecting a large group of 100+ folders and getting the content out of those folders into one master folder called ‘Trip’?
Victoria Bampton says
Yes, you have a couple of options. For one, you could just ignore the folders. They’re only for storage. All of your projects will be further down in the Collections panel, so use that to group your photos.
If you do want to move the photos into other folders on the hard drive, create the folder you want to put them into, then shift-click to select the multiple folders, select all of the photos in Grid view and drag them by their thumbnails onto the folder you created.
WTH says
I wish I had found this earlier. I began to import my Aperture Catalog and due to a few issues I had to abandon the attempt. After replacing the hard drive and trying it again, I succeeded, but I now have multiple duplicates and triplicates. How can I erase the entire Lightroom catalog and start the import fresh? Thank you
drew says
Why don’t you just start a new catalog and delete the old one?
Victoria Bampton says
Yep, Drew’s got it. Just go to File menu > New Catalog to create a fresh catalog and use Finder to delete the old one.
WTH says
Thank you. It worked!
drew says
I imported to Lightroom from iPhoto using the plugin. A few things…
1. Only some albums are showing up as iPhoto Collections in Lightroom. Very strange and seemingly random. Is there something about those albums that are unique? If I know why we can fix the others.
2 (and most important). iPhoto is not showing updated files that were adjusted in Photoshop. For example, in iPhoto, I clicked edit and it opened the file in Photoshop. I then saved the file and it updates the thumbnail in iPhoto. But when I look in Lightroom after the import, the original file is there and not the updated one. I’m surprised by this because I edited in Photoshop and saved over the original file (seemingly).
Thanks for any help anyone can provide.
Victoria Bampton says
I’m missing something here Drew… you’re trying to run iPhoto and Lightroom alongside? If you edit in PS from iPhoto, LR won’t know to update its own preview.
Drew Katz says
I’m trying to bring everything from iPhoto into lightroom. And even though I technically made changes in Photoshop, when I import, it isn’t giving me the updated files. I was under the impression if I was in iPhoto but I selected to edit in Photoshop, and saved the file, it was replacing the file. But it appears like iPhoto hogs that updated file, even though I did the changes in Photoshop.
Victoria Bampton says
So are you doing this edit in Photoshop before you’ve run the import script or after?
Drew Katz says
Yes, before. While in iPhoto, I selected “Edit” and it opens the file in PS. Then I edit and hit save. Looks great in iPhoto but when I import, it only imports the original file.
Victoria Bampton says
That is an odd one. You could try rooting around inside the package file to see if you can find it.
Jay says
Yosemite version 10.10.2 installed. With updated Aperture and LR 5.7.1, when the importer opens, it immediately shows “checking Aperture Library” with a progress bar displayed. The progress bar never budges, and nothing seems to be progressing.
The default locations for the library locations are inaccessible, the options on the importer are inaccessible, and the rest of LR functions are inaccessible. The only way to stop it is to force quit LR.
Jay says
I’m pretty sure that the problem is that my main Aperture Library is too large. A smaller library imported fine, and the aforementioned progress bar displayed for just a few seconds.
Think the answer is to leave Aperture alone, wait for the new “Photos” app to appear, and see if that can be used to manage non-LR images. I’ll import some working libraries into LR and leave the rest alone.
Thanks for your Quick Start Guide. Very helpful for a Sports Photographer who needs to transition to LR between seasons, quickly!
Victoria Bampton says
Have you considered exporting your main library into a few smaller libraries? Other people seem to have found that a great help.
judith says
Thanks for excellent helpful advice, Victoria.
For what it’s worth, here’s my little adventure: like for so many here, when launching import from iPhoto library the plug-in’s import button was greyed out. Restarted Mac, open and closed Lightroom and iPhoto, double checked iPhoto library was in right place and not too big (15GB/ under 4000 photos) etc.
At some point the import button suddenly was active and the whole import worked perfectly!
When I closed down all programmes for the night, I saw I accidentally had left iPhoto open while launching the Lightroom import plug-in … maybe that did the trick?!
Go figure ….
Victoria Bampton says
Excellent, thanks for the update Judith. How strange!
Ralf Brodrecht says
Hi, I’ve tried to import the Photos from an iPhoto Library to LR 5.7
But then nothing will happens. The Status-Bar hangs at 0% and after a few minutes Lightroom is no more responding and hangs. I only now can close Lightroom via Task-Manager
Victoria Bampton says
So you get as far as pressing the import button, but then it hangs? How many photos in iPhoto? And which iPhoto version?
Fin Springs says
I have a lot of older photos in Aperture that came over to LR with missing dates so I had to abandon the import.
I’ve since found that these photos do not have the IPTC date tags (DateCreated/TimeCreated/DigitalCreationDate etc) in them.
By running an AppleScript against Aperture I can see that the date that Aperture is showing comes from what it calls the EXIF tag “ImageDate”. However, this field doesn’t show when I examine the files with exiftool, and it doesn’t show when LR imports them, hence the resulting missing dates.
The “Write IPTC Metadata to Original” menu item in Aperture doesn’t make it fill in the IPTC date fields.
Has anyone found a way to either get LR to see this “ImageDate” tag and use it in the absence of the IPTC date fields, or copy “ImageDate” into the IPTC date tags so that LR can find it?
Victoria Bampton says
How did those dates get there in the first place? Is this an Aperture script you’re using to find them (e.g. could it be stored only in Aperture’s database) or something you’re running on the files? Perhaps the script could also be used to write it to the correct fields?
Fin Springs says
They show in Aperture in the Info panel, but it’s possible I had to enter those date manually, and so it is possible that it only exists in Aperture’s database (these were taken with a Sony Mavica that took floppies :)). Aperture reports those dates via AppleScript as the ‘EXIF tag “ImageDate”‘, which is not a tag that exiftool recognizes.
I could probably write as script that reads that tag, converts it to the format the IPTC date tags want and write those tags, then try the import again, but I was hoping there was a way to get LR to pull those dates.
Victoria Bampton says
Post it on the forum and I’ll give John Beardsworth a nudge. He’s spent more time rooting around the innards of Aperture than I have, so he might have some bright ideas.
Stefano Fabbi says
No more able to import aperture libraries in Lightroom (yes, there was a time I was it).
My “landscape”:
– Mac OS X 10.10.1 (yes, Yosemite…)
– Aperture 3.6
– Lightroom 5.7,1 (CC version)
When trying to import some libraries from aperture I get this immediate response “Failed to obtain image version information from Aperture library”.
In the plug-in import window, “Number of image/video files” is as well as “Disk space required”.
Tried with different Aperture libraries, but with the same negative result.
The plug-in worked in previous Lightroom version or when it was a stand alone plug-in.
I think I’m not the only one with this problem… but, any idea?
Thank you
Stefano
Victoria Bampton says
How big are the libraries you’re trying Stefano? Some people are doing better with small libraries of up to about 20k photos.
Stefano Fabbi says
Hi Victoria, thanks for your attention. I tried with small libraries too, with no more than 1500 photos, to keep results under control, but no way.
It’s seems there’s something wrong somewhere, in the library metadata or in the plug-in software, because the error prompt is immediate. Thank you.
Stefano
Victoria Bampton says
You could try a clean LR catalog (File menu > New Catalog) to see if that’ll work.
Stefano Fabbi says
Hi Victoria, thanks again. I tried with a new clean catalog, but with the same negative result.
Victoria Bampton says
Hmmm. You could try resetting LR’s preferences. Or try a clean user account.
Stefano Fabbi says
Finally, I got rid of this!
Following the suggestions of “wezlo” in Adobe Community, I separated my Aperture Libraries in some different libraries (by year) and I imported them one by one.
Only one project (in a certain year) revealed the original problem and for this I used a normal export/import procedure.
Victoria Bampton says
Glad to hear it! Thanks for the update!
Jim says
Well this might be working. Having nothing to go on and tech support not getting back I have broken my Aperture library down by year. Select all the events in a year and select “File” then “export project as a new library”. This takes all the events for that year and makes a new Aperture library of just those events. Now run the Lightroom plugin on just that smaller library and it runs. Only a few photos didn’t import and are automatically put in a “notImported” folder so they are easy to find. Yes you have to cut your library up (which takes lots of time) but this method leaves the original Aperture library alone so no chance of harm. I have 100,000 images so I am cutting it up to around 20,000 each import. It would be nice if the code people would at least have the thing come back with “too many images” or something. Best of luck. I’m still not done as it looks like this will take 3-4 days. A note: I did have Aperture regenerate full size previews of the entire library first so the cooked JPEGS of all my edits would come across which was 18 hours.
Jim says
So now that I’m partially indoctrinated I can’t find out how to get the original RAW and Aperture edited JPEG to be on the screen together. Are they linked in some way or imbedded together? Any thoughts? Thank You
Victoria Bampton says
Are they in the same folder Jim? If they are, select their folder in the Folders panel and you should see a little white box in the corner of the thumbnails with the number 2 in it. If you click on that, you’ll open the stack. If you want to stack them in their collections, select all of the photos in the Collection and go to Photo menu > Stacking > Auto Stack by Capture Time and move that slider all the way to the left.
Eric says
Victoria, thank you for the helpful article. I’m curious… I have about 50,000 photos stored in my iPhoto library. I’ve only recently started shooting raw with a Canon 6D and really want to use Lightroom for fine-tuned editing and essentials like lens correction. However, all of my devices are synced via Apple, with photos and albums shared and streamed across my iPad, iPhone, etc. With the plugin now available for Aperture or iPhoto to “leave referenced files in your iphoto/aperture library,” would you recommend keeping the ‘masters’ (e.g. raw) in the iPhoto library for continuity and then editing in Lightroom (since the Lightroom edits are effectively metadata?). I’ve been agonizing over the wholesale switch to Lightroom and lots of forum posts of people like myself with large (10yr+, 50K+ photos) photo libraries managed in iPhoto suggests that the master should stay put. Thanks very much for your advice.
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Eric. If I remember rightly, iPhoto doesn’t have a referenced files option – that’s only available in Aperture – so you don’t have a choice. You could certainly use a copy of the originals in Lightroom and leave the existing ones where they are. If they’re mostly JPEGs, they shouldn’t take up toooooo much space.
daslicht says
How about importing iPhoto / Aperture Libraries into Lightroom running on Windows ?
Is thats also possible , please?
Victoria Bampton says
No, it’s not. The assumption is that if you’ve been using iPhoto/Aperture (which are Mac-only) then you have access to a Mac on which to run the importer tool. You can just install the trial on the Mac, run the importer, and then transfer the resulting catalog to the Windows machine though, as Lightroom catalogs are cross-platform.
Rona says
I imported my iPhoto pictures several months ago by exporting to my desktop and importing into LR before this plug-in was issued. Thus I don’t have the tags and other important metadata for those photos in LR now. I’d like to retrieve that information. If I use this plug in, will I end up having a duplicate catalog of all of those photos (and later have to delete the old one)? Or will I have the option to overwrite the existing photos? I am concerned because I have over 34,000 iPhoto pics and don’t want to overload the external hard drive I use to store my photos.
Victoria Bampton says
It doesn’t offer the option to overwrite existing photos. Have you edited any of those old iPhoto photos in Lightroom yet?
Rona says
I may have edited a few, but only a tiny fraction of them. I had plenty of new photos to work on so haven’t tackled the older ones yet (I only purchased my first copy of LR about a year ago). I’m mostly interested in retrieving the tags from iPhoto so I don’t have to re-keyword 34,000+ photos!
Victoria Bampton says
Ok, is there enough space on your external hard drive to have both on there temporarily? If so, I’d try something like this:
1. Back up your catalog
2. Add the photos you’ve edited to the Quick Collection so you can find them easily.
2. Use the iPhoto Import tool to import the iPhoto photos into a separate folder in Lightroom (separate folder making it easy to distinguish the newly imported ones)
3. Check everything worked correctly.
4. Find the photos you edited in LR and drag them into the new folder structure that the iPhoto Import created.
5. Find any new photos you’ve imported to Lightroom since you stopped using iPhoto, and drag them into the new folder structure too.
6. Check you’re happy that the new folder structure contains all of your photos.
7. Back up!
8. Select the rest of of the earlier set of photos and delete them.
Rona says
Thanks for your help and the clear step by step instructions. I’ll try that.
Miles says
Same problem as Marcus and Jorn; OS X 10.10.1 and Lightroom 5.7, attempting to import Aperture library. The Import button is grayed (greyed) out. Anyone found a fix yet?
Victoria Bampton says
I haven’t heard of any fixes, but I’ve emailed the engineers today to see if they can figure out what’s going on. I’ll keep chasing it.
Miles says
Thank you Victoria!
Jim says
The cause of the greyed-out Import button, at least for me, was the size of my Aperture library, 180GB. Once I broke the library into smaller libraries and imported these separately, the Import button started working.
I’ve organized my Aperture library by year, and I used this to break it up. Here’s what worked for me:
1) in Aperture, select the folder for a year (e.g. ‘2013’) and select all the images in it (cmd-A)
2) in Aperture, select File/Export/Folder as Library
3) in Lightroom, use the Aperture Import plug-in to import this new, smaller, library.
With 14 years of images, this took a while. I know the plug-in is ok with 10GB libraries (my largest year so far); its upper limit is higher than this.
Victoria Bampton says
Thanks for sharing that Jim!
jorn says
My “number of files” and “dick space…” fields are empty; the Import button inactive. So sad 🙁
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Jorn. A few people seem to be having trouble with that. What’s your OS and Aperture/iPhoto version?
Michael says
I have the same problem here. OS 10.7.5, Lightroom 5.7, iPhoto ’11 (version 9.2)
Laurie J says
Not working for me. I have over 30,000 pics in iphoto. I have the latest versions of both lightroom and iPhoto. I get a message from Lightroom ” your selection does not appear to be an iPhoto library. (The importer plug-in expects version 9.5.1or newer)
Very confusing.
Victoria Bampton says
What’s your operating system Laurie? And what’s the name and location of your iPhoto Library? You’ve been using it for a few years by the sounds of it?
Laurie J. says
Ive had my Mac for 7 mo. I have way too many pictures for sure. Need to edit out a lot. My operating system is OS X Version 10.9.5. My iPhoto library appears to be in my pictures folder in the finder but it says size is 133MB (does this seem right?) Every time I open iPhoto from this location it tries to download a random group of pictures.
Victoria Bampton says
133MB sounds very small, considering you have way too many pictures. It might be worth using Spotlight to search for any other iPhoto Libraries.
When you open it, can you see all of your photos ok?
How do your photos usually get into iPhoto – by plugging a memory card/camera into your computer or using something like PhotoStream from an iPhone?
Tom K says
Your site is quite helpful!!
The plug-in transfers the original files, but not the adjustments in Aperture. I know how to select all the adjusted files and import them over. Now, what is the best way to put those adjusted files back with the originals so they are in the same location in the Collection? Must it be done manually? (I know that the plug-in with import a pre-view when importing, but I would like the nicely edited large file in the same place. Thank you!
Tom K says
After doing a lot of on-line research I came across, Aperture Exporter. It is $15, but if you use their new beta version you can name your own price ($4 min). You can download a demo version. I downloaded the demo, tried it a few times on a few projects, and found that it was just what I needed. I used it to export all my photos and adjusted photos in the exact same file structure and names I had used before. It kept originals and adjusted photos together, labeling the adjusted ones. It did not import them into LR, which is OK, as I can do that on my own. Basically this pulls your stuff out of Aperture so you can use it with any other program. Feeling SO GOOD knowing where all my photos are, and no work was lost. There were a couple of little glitches, with Aperture saying it could not export metadata on about 1% of my files, but they typically were jpegs that were not photos but items saved from on-line, or old scans. You have to be at your computer to dismiss the warnings in Aperture as they come up. This was the only drawback to the program. A SMALL price to pay for what the program did for me. Try the demo; I found it better that the Adobe plug in.
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Tom. Sorry I missed replying to your earlier post. Thanks for sharing that program – looks interesting. For anyone else having trouble with Adobe’s tool, here’s the link to the one Tom mentioned: https://apertureexporter.com
Steve Darden says
Your post on Aperature/iPhoto importer is better than anything I found on Adobe site. Thank you Victoria, excellent!
I’m assisting a friend to migrate some 47,000 images from iPhoto 9.5.1 to LR 5.7. Running v 1.0.989918 of the importer plugin. Nothing was imported when LR displays the alert
An internal error has occurred.
?:0: attempt to index a nil value
in front of the Import from iPhoto Progress window. Below is the entire LibraryImporter.log. Meanwhile I’ve downloaded iPhoto Library Manager and have started a rebuild.
2014-12-02 07:15:47 +0000, INFO Failed to obtain album info from iPhoto library with error Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.app/Contents/PlugIns/aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin/Contents/Resources/python/albums.py”, line 149, in
readAlbumInfo( unicode( sys.argv[ 1 ], ‘utf-8’ ), unicode( sys.argv[ 2 ], ‘utf-8’ ) )
File “/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.app/Contents/PlugIns/aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin/Contents/Resources/python/albums.py”, line 132, in readAlbumInfo
xmlAlbums = readAlbumDataXml( unicode( sys.argv[ 1 ], ‘utf-8’ ) )
File “/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.app/Contents/PlugIns/aperture_iphoto_importer.lrplugin/Contents/Resources/python/albums.py”, line 65, in readAlbumDataXml
plist = plistlib.readPlist( xmlPath )
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plistlib.py”, line 78, in readPlist
rootObject = p.parse(pathOrFile)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plistlib.py”, line 406, in parse
parser.ParseFile(fileobj)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plistlib.py”, line 418, in handleEndElement
handler()
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plistlib.py”, line 466, in end_integer
self.addObject(int(self.getData()))
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ‘(null)’
Victoria Bampton says
I wish I could tell you the answer to that Steve! Best I can suggest is reporting it at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum where the engineers and QE guys hang out.
Charlie says
Steve – any update on the “attempt to index a nil value” error? I’m experiencing the same thing when attempting an import from Aperture.
Thanks!
Marcus says
Well, it’s not working for me at all.
I have latest CC version of LR and latest release of Aperture and Yosemite. The import plugin (latest) is fine but the ‘import’ button is always greyed out!!
Number of images and disc space just show “undetermined”.
Any ideas?
Victoria Bampton says
How big’s your Aperture library Marcus?
pete says
This seems a wonderful guide … detailed and specific. But taken as a whole, it is complicated with many steps. I changed to LR a year ago shortly before Apple’s announcement in frustration with them, and am still learning the ways of LR. It’s going ok. Since I used Aperture referenced before, I just imported the photos and left the Aperture program as available for any of the 200,000(!) photos it managed. One good feature for ex. for me was its ability to find photos by faces which LR doesn’t do. Anyway, my logic was should I need to access the history I still could. But of course Apple keeps updating its OS and eventually I suppose won’t encompass the ability for Aperture to run? So thereby I’m really forced into doing a conversion like this?
Victoria Bampton says
Yes, I tried to break it down into separate steps as it’s easier than reading chunky blocks of text, and it’s important not to leave anything out for those with more complicated scenarios. If your photos are referenced, you should have a nice straightforward transition.
Adobe are aware of the requests for face recognition, so you’ll likely see it in the future LR version. In the meantime, they’re transferred as keywords so you can still find any faces you’ve already tagged.
Skyscraper J says
Thank you very much for this guide! Just to let everybody know: Neither this plugin nor the current version of Lightroom (5.7, which includes the plugin) will import Aperture’s gps data. For people who want their photos freed from Apple’s software and still preserve information, I think the best way is to export the originals with xmp sidecars and then use exiftool to write the metadata (including gps) into their masters. (I struggled for days, so I think this information might be useful for some). Thanks again!
Victoria Bampton says
Very useful to know, thanks. I can’t check this right now, but what happens if the files are reference, you write the metadata to the files in Aperture, run Lightroom’s import to transfer everything else, and then use Metadata menu > Read Metadata from Files. In theory, that would pull in any metadata from the files that wasn’t transferred by the import tool.
LBH says
Hi,
Will the “description” field used in iPhoto be transferred?
Victoria Bampton says
As long as it’s the IPTC Description field we’re talking about, then yes.
marcB says
Having an issue. Followed your steps. However, I get this message: Failed to import any image version information from Aperture Library. Please help…
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Marc. Which Aperture version are you moving from? And you’re running Lightroom 5.6?
Are your files managed or referenced? If they’re referenced, can Aperture still find all of the files?
If you look in the users main directory /Users/ can you find a couple of log files called LibraryImport.txt and LibraryImporter.log
Bernard says
Hello
I Have the same problem.
I ‘m using Aperture 3.6 & Lr 5.6
plugin worked well with my Iphoto Library but not with Aperture Library
LibraryImporter.log is available but I didn’t find the .txt
Bernard
Victoria Bampton says
Are you getting the same error message Bernard? Are your files managed or referenced?
Victoria Bampton says
Some people are reporting that cleaning up Aperture’s trash solves this “failed to import any image version information” error.
BSKaran karan says
Hi,
My Aperture file is about 500 G. what is the best way to move to Lr? can I move selective folders from Aperture?
Victoria Bampton says
If you’ve got enough drive space, just go ahead and run the import. If you want to move selective folders, you’d need to use Aperture’s Export as Library feature to create a separate library of those photos.
Edc415 says
Excellent guide, Victoria!
Do you have a quick and dirty workflow step by step guide for avoiding using iPhoto all together? I have an iMac iPhone and iPad and like the iCloud features, but much prefer using Lightroom’s superior post processing tools.
Is it better to import the photos into aperture first from iPhoto, or just do a direct import?
I have three years worth of photos that ended up in iPhoto and not Lightroom and I would like to change my habits and workflows, while keeping cloud access. Considering the 9.99 Lightroom/Photoshop CC plan.
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Edc415. The 9.99 CC plan would give you access to Lightroom Mobile, which can upload your photos from your phone/iPad directly into Lightroom. That way you could skip iPhoto altogether.
As far as the import goes, you can just do it direct – no need to go through Amazon first.
Edc415 says
Thank you for the prompt response, Victoria. by Amazon I think you meant Aperture, right? Dang autocorrect LOL.
Victoria Bampton says
Doh!!! Yes, Aperture!
Victoria Bampton says
There’s an updated 1.0.1 release now
Stephanie says
Hi Victoria
I would like to discontinue using iPhoto and only use LR5, which I have been using now for some weeks and beginning to feel comfortable with it. Your explanation of how to get all of the iPhoto library into LR is the best I’ve found after trawling the internet for weeks. I am very grateful to you.
I have successfully installed the plug-in, and am about to press the ‘import’ button but keep hesitating because I’m not sure that I completely understand your explanation about ‘Leave referenced files in your Aperture (iPhoto) library in their current location’ and don’t know whether to tick that box or not.
Will the originals always remain in iPhoto? or can they be moved to a new location? I understand that LR only works with copies. I don’t want to use up unnecessary disk space with duplicates.I have copies of the originals on an external hard-drive, and a back-up on another external hard-drive. (Yes I’m paranoid about losing my photos!)
Victoria Bampton says
Hi Stephanie. iPhoto wraps the files up in a special kind of wrapper and so Lightroom can’t access them without copying them. (Aperture allows them to be referenced on the hard drive, whereas iPhoto doesn’t).
Once you’ve got Lightroom up and running, and you’re happy with it, you can delete the iPhoto Library so you’ll just have Lightroom’s copy of the files plus your usual backups.
Stephanie says
Hi Victoria
Thanks for your prompt reply!
So I’m still unsure as to whether to tick that box or not. The one about leaving referenced files in their current location. To tick or not to tick….
Victoria Bampton says
Untick. 🙂
Victoria
Erica says
Oh thank you – this is the comment I’ve been scouring the web forever to find! Good bye iPhoto…
Giuseppe says
Hi,
I run Windows 8 with bootcamp on my Mac mini.
On Windows 8 i’ve installed lightroom and here is where I would like to move my iphoto library which now resides on an HFS+ exrternal drive.
Anyway the problem is that the plugin doesn’t recognize my library.iphoto as a valid iphoto library!!! I’m stuck!!!!
Please help!
Thank You!
Giuseppe
Victoria Bampton says
Install Lightroom – the trial would do – on the Mac partition and run the plug-in. It isn’t designed to work on Windows. Once you’ve got the information into the Lightroom catalog, you can use it on either operating system.
Ditlev Brodersen says
Today I discovered by chance that the Aperture importer does in fact leave a couple of log files in the users main directory /Users/. They are named LibraryImport.txt, which is brief and seems to contain a list of problematic files and LibraryImporter.log, which is more exhaustive and appears to list all import events. I hope this may be of help to some of those experiencing trouble with the plugin. I’ve managed my way through by dividing the Aperture library into smaller bits, so it doesn’t look like there was one particular file that obstructed the import as everything came over in the split import.
Victoria Bampton says
That’s good to know, thanks Ditlev. I wonder whether there was some misformed data in the original library that got automatically fixed while exporting to a new library. I’ve seen similar magic fixes by exporting Lightroom catalogs in the past, so that might explain it.
John says
This is fantastic! Thank you! I had a quick question though. I am new to Lightroom – I see that it has imported the photos into folders YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD, but now when I try to import other photos into LR (not using Aperture importer on an Aperture library but using LR’s built-in files and folders importer), I don’t see an import folder preset that matches YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD. How can use the format: YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD for imports done outside of the the Aperture library importer? Help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Victoria Bampton says
How daft is that?!? I hadn’t noticed! Ok, there is a solution to that. Assuming you’re using the English version, try this:
Create a plain text file called TranslatedStrings.txt inside:
Windows: c:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Photoshop Lightroom 5Resourcesn Mac: Macintosh HD/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj
Put a single line in the text file that says: “$$$/AgImportDialog/ShootArrangement_9/Template=%Y/%m/%Y-%m-%d”
Make sure it’s got straight quotes, not curly ones.
Then restart Lightroom.
It basically makes use of the translation strings to change one of the built in templates from YYYY/MM-YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD to YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD.
Don’t forget to back up the TranslatedStrings.txt file, as it may be replaced each time you update Lightroom. If you have any problems, delete the file and you’ll be back to the shipping version.
John says
This worked! Thanks a lot Victoria!
Chandler says
Thanks for the fix,,, any chance this will be fixed in the importer, or that YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD Destination option added to Lightroom?
Victoria Bampton says
I did put in a bug report, but it may not be considered a priority. You could report it here to give it some extra weight: http://clkuk.tradedoubler.com/click?p(265883)a(2791170)g(22913796)url(http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family)
Angelo says
I have most of my images referenced on a networked drive (NAS). Aperture never did like network drives much, so it needs reminding every once and a while about where they are.
Anyone tried to migrate with this setup?
Also, for versions, have you figured out an automated way to put those in the same date folders via exporting from Aperture, or is it just going to be all manual moving?
Thanks,
Angelo
Victoria Bampton says
As long as Aperture can find the photos just before import, then the import tool should be able to find them too.
Victoria
Ditlev Brodersen says
On a separate note, has anyone found a reasonable Lr replacement for the Auto Enhance function in Aperture? I’m a casual photographer with three young kids, so I don’t have oceans of time and would like my photos to just look great. I know Matt Kloskowski offers some free Lr auto enhance presets, but in my hands they don’t achieve as good results as the Aperture built-in function. Also pictures look less detailed in Lr than in Aperture (on a 15″ MBP with retina screen), and Lr appears to run less smoothly. Is that also what other people are experiencing?
Victoria Bampton says
If you find some settings you like, you can apply them by default. That’ll include things like sharpening. When you say it’s running less smoothly, which bits specifically? There might be bits you can tweak to help.
Ditlev Brodersen says
I guess it was just my initial feeling when scrolling through an overview of images in a folder, but I may be mistaken.
Victoria Bampton says
It probably hasn’t built out all the previews yet. Select all, go to Library menu > Previews > Render Standard Sized Previews before you go to bed. The first time you scroll through the grid it might be a bit slow and then it should speed up as it gets cached.
Sent from my iPad
Robert Dilworth says
I am still always getting stuck at 27%. Running the Plug-in multiple times doesn’t seem to duplicate anything, so that’s answered. Really want the Aperture migration with this plug-in to work as well as it did for iPhoto (almost perfect; impressive). As to Aperture migration, plug-in has made 26 empty Projects / Project Photos folders with right names though.
Have potential workaround, but could necessitate better part of another Saturday: purchased and downloaded Aperture Exporter for Mac OS X (CDN$15 ), exported entire file structure and content to a special folder / external disk. AE did this perfectly, except for 11 images out of thousands. Can happily fix that or live with 99.9% completeness. These exceptions were noted as they occurred because program stopped so that I could jot down the names. As to the 26 empty LR Project Photos folders I could next go each and attempt manually to populate the corresponding images since they are all so nicely organized in folders on external drive – $15 well spent on AE, bravo.
Question is whether and how one can add manually to one of these empty Project Photos folders. Do I have to manually import each set 26 times, then take “Current import” or “Most Recent Import” set and drop into right Project folder so that it gets all linked? That is, a manual fix 26 times? In LR-speak, these are “Collections”, I hope in this instance not static. If users can work with them post-migration as if they had been native LR Collections, then it ought be possible to populate an empty one. Thanks for any tips, whether as to how to jump-start the plug-in, or as to my proposed workaround. Robert
Victoria Bampton says
If the other program’s falling over 11 images, chances are the Lightroom import tool is falling over the same 11 images and not handling it gracefully. It might be interesting to try removing those 11 images from Aperture after saving their settings (Aperture would let you export them as a new library?) and then see if the LR importer completes without getting stuck. If it does, Adobe would probably like a look at the library of 11, to see if they can fix it in the next release.
As far as the collections goes, yes, they’re just standard collections you could quite happily manually populate those, or just work straight from the folders, if you imported the photos using a normal import (i.e. without creating a dated folder structure).
Robert Dilworth says
Victoria, thanks for the prompt reply. I wondered about these 11, as well esp since LR (after running the plug-in) put up a “Missing Photographs” collection of … 11 images. Although the plot thickens – they are not the same 11 as the Aperture Exporter (3rd party app) didn’t like. Using the LR migration plug-in, the 11 that failed all related to a single Album / Project, not all 26 empty Project Photos folders. And I spoke too soon re the iPhoto migration: there are a few empty LR folders there as well, but much fewer fails than from Aperture migration. Anything here that we want Adobe to look at / consider?
I did just import a couple of the smaller folders as an experiment, selected “all” under “Previous Imports” and dragged to right Collection (Project Photos folder). Is there a way to reduce a step (import straight with like to right folder)? Or way to avoid doing 26 times? Thanks again.
Robert
Victoria Bampton says
Excellent questions. Let me test your scenario Jo, and see if the engineers know the answers to your questions Robert & Ditlev, and I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.
Ditlev Brodersen says
In the meantime, I’ve decided to export each of my year projects in Aperture as separate libraries and then import them one at a time in Lr and see how far I get. After all, it’s only 11 years since I got my first digital camera… 🙂
Victoria Bampton says
Good plan Ditlev. I’m guessing it’s falling over a specific photo somewhere, so if you figure out which one, I’m sure Adobe would love to know about it.
Jo says
Hi Victoria,
Thanks for looking into this, and, awesome post by the way.
I went ahead and did the import. Most of the files were imported fine but there is a list (LibraryImport.txt) of failed imports and I am slowly working through. Based on the failures I’ve examined so far it seems that referenced images were located by Aperture using absolute paths on the boot (not sure how it would work if they were stored on an external drive) drive as opposed to a path relative to the Aperture library. For example, a file called DSC06077.jpg lives in the ~/Pictures/AMLR folder so, on the external drive (called backup) it’s full path from my mac would be /Volumes/backup/users//Pictures/AMLR/DSC06077.jpg.
However, the importer plugin could not find it but tried to access it as follows
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/users//Pictures/AMLR/DSC06077.jpg.
i.e., the wrong drive, “Macintosh HD” as opposed to “backup”
Another possible wrinkle is that the could conceivably have changed when switching from the old to new computer…..
All the same, this is not a train smash as the errors reported in LibraryImport.txt can be examined and used to manually import failed folders and/or files.
In my case it would have been awesome if the plugin took the path relative to user root, i.e ~/Pictures/AMLR/, looked what Volume (i.e. drive) and user the Aperture library was on, i.e. /Volumes/backup//, then combined the two to get the correct and absolute path to use for the import.
But, I’m sure there are as many options and variations as users out there and (you can thank me later Adobe, I’m kinda giving you an out here 🙂 ) the authors of this plugin would hard pressed to find a one size fits all solution for everyone.
Victoria Bampton says
That’s good to know Jo, thank you! I’m sure that info will help someone else down the line too.
Robert Dilworth says
This is a great development and great guide. One snag and question. The migration plugin seemed to jam at a particular point (42%) so I had to stop it. It did cary over the project structure, but many folders are empty. I had configured the plugin to make copies of the photo files – it said that it needed about 80gb. If I re-start it, will it pick up where it left off? Or start fresh, but without making an additional copy (I hope !). I hesitate to start that right now until you or someone else responds, I don’t want to create a bigger mess. Many thanks.
Ditlev Brodersen says
This seems identical to the problem I had. So far, I’ve managed by breaking up the Aperture library into smaller pieces that I can handle, i.e. by exporting each larger project (year in my case) as separate Aperture libraries and then importing them separately. At each step I check that the number of photos imported into Lr (Last Import…) matched the no. of photos in the Aperture project. At 2008 now, and so far so good!
Robert Dilworth says
OK, Detlev, thanks for tip. I’ll do an experiment – take one of the larger Projects that failed, then “Export Project as Library” then run the Plugin on just that customized Library. But should I use a new, clean Catalog, or the one that I had made yesterday for iPhoto & Aperture Imports? Just wondering if i keep that Catalog as open and run the plug-in, will it fit the output into the right spot (the Project Photos folder that it made first time through). Is worth a shot, Robert
Robert Dilworth says
Am trying your suggestion. Now stuck for longest time at 0%. Slower than 1st time through with entire Library.
This is definitely a weekend killer. Adobe’s idea of how to keep those of us in northern climates busy all Fall and Winter. They must have twisted sense of humor out there in California.
Ditlev Brodersen says
I agree it’s a weekend killer, but so far my plan works here. I did, however, clear out the old Catalog in Lr by deleting all Collections and Folders pertaining to the old, failed import. I also cleared out the Masters directory first. Not sure if it matters but I wouldn’t count on the plugin to merge correctly with a failed import.
Victoria Bampton says
Don’t waste your whole weekend on it! Report it as a bug at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://clkuk.tradedoubler.com/click?p(265883)a(2791170)g(22913796)url(http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family) and wait for the next release. They’re going to continue working on it, so hopefully with the extra information from a wider range of users, they’ll be able to fix these frustrations.
Robert Dilworth says
Thanks. I filed a bug report.
Ditlev Brodersen says
I am having the problem that the importer stops after 86% of about 25,000 pictures and then doesn’t move on. I’ve tried it twice and it stops at exactly the same place. Any ideas? Could there be a particular file which is problematic? I was wondering if the importer left some sort of log file as it doesn’t seem to import the files in any particular order.
Jo says
Hi,
I was just wondering about reference images. In particular, I recently bought as new computer and do not have access to it BUT, I did duplicate the drive on an external drive. I’m trying to keep the new computer as lean as possible so do not want to install Aperture. So will this Aperture->LR plugging still import referenced images if I point it to the Aperture catalogue on the external drive. Or put another way, is the Aperture folder structure absolute or relative to the Aperture library?
Jeffflindt.com says
Thanks LRQ!
Victoria Bampton says
You’re welcome Jeff!