Quote:
Originally Posted by PatrickFordham  Using Lightroom to catalogue a folder on your hard drive, "Synchronize Folder" will update (either add or subtract) images from the catalogue of that folder if you happen to add or delete images from that folder on your hard drive.
I have even renamed files in a folder using a renaming utility and Lightroom has automatically reflected those changes.
Lightroom also has a "do not import duplicate images" function. |
Aperture does not provide a directly equivalent feature, no. This omission reflects a difference in thinking rather than a gross oversight.
First, as Johan Elzenga points out, it's pretty trivial to import images from a folder that were added since the previous import: you simply re-import the folder and make sure the "Do not import duplicates" option is checked.
Second, more so than Lightroom (for the time being), Aperture was designed to work well with
off-line volumes. The idea is you can have your masters on removable drives (or network shares) that aren't always available, and have Aperture reconnect/disconnect to them
transparently. My cursory testing indicates is that Aperture is surprisingly good at repairing broken links without intervention. If you rearrange files and folders on the same volume, Aperture figures it out instantly and no further intervention is required. If the volume goes off-line, Aperture doesn't complain until you want to do something with the off-line image that actually requires access to the master. Only then does Aperture ask you to re-mount that volume.
About the only thing it can't cope with automatically is if you move the images to a different volume. To deal with that situation, Aperture provides a window called "Manage Referenced Files". This dialog makes it pretty efficient to "re-connect" the Aperture database to files whose paths have changed or
whose path is missing. Generally, you only have to reconnect one file and press the "Reconnect All" button, and Aperture will look for the others in the same new location.
The one thing Aperture doesn't seem to do is provide a feature to automatically prune entries from the library whose master files have been deliberately deleted. However, any file whose master is currently missing immediately get a little icon on them indicating the broken link.
Removing a library entry is as easy as selecting its thumbnail and pressing COMMAND+delete. Furthermore, the "Manage Referenced Files..." dialog contains an "Update Selection in the Browser" button to facilitate selecting (and deleting) library entries that are no longer wanted for which you have already deleted the masters.
Finally, Aperture provides two convenient features, "Relocate Master..." and "Consolidate Master...". The former allows you to physically move selected files (keeping the database in sync) in batch. The latter is used to move the selected files into the managed, much-maligned Aperture database.
Linear Mode
