Apple MB673Z/A User Manual - Page 203

II Generating Previews for Projects You Intend to Keep Offline A JPEG preview is displayed when a referenced image's master is offline or cannot be found. This makes previews a great way of maintaining high picture quality while conserving the disk space that masters (especially RAW files) require. To use previews for offline referenced images: 1 Make sure the external hard drive containing the referenced masters you want to keep offline is connected to your computer. If the masters you want to keep offline are currently stored on your computer, you must convert the images to referenced images and move the masters to an external hard disk. You can do this by selecting the project containing the images whose masters you want to keep offline, choosing File > Relocate Masters for Project, selecting an external hard disk location for the masters, and then clicking Relocate Masters. 2 Control-click the project containing the images whose masters you want to keep offline, then choose Update Previews from the shortcut menu. 3 When the previews are built (you can tell by choosing Window > Show Activity), you can disconnect the hard disk containing the masters. Even though the masters are offline, you can browse, search, and assign metadata to preview images. You can even use the Loupe to zoom in on preview images, because they are high-quality JPEG files. Generating Previews for Images Based on Rating Another way to use previews is to create a search that displays only low-rated images. You can then build previews just for those images, and take their masters offline (for example, burn them to a DVD). That way you still have good-quality images for all of your photos, without using a lot of disk space. You can also create a search that displays only highly rated images, and then build previews for those images only. This is a useful alternative for workflows where the default thumbnail resolution is sufficient for low-rated images. Generating Previews for New or Active Projects Because previews are used by the iLife and iWork media browsers, as well as by the Mac OS X screen saver, you can use previews as a way to distribute your Aperture pictures in movies, on the web, on DVDs, in slideshows, and in podcasts. You can also download your Aperture pictures to your iPod, import them into iPhoto, or use them to create Pages documents. Chapter 6 Displaying Images in the Viewer 203