I know.
That is not the point. I WANT to switch to Lightroom, but as I wrote, I imported my pics over 10 years into Aperture (Aperture stores them into its "Library"). Now I have to migrate them.
My only chance seems to be the following:
- Use the plug-in to import from Aperture into Lightroom -> I only have the jpgs, because they are marked as "original" in Aperture.
- Select all photos in Aperture and mark the RAWs as "original" (takes days of time!!).
- Use the plug-in to import from Aperture into Lightroom -> I only have the raws, because they are marked as "original" in Aperture now.
Maybe there is another possibility ...
There is another possibility. Don't use the plugin, but use the following approach:
1: Change your 'managed' library to a 'referenced' library. To do that, expand all stacks, select all images and then choose 'File - Relocate Original'. That will move the images from within the Aperture library to folders outside the library. You can define a folder structure that matches your projects, so that is an added advantage. Try this first on just a few of those raw+jpeg pairs, so see if they get both moved to the external location.
2: If that works, then keep all images selected (or select them again) and choose 'Metadata - Write IPTC Metadata to Originals'. Aperture will now write all your keywords and rating to the original files, so Lightroom can pick these up on import. This will take a long time, but you can walk away and leave it overnight.
3: If you want to have a jpeg/tiff copy with Aperture edits of selected images as well, then select those and export a copy into the same folder structure.
4: When all this is finished, start Lightroom and import the entire folder hierarchy. Use 'ADD' so Lightroom does not start to make copies of these images again.