Do NOT use the Flickr uploader in Aperture 3.01

What a fuckin' disaster - Apple you bunch of twits !

Aperture 3 is a step forward in many ways but the Flickr uploader that comes built in was clearly the work of the junior member of the Aperture dev team. Oh, this will be easy, let's give it to Joe - he has no experience but it's only a bloody file uploader he can't screw it up too badly. Wrong. Joe fucked it up !! 

So, having selected an image to upload, I click the Flickr button in the tool bar - the tooltip for the button is "New Flickr Album". It creates an Album in my Aperture Library which it synchronizes with Flickr. Great - the image uploaded. However, if I then modify the image metadata in Flickr itself (which is what I would normally do) - like give the image a new name - it get's out of synch with the Flickr Album in Aperture and the image disappears from the album. Ok, I think to myself. I'll name the image version in Aperture, and set the keywords in Aperture too - great, these things synch to Flickr, and the keywords become Flickr tags.

At this point I'm not completely comfortable with the two-way nature of the link between Flickr and Aperture but it seems to work.

So, one day I use the Aperture auto-stack feature and inadvertently auto-stack more photos than I had intended - but it's no problem, they all needed stacking ... oh oh, what the fuck's happened to my Flickr page! The auto-stacking in Aperture created stacks that contained previously published-to-flickr photos - and the photo I had published was not the pick of the stack (the first photo in the stack) - so Aperture deleted the published picture and started publishing the pick. All of the comment history and favorites for my published photos disappeared in a blink. So, I set the correct photos to be the picks and they were re-published but all of the history is still lost.

So - do NOT use the Flickr uploader that comes with Aperture. It is poorly conceived and implemented and I rue the day that I used it.

Also, while I am bitching about Aperture 3 - it doesn't seem to handle psd file contents properly. See below - how the expanded image is at odds with the thumbnail. This has happened to every PSD file I have added (or that was generated by the Photomatix plug-in). What is going on Apple?


Comments

Aaron Koolen-Bourke said…
I think you should get an award for best opening line in a Blog post - ever!

That truly sucks that a feature like that could be so destructive and I'm sure like me you can see what sort of code they wrote for the stupid thing.

Lightroom 3 has a similar feature, so when that's out I'll be a tad scared to give it a go!

Hope they get that one sorted in Aperture 3!
March 13, 2010 at 7:16 PM
Unknown said…
I can feel your pain, as I just took the A3 flickr API for a spin tonight. I uploaded one photo and everything looked great. Like you and wrote a description and added tags in Flickr.

Then I went to add a new picture to the same set, the A3 flickr API didn't seem to want to upload the picture so I tried pressing the sync button.

Big Mistake # 1. A3 removed all of my titles, descriptions, and tags from every photo in the set. It also downloaded every image from that set in .jpg web form to my A3 library. Talk about frustrating.

Big Mistake # 2. Frantic to stop A3 from doling out any more destruction, I deleted the set from the aperture library and told A3 to no longer manage my flickr account. Wrong move. The A3 flickr API proceeded to delete the entire set off flickr.

I can't think of a more cobbled together garbage API. I mean how many average joe's have created flickr API's in their spare time. Its ridiculous that apple couldn't though something halfway decent together.
March 18, 2010 at 10:58 PM
Chris said…
Completely agree...even not touching the labels or metadata I still have trouble just uploading pictures. I use Flickr mainly as a backup service, but my first few attempts with A3 ended up with 1024 resolution photos being uploaded instead of full res, for no apparent reason. (Even after changing the export setting to Original Size.)

Overall A3 has not been a great experience...
April 7, 2010 at 1:51 PM
Anonymous said…
So, what about the alternatives? I've discovered - because of very similar circumstances -
FlickrExport for Aperture
Latest Version: 3.1.1
Release Date: 2010-03-05
@ http://connectedflow.com/flickrexport/aperture/
Have you tried this plug-in yet? I am seriously considering it.
April 22, 2010 at 11:30 AM
Unknown said…
Very frustrating to loose all Flicker stats on views, comments etc. when you make a minor tweak to a photo in aperture.

Have just bought the FlickrExport and can strongly recommend it. Sends all your key words, geotags, meta data and allows title and description of set. You can also set permissions if you don't want the world seeing your pics. Very much a Publishing export compared to Apertures built in Synchronisation.
June 25, 2010 at 1:02 PM
Miguel said…
What a joke this is. I upload one set and it deletes another one.

Aperture has clearly failed to work with flickr.

Total Joke. Not expected from Apple
April 4, 2011 at 3:17 PM
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