It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to post an image to the photo blog with any kind of regularity. Between speed issues, OpenCL issues, and application lockups, it’s been incredibly painful to get anything done in terms of photo editing. About a week ago, I decided to rebuild the entire preview and thumbnail cache from the library, thinking in part that slow file access was getting me. After a week solid of rebuilding time, my Aperture library is down from 140GB to 70GB or so, but if anything has been less stable since I’ve done this.

Just trying to import the pictures from this weekend have taken me almost 45 minutes – to not be able to do anything. Any time I try to access the project containing the current imports, Aperture locks up solid. I find myself once again running Aperture’s built-in Library repair functions.

I’m sick and tired of this crap. Thankfully, I was smart enough to store the 170,000 image files externally to Aperture’s library, so I’ll be able to get to all the photos even if Aperture never returns to it’s former working status. Once (if?) I get the Aperture library sorted out, I’m going to back it up and never touch it again, unless I’m trying to get an old edit out of the system. (One of the down sides of both Aperture and Lightroom – edits are both non-destructive and proprietary, so they don’t move between products.)

Lightroom, here I come!