[HOWTO] Access your ApertureVault files from a Mac without Aperture installed

[Giaguara]

Need to access those photos that you are using on your Aperture and have conveniently backed up or stored on your server, Airport base station, external hard drive etc, but from another Mac without Aperture installed at all? Or all your photos are only on an Aperture library and that is all you got accessible for now...

1. Navigate to the location where you have your Aperture Library or ApertureVault file stored.
2. Right click (control-click) on your Aperture Library or ApertureVault, and select "Show Package Contents".
3. On the window that opens, go to Library, and you will see all your projects. Similarly, select the desired project.approject, and right click again "Show Package Contents".
4. You will see a number of date-portgroups. Inside these, you will see the original files.

Now, a few limitations..
- Metadata and iptc tags are not associated with the pictures, so finding a picture if you remember how you tagged it isn't really an option
- With big projects it will take time to locate the correct photo especially if you don't remember the date or the filename. If you know part of the filename or date, grepping or trying to find it with Spotlight may work. If there are thousands of photos in a project this may not be an ideal way to find the correct photo, if it is possible to simply open the Library or the Vault somewhere where Aperture is installed.

At least the name ApertureVault does not prove that the whole vault would be encrypted and safe. It is merely a convenient backup, but it can have its uses. If you have to work on a certain project, or give a copy of all your photos from a certain project to a friend or family but thought you could not access these files from that system... well you can. Copy the whole contents of the someproject.approject and everything contained in it will be there.
And seeing how simple this can be, the storage location of your ApertureVault should be protected accordingly to keep anyone you don't want to sneak at your files away from it.

For getting all the photos from an Aperture Library or ApertureVault to an iPhoto library with way less work seeing the structure of Aperture files, this seems to be possible with some simple AppleScripts... or copying with a few scripts all picture files only to another location.

The structure of Aperture 1 and 2 libraries and Vaults are identical in what comes to the picture storage paths.