Aperture Import Incredibly Slow - Lightroom

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 26, 2019
4 replies
2596 views

I'm using the Lightroom Aperture Import plug-in to move my Aperture library of about 400GB into Aperture.

But it's crazy slow. After three full days, running 24 hours a day, it's only up to 41%.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for any help.

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Import and export

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Correct answer johnrellis

[I copied this from a previous thread]

Many people (including me) have experienced such problems attempting to import very large Aperture libraries. Adobe used an inappropriate algorithm, which slows down progressively as more photos are imported. If it took 4.5 days to go 60% through the first 50K, it could easily take weeks to complete the remaining 33K. (Yes, I plotted a graph at one point of photos imported per sec versus number of photos imported so far.)

Using a different arrangment of disks won't help overcome the bogus algorithm.

Many people have had success breaking their large library into smaller multiple libraries (e.g. no larger than 5K photos). These smaller libraries import relatively fast, and while it will be tedious to import 16 separate libraries of 5K photos each, you're more likely to actually get the job done.

There have been many reports of other gotchas other than the number of photos, and if you encounter them, importing small libraries will make it easier to troubleshoot and work around.

Also, I recommend starting over with a clean LR catalog.

If you run into unsurmountable problems using the import plugin, you could try the old manual method, well described here (the article also includes useful hints for using the plugin):

http://lightroomsolutions.com/articles/migrating-from-aperture-to-lightroom-where-do-i-begin/

It's a shame that Adobe and Apple did such a bad job with the Aperture end-of-life (Apple explicitly recommended LR, and they may have provided technical help to Adobe). But not unexpected from either.

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johnrellis

Legend

In the past six months or so, a number of people have reported that the Avalanche program does an excellent job of migrating your photos from Aperture to LR:

https://cyme.io/avalanche-photo-conversion/

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L

Lumigraphics

Legend

Break it up into smaller Aperture libraries and import them that way.

johnrellisCorrect answer

Legend

[I copied this from a previous thread]

Many people (including me) have experienced such problems attempting to import very large Aperture libraries. Adobe used an inappropriate algorithm, which slows down progressively as more photos are imported. If it took 4.5 days to go 60% through the first 50K, it could easily take weeks to complete the remaining 33K. (Yes, I plotted a graph at one point of photos imported per sec versus number of photos imported so far.)

Using a different arrangment of disks won't help overcome the bogus algorithm.

Many people have had success breaking their large library into smaller multiple libraries (e.g. no larger than 5K photos). These smaller libraries import relatively fast, and while it will be tedious to import 16 separate libraries of 5K photos each, you're more likely to actually get the job done.

There have been many reports of other gotchas other than the number of photos, and if you encounter them, importing small libraries will make it easier to troubleshoot and work around.

Also, I recommend starting over with a clean LR catalog.

If you run into unsurmountable problems using the import plugin, you could try the old manual method, well described here (the article also includes useful hints for using the plugin):

http://lightroomsolutions.com/articles/migrating-from-aperture-to-lightroom-where-do-i-begin/

It's a shame that Adobe and Apple did such a bad job with the Aperture end-of-life (Apple explicitly recommended LR, and they may have provided technical help to Adobe). But not unexpected from either.

[Use the reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]

K

krinkly2009Author

Known Participant

It looks to me like the answer is to avoid the Aperture import plug-in. After five days the ~500GB Aperture library import had only reached 50%. By that point it had slowed to the point where it was only adding another roughly two percent per day. I cancelled the operation and trashed the half-completed import.

I reread the article linked above and followed the instructions that the author calls "The Old Method." http://lightroomsolutions.com/articles/migrating-from-aperture-to-lightroom-where-do-i-begin/

This involves making sure Aperture is only using referenced libraries, then importing the images into Lightroom with the Add command, which leaves images in place on the hard drive.

That whole process took less than half an hour. All the metadata was properly imported. Aperture's Projects organization was preserved (except for Smart Projects).

Lightroom is still working on creating the Previews for the files, but that's only going to take a few hours, and I can still use the application while that's going on anyway.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!