Hello! I had great success setting Aspect Pro up on my Windows 10 (64bit) laptop. The images were directly on my hard drive, and so was the Aspect library.
I recently got a new laptop (MacBook pro, M4 Max) and am trying to understand how to proceed with making the MBP my main laptop for my aspect library. I’ve already imported my 100GB worth of images from the PC onto the MBP, along with the xml files.
First I tried linking the MBP to the original PC’s library, but I didn’t see anyway to tell Aspect to change the location the images were pointing to (from PC to MBP). Instead doing this reimported all the original photos that I already had on my Mac (and it put them in event folders rather than the photo structure I natively have).
I then tried to start fresh and create a new library, but for some reason doing this messed up the key wording and other aspects (like ratings, color labels) that worked perfectly before.
I intend on having many devices in the future (eg, hard drives where I move original images into backup and need to point aspect to the new directory), so I’m rather confused on how to proceed here. If I don’t switch which laptop is the main one, then I won’t be able to edit RAWs on the MBP like I intend to.
is there another way I should be thinking about this when thinking about long term storage limitations (I only have 1TB so I can’t have all my photos on one device, so will have to move them around one day…)
Sorry for the late reply, I’m in the process of slowly catching up right now. So, the “standard” way to do this would be to use Library → Add New Device… on the Windows PC and then use “Another Device Running Aspect” to choose the MBP and create a library instance there. You will then also have the chance to choose which photos should be physically stored there (e.g. all or just the latest 6 months).
Before giving advice that is possibly outdated and doesn’t apply anymore, is the last state that you have still the newly created library on the MBP where the metadata hasn’t been retained? If that’s the case I’d say that it’s probably the best idea to just use the “Add New Device…” approach above and let the application copy the files over once more, even if that wastes a bit of time.
If you still have a verbatim copy of the original library from the Windows PC on the Mac, there is a potentially a way that avoids the extra copy, but that requires one of the two computers temporarily having direct access to both copies of the library (probably via a network share), so that the connection between the two libraries can be established.
Thank you for the above! I tried it but ultimately found that it was best to restart fresh for a few reasons:
This resolved keywording problems
A hard drive migration let me retain the original structure of my files, rather than copying over the Aspect structure
My ideal use case would have been that Aspect would sync the photos to the new computer with the same file structure that was on the prior one, rather than the Aspect structure.
I imagine when my storage fills up I’ll want to transfer my old photos to a hard drive. What is the process for relinking photos after they have been moved, especially to a new hard drive?
If easier to visualize, this is what the workflow looks like in Lightroom:
Copy photos / metadata into a hard drive, maintaining the same folder hierarchy as was on Mac
Remove photos off of Mac
Lightroom detects that the original photo is not available, and puts a “!” over it warning the photo needs to be relinked
Select all of the photos that need to be relinked, and point them to the correct directory
Auto re-links all photos that are missing
Appreciate all the great work that is going into this app! And saving up for an early bird contribution because this app simply makes me love seeing my photographs.
