Selecting an Alternate Aperture Library

Although Aperture is most efficient when using one Library, you can work with multiple Libraries if you'd like. You might want to use multiple Libraries when you plan to archive images differently, such as for current jobs versus completed jobs, or for your own images versus someone else's images. Working with multiple Libraries requires a lot of care and organization; it isn't recommended. However, in order to protect your current Aperture Library, we are going to switch to a different Library for the remaining lessons in this book. You can switch back to your user Library after you complete the lessons.

1.	Choose Aperture > Preferences. The default Aperture Library is located in the ~/Pictures folder (the tilde indicates your home directory), but it can be located on any mounted or networked drive.
2.	Click the Choose button.
3.	Navigate to the APTS_Aperture_book_files > Lessons > Lesson01 folder and select Aperture Library.
4.	Click the Select button.
5.	Close the Preferences dialog. Nothing happens yet. You must quit Aperture and reopen the application for the newly selected Library to become active.
6.	Quit Aperture.
7.	Open Aperture. Voilà! You are now using the newly selected Library. Any work we do affects this Library unless we go back to Preferences, choose a different Library, and then quit and reopen Aperture. The only way to tell which Library you are currently using is to go back to the Preferences dialog and view the path information in the Library Location field, which is at the top of the dialog. Note The Library can also be renamed in the Finder after it has been created. If you rename the Library, you must go back to Preferences to select the renamed Library, as Aperture will have created a new Library named Aperture Library.