Table of Contents       3. Catalog your data


3.14 Catalog your Aperture, iPhoto, Lightroom, or Apples “Photos.app” database

All four apps use one location to store their databases, and that is your Pictures folder. Use the Go menu in Apples Finder, and select Go > Home > Pictures.

As all of them use a hidden folder, named “bundle” or “package,” some special settings are necessary for NeoFinder to be able to catalog those.

By default, NeoFinder ignores the content of packages. You can change that in the
Cataloging preferences, in the Ignore section. Make sure to remove the checkmark from the Package Contents option, so that NeoFinder will look inside these bundles for you.




All photo management apps allow you to store your photos in your own proper location. If you do that, simply catalog these folders with NeoFinder, and you are done.

If you let your photo management app handle your photos, just catalog the entire Pictures folder to get the thumbnails.


Apples Aperture
Apple has discontinued this amazing product, unfortunately, but you can still use NeoFinder to catalog the bundle: Aperture Library.

If you have allowed Aperture to copy over your original image files to its private library, NeoFinder will then be able to read these as well. Otherwise, use NeoFinder to catalog the original data files on their storage volumes directly.

Also please note that as Aperture keeps all your metadata changes privately hidden in a secret database, you will not be able to catalog ratings, keywords, or other metadata from here, except if you export your images from Aperture and tell it to include your own metadata.





Apples iPhoto
Another discontinued app from Apple, and it also uses the Pictures folder for its database.






Adobe Lightroom
Adobe stores the database in a separate folder, called Lightroom, in the Pictures folder. You can just catalog that folder with NeoFinder. Your pictures are inside the Lightroom 5 Catalog Previews.lrdata bundle.

If you have actually stored your original photos in a clean folders structure outside of Lightroom (which is a very good idea!), please instead tell NeoFinder to catalog these folders for you.

In both cases, make sure that you ask Lightroom to immediately store any metadata changes to the XMP data, so that NeoFinder can see and catalog your metadata. You find that option in the Catalog Settings in Lightroom:

lightroom-catalog-settings





Apples “Photos.app”
As this new app stores all your data in the depths of the “Photos Library” bundle, they will all show up in your NeoFinder catalog. The structure of this package is very complex, so it might be a good idea to use the “Find all Photos” command in the Find contextual menu of NeoFinder to get only those.