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Version Control in Aperture
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If you look under the Images menu, you'll find all of the options for creating versions. These include an often-overlooked feature for creating versions: Create and Add to Selection. This option gives you the same two alternatives as above but automatically selects the new version so you can compare the two versions side by side. So, I select: Create and Add to Selection: Duplicate Version (Option, Shift, V).

Select Duplicate Version for easier side-by-side image comparison.

Perfect. Now I can compare my versions and continue my search for the best effect for the scary branches. Notice as I continue to create new versions, Aperture gives each one a version number (_MG_1602 - Version 5, _MG_1602 - Version 6, and so on). And, the versions are put neatly into a stack so when I'm finished playing, I can promote the best version to the top of the stack and have it be my pick. There's something new in this stack however. There is a light gray box around these versions to let you know that these are versions from the same master.

Promoting a favorite to the top of the versions stack.

If we take a gander back at the Finder, we see how Aperture is handling our versions in the Library. Notice the other versions that we created. They're neatly organized here and are all about 20KB. These are very small files taking up almost no space on your hard drive. We could literally create thousands of different versions of a particular image without any significant effect on our hard drive. If we were still in a 20th Century workflow, our hard drive would now house close to 120MB of data just for these five versions!

A Finder level view of version files.

Let's take our versioning example a step further and assume we need to open our image in an external image editor. Once we set the application in the Output section of our Preferences, all we have to do is select an image and under the Images menu select Open with External Image Editor. Aperture handles this task differently.

When a file is opened in an external image editor, a new master file is created based on the settings in your Aperture Preferences. You have the option of a 16-bit Tiff or PSD. By creating a new master file, Aperture safeguards our original master file. Since an external editor could change our master in ways we may not like, Aperture makes a backup. That new master is included within the same stack as the versions we created before but is not included in the light gray version box. Additionally, it has a new badge that looks like a bull's eye.

The new master is marked with a bull's-eye badge.

The examples in this article have dealt with managed files. Managed files work great for me as I started with Aperture 1.0 and like Vaults. There are some additional considerations when using versions and referenced files. All of the same functionality exists for versioning in Aperture using referenced files. Aperture will handle versions the same way on the Finder level, creating folders for your images and creating metadata files for versions. The only difference is that your master images are housed elsewhere. You should still create a Vault to back up your versions and the new masters created when you open in an external editor, as those will always be kept in your Aperture library.

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