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Author Topic: Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem  (Read 3439 times)

ad9t

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Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem
« on: March 16, 2016, 10:48:04 pm »

I am a former Aperture user. Last summer I switched to LR, and am now trying to convert my Aperture library to LR. I am having difficulty with a group of nearly 5000 pictures where the time zones got mixed during import into Aperture. It took me hours to adjust the times in Aperture so all the picture sorted in the correct order. Now when I transfer them into LR with the transfer plugin, the time order is reverted to the incorrect sorting. I took care to write IPTC meta data to the original files in Aperture. Does anyone have any idea how I can do the transfer and retain the corrected time stamps?

This is probably not important to my question, but I am also evaluating Capture One Pro 9. The same pictures import into CO in the correct order. The adjustments are also duplicated reasonably well. Overall, the transfer of pictures from Aperture is much better to CO than to LR.

Jeff
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mlewis

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Re: Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2016, 07:10:35 am »

Are you sure Aperture actually changed the exif timestamps in the image files?  I suspect it didn't and this is the cause of the issue as LR is reading the timestamp from the image files.  You can check with an exif viewer such as Exiftool.  Exiftool can also easily fix timestamp errors such as arising from having the clock set wrong in the camera.  You can bulk shift timestamps with Exiftool by a specified time offset which I have found very useful for such clock setting erors.
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ad9t

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Re: Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem
« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2016, 08:34:42 am »

I am sure you are correct that Aperture is not updating the files, and LR is reading the date from the file. Using Exiftool is not practical in this case because the images are out of order in a very random way. Also, if I change the times in the files outside Aperture the order may be scrambled in Aperture.
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CatOne

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Re: Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem
« Reply #3 on: March 17, 2016, 12:56:05 pm »

I am a former Aperture user. Last summer I switched to LR, and am now trying to convert my Aperture library to LR. I am having difficulty with a group of nearly 5000 pictures where the time zones got mixed during import into Aperture. It took me hours to adjust the times in Aperture so all the picture sorted in the correct order. Now when I transfer them into LR with the transfer plugin, the time order is reverted to the incorrect sorting. I took care to write IPTC meta data to the original files in Aperture. Does anyone have any idea how I can do the transfer and retain the corrected time stamps?

This is probably not important to my question, but I am also evaluating Capture One Pro 9. The same pictures import into CO in the correct order. The adjustments are also duplicated reasonably well. Overall, the transfer of pictures from Aperture is much better to CO than to LR.

Jeff

There is an option to "write time/date changes to original RAW files" in Aperture. If you don't select that, the dates won't be updated in the files, only elsewhere, that LR may not be reading.

I don't know if there's an easy time saver going forward; you'll either need to re-do the changes in Aperture, or in LR, if you didn't write to the originals.
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ad9t

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Re: Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem
« Reply #4 on: March 29, 2016, 08:27:39 pm »

I had time today to look at this problem again. The behavior in Aperture 3 is stranger than I expected.

The files I am trying to move are from a trip where I took around 3500 pictures, and friends took a few hundred. On import into Aperture, the date and time stamps of my pictures  somehow became scrambled. Using a combination of Aperture's “Adjust Date and Time” and “Batch Change” I adjusted everything to the correct times. I did not use “Also change original file” while I finished the adjustments because I did not want to be changing the files multiple times.

When I had everything in order I selected all the pictures. I then used “Adjust Date and Time” to change the time by one second, and selected “Also change original file”. After this the pictures reverted to the scrambled order! It appears that instead of adjusting based on the time stored in Aperture, the date in the files is used, and then the new time is read into Aperture.  Very frustrating.

When I read the pictures into Aperture originally I renamed the files based on the date and time. The times used were the incorrect times. The original file names from the camera are stored in the Aperture field under "Version Name”, and I can use these to sort the pictures I took into the correct sequence. The pictures my friends took all have different sequences so I still cannot sort everything together. The “Version Name” does not appear to transfer to Lightroom, so I am not able to use this to sort after transferring.

A large percentage of these pictures were geotagged before importing into Aperture. Theoretically, it would be possible to read the location data in the pictures and match them to the GPS track log to find the time. I did this manually to verify some of the times. I am not aware of a tool that automates this process. I also just realized that the GPS tags do not transfer from Aperture to Lightroom with out significant extra work.

I am not sure what to try next. Any ideas?
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mlewis

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Re: Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem
« Reply #5 on: March 31, 2016, 05:58:52 am »

A large percentage of these pictures were geotagged before importing into Aperture. Theoretically, it would be possible to read the location data in the pictures and match them to the GPS track log to find the time. I did this manually to verify some of the times. I am not aware of a tool that automates this process. I also just realized that the GPS tags do not transfer from Aperture to Lightroom with out significant extra work.

I am not sure what to try next. Any ideas?
If the geotags are written to the exif data of the photos then LR can read them just fine. Hopefully the photos geotagged before going to Aperture have the tags written to the exif data so will have no issues.  You might be able to get Exiftool to timestamp on GPS tracklog matching.  It can to geotagging so the reverse could be possible somehow.
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vulture

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Re: Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem
« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2016, 05:17:57 am »

Quote
I am a former Aperture user. Last summer I switched to LR, and am now trying to convert my Aperture library to LR. I am having difficulty with a group of nearly 5000 pictures where the time zones got mixed during import into Aperture. It took me hours to adjust the times in Aperture so all the picture sorted in the correct order. Now when I transfer them into LR with the transfer plugin, the time order is reverted to the incorrect sorting.

What Aperture - LR transfer plugin did you use?
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ad9t

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Re: Aperture to LightRoom Transfer Date Problem
« Reply #7 on: April 18, 2016, 05:27:36 pm »

I used the standard LR plug-in to transfer the files. It reads the date from the file rather than the Aperture data base.

I had changed the times in Aperture without writing the data back to the files. Later, I tried changing the times by one second with a write back to the files. I thought this would force all the new times into the files. Instead, it reads the date and time from the file, adds one second, writes to the file, and then updates the data base with the new time. This was maddening because it reshuffled all my pictures in Aperture.

I gave up on sorting in Aperture, and did the sorting after importing to Lightroom.
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