User Manual

Chapter 1 An Overview of Aperture 41

Backing Up Your Work

After importing images from your camera and erasing memory cards in preparation for

the next shoot, the only record of your images is stored on your hard disks. It’s vital that

you back up your files on storage media separate from your computer and its hard disks.

Backing up your photos and storing the backups in a safe place can save your work from

catastrophes such as fire, theft, storm-related disruptions, or equipment failure.

Aperture backs up your managed images (images that are stored in the Aperture

library) and all information associated with the images, such as versions, metadata, and

previews, on vaults located on hard disk drives. Aperture doesn’t back up the masters

of referenced images located outside the Aperture library. You must maintain your own

backup system of referenced image masters. Aperture does back up the versions,

previews, and metadata information associated with referenced images, but not the

masters themselves.

You can view your vaults in the Vault pane. There are several controls that you’ll use

when you update vaults to back up your images.

You can create multiple vaults to provide duplicate backups. Each vault holds a backup

copy of the entire Aperture library.

After you import new images into Aperture, you should immediately make a backup of

the newly imported files. Once the images are backed up, you can depend on the

reliable Aperture backup functions to track all the versions of your photos and the work

you have done with them.

For an explanation of the Aperture backup and archiving features, see Chapter 22,

“Backing Up Your Images,” on page 611.

Disclosure triangle

Vault Status button

Vault Action

pop-up menu

Update All Vaults button

Vault Pane button