Friday, August 20, 2010 at 10:45 PM | User Tip by Nathan Smith Generating Previews On Your Schedule
By default Aperture is setup to create preview JPEGs that can be shared with other apps or that can be drag and dropped from Aperture to the desktop. This eats up CPU cycles and disk space which can cause Aperture to bog down. If you do not have a need to share the images with other apps or have an older Mac and need the extra speed gain then you can turn off this feature under menu Aperture > Preferences… > Previews
If you do like to share previews or want to be able to drag and drop photos from Aperture to the desktop but would rather be selective about which projects generate them you have an option. To take advantage of this feature you would need to have the “New projects automatically generate previews” option unchecked in the preferences (under the previews section).
With your projects not generating previews you are now free to pick and choose which individual photos will generate them. To generate a preview for just one photo click to select the photo, go to the Photos menu and hold option to see Update Preview (near the bottom of the menu) change to Generate Preview. You can also right click (control click) on the photo and the the same option will apear near the bottom… just make sure to hold option once the contextual menu opens. You can also select multiple photos and do the same thing.
Nathan • @n8smith
Joseph Linaschke
A follow-up on the above…
- If a preview has not been generated yet, you don’t have to bother to hold down option to toggle Update Preview to Generate Preview. Aperture will just generate one for you, regardless of the menu selection.
- If you like this workflow (and this is precisely how I work in my Libraries), make a keyboard shortcut for Update Preview. Mine is Shift-Return.
- If you want to clear out all the existing Previews, you can select all or any photos and choose Delete Preview from that same Photos menu.
- If you have a Project that’s already generating Previews for you, toggle that option off from the gear menu on the Library tab, with that Project selected.
To learn more about Previews, read the long, detailed article I wrote back in May titled A Comprehensive Look at Thumbnails, Previews, and More in Aperture 3. It’s probably one of the more detailed posts I’ve written on here; take some time to check that out and really grok what’s going on deep in Aperture’s bowels.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
Reader Comments (2)
Nice.. I'll be adding that shift+return shortcut. ;)
I could write an AppleScript that sends the selection anywhere you want (new or existing folder/album/project). Using a shareware tool like FastScripts you could launch this script with a keyboard shortcut.
-Morten Scheel
@aFringeDweller