First Impressions

[sgbotsford]

This is not going well. I am using a 2012 Mac Pro 4 core 3.2 GHz with 24 Gb of ram, currently with 6 disks attached.

A: The installation was a piece of cake.

B: On startup, it wanted to open it's catalog in my library. Not really wanting this to become part of my time machine backups, copied the IDimager directory to a non-backed up part of my disk. I was then able to point the startup to this new location.

In general anything that takes as much room potentially as a photo archive, you should be asked where to put it. My normal routine is to put large blobs on mirrored disks, and not use Time Machine to back them up, as they almost are never able to be restored correctly. Apple Aperture recognizes this too, with their idea of vaults.

C: On startup it says it has to update it's database. From the message I get the idea it's shipped with a previous version of the database. This seems to be taking a very long time. At this point idimager.thumbs.db is 15 GB and the database is not yet half filled. It would seem that it's reading my Aperture library.

Bad Puppy. BAD. NO Biscuit.

Software should NOT take this sort of arbitrary action.

Option: "You appear to have an aperture library open. Should I import that?"

Option "You have 8 aperture libraries (yes, I do...) Click File -> Import to open one"

Option "You have 8 aperture libraries, would you like each one turned into a Photo Supreme Catalog"

Secondly: It should be more informative. It says "Your database is being updated. This may take a while to complete. WARNING: Please do not terminate the process while this message is shown."


* My computer is on a UPS. But that has only 20 minutes capacity. What happens if this fails? Corruption? Your system *should* be robust enough that even force quitting it will worst case cause it to lose uncommitted changes, and it would carry on where it left off next time.

* It should give an estimate of time remaining.


***

It's now been 40 minutes. Orange progress bar is somewhere around 40% (over the e in updated)

Ok. Finished now at 8:18. About 50 minutes total.

Now it's building similarity database.

AND it didn't find my aperture library at all, but rather found my online Aperture Vault.

That is 17,000 images.

All the folders show zero

Once the similarity is done, it brings up a panel, "Import Images into Photo Supreme" and shows me the wrong folder -- still pointing at the disk with the vault. Just what has it been doing?

Redirected to my aperture library, and clicked "start import" Spinning beachball.

At LEAST the start import button should change.

After a few minutes the panel disappears. For a brief while I was able to use the program. Thumbnails for the vault appeared.
In folder view I was able to remove the disk with the vault from PSu. The import process is holding at 10%, the vault folder shows at 17,682 images, and I have a spinning beach ball when I mouse over the application.

8:56 Vault has disappeared. And import progress is now at 20%

I don't like the inconsistency: Some jobs can be done in background, some can't. There are no intermediate results. So the disk with my aperture library has zero pictures in it, while the activity monitor is at 70% and is saying versioning.

Curiously even though I told it the Aperture Library, what shows up is the disk. Within it the only item is the Aperture library. It seems, however to have found 82,832 images. Aperture thinks it has 23,263 images. I do home that PSu isn't regarding all the thumbnails in the Aperture library as separate files. Ah yes 23899 masters, 28826 previews and 30082 thumbnails. Seems to be including everything the Aperture trash too.

9:15 Back to the beachball. I have a screen full of thumbnails. Yes I have two copies of everything, no, not everything. I also have at least one mask. I can't scroll anything due to the beach ball.

It's been two hours now. I quit.

I had to force quit PSu:

At this point PSu doesn't seem to be robust. it doesn't seem to handle background tasks; (It hung trying to do a sync, while no sync has yet been set up.) it doesn't seem to handle importing Aperture libraries in a timely fashion. (It should be on par with the time it takes to update a vault.) It doesn't consistently tell me what is going on.

The lack of a decent manual, the reliance on the user forum, the difficulty in getting an account on Mantis (After 90 minutes I still have not received my confirmation email;

At this point I don't have confidence that it will do anything properly.

Restarted PSu.

Nothing. Appears that none of the work it did before stuck. Not cool.

Ok. Start over. Started with Quick import wizard, pointed it to aperture library, do not copy, then clicked 'advanced settings.' This caused it to forget the settings I initially set. Bad UI.

Pointed it to Aperture library, said include sub folders, Turned OFF copy, turned on Import. checked crete catalog labels from folder names.

What happens? I've got a bunch of masks with garbage can names.

It isn't clever enough to see that mask, thumbnail, preview, and image are multiple versions of some base.

I've wasted most of the morning. PSu goes into by reject list.

[Hert]

Sorry to read about your experience. But I think something else is going on. PSU will not convert anything automatically for you. Having 8 aperture databases? Those will not be converted by PSU on startup. Also, keep the database on the fastest disk you have, preferably a SSD. Using an externally connected drive to hold your database is typically not a good approach (don't know your setup though).
Also I don't see why using words like "bad puppy" are needed...and you assuming all kinds of things like PSU is converting your multiple aperture databases without you telling it to do so and then bashing about it. And then you're upset that it didn't find your Aperture database at all....again assuming that it was converting them (which wasn't the case). And you don't do a quick import from an Aperture library, you do a quick import to import images, not Aperture libraries. If you want to convert a Aperture database then do that from the Data menu.

What I think was going on is that you had tried PSU in a far distant past (your other post here was from feb 2012) and had a catalog from that session. PSU was upgrading that database. I was happy to read that PSU still converts a database from almost 5 years ago...futureproof software FWIW; Aperture was there in 2012 and killed 5 years later...hmm does that mean that PSU would have been the better choice in 2012?

If you want to give PSU a fair chance, then start with a new database, read and understand the Cataloging document from the Help menu, then take small steps: import a few images (not entire Aperture libraries) and try to understand what's going on in the software.
Then move on from there. And if you need help then ask for help without being denigrating or bashing it for not doing what you assume it does or should do.

[fbungarz]

I can only agree. PSu is very powerful, but complex. This complexity is hidden below a deceivingly simple interface. Just starting out without making an effort to try to understand this complexity is bound for failure.