[Art743]

I installed Aperture 3, and allowed it to create its "Library" so I could work with it. After this was over, I suddenly had a new 95Gb folder (Aperture Library) on my drive which appeared to be a duplicate of my Picture folder, and located within my Picture folder. This eats up a great deal of file apace, and also creates a lot of confusion over time about which folder is the "real" folder for pictures. This just doesn't make sense to me.

Because I always wondered how this works, this is the first time I have ever let a program that has a "Library" have its way in my computer.

Can someone with more experience and knowledge help me understand how this works. Surely such an inefficient system is not necessary (a doubling of file space), and I have done something wrong. It seems some programs like this can operate by allowing the files to remain in the original folder, and the program just memorizes where they are and "fetches" them individually, or in groups as they are needed. Can Aperture do that.

All of the above applies to iPhoto as well (at least the questions. If I were to use iPhoto, would it do the same, then I would have the original Picture file (96G), and 2 duplicates folded within it for almost 300G?

Someone help a novice out here. Tell me it ain't so.

Regards, Arthur in Baton Rouge

[mduell]

Yup, that's how it works. Aperture and iPhoto manage their own libraries, they don't just refer to the files sitting in other folders. You can delete the photos just sitting in the folder since you have copies of everything in the library.