When syncing photos to iPhone or iPad through iTunes from Aperture, it syncs the wrong (original) versions. Why

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I have an album, let's call it "Europe Trip 2011" within which, in Aperture, I have done at least some degree of editing to all of its pictures (exposure, saturation, curves, etc). As we all know, Aperture works off of "versions" of a file. So, my edited photos are all newer versions of the original.

Well, problem is, once I've finished the editing, I close Aperture, then open iTunes (in this order, to make sure everything is "updated" upon close & open). Then, I select the usual "sync photos…from Aperture" within the iPhone or iPad window on iTunes. Then, I find the "Europe Trip 2011" album, select it, and commence syncing.

iTunes does in fact sync all of the correct photos, in order, etc. Problem is, it only syncs with the original, un-edited versions. So, now I have all of my pics on my iPhone or iPad, but none of them are edited. They are all the originals. Which is…semi-helpful, but not what I'm shooting for.

I have taken every step I could think of so far to address this discrepancy including: "Update Previews" and "Share previews with iLife and iWork: Always" in Aperture.

Thoughts and/or suggestions? Thanks!

Best Answer

If all your edited photos are new versions of the original, then I'm guessing you've got Aperture set to create new versions when you make adjustments (that's an option in Preferences). In that case, then each photo is probably in a stack with all of its versions. Generally, only the "pick" (or top) of each stack is synced with your iOS device. So you need to go through your album and move all the edited versions to the top of their stacks.

To do this:

  • Open your album in Aperture
  • In the Stacks menu, choose Open All Stacks
  • For each of the stacks in the album, choose the version you want and choose "Pick" under the Stacks menu. This will make the chosen version jump to the far left of the group.
    • I might be wrong on the name of that command, but I believe the shortcut for it is Command-\. That's what I usually use, instead of the menu option.

You can then re-sync your device, and the proper versions should show up. You might want to try it with one or two of them to make sure it works before doing it for all of them.

Additionally, you might want to turn off the option to create new versions for each adjustment. It'll mitigate this problem in the future. Aperture uses non-destructive editing anyway, so you're not making irreversible changes to the original no matter what. If you want to make multiple versions of a photo, you can do it manually with the Duplicate Version command (in the right-click menu on a photo, or somewhere in the menu options at the top).

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