Apple is hosting a special event next Tuesday, and all of us Aperture-heads are crossing all our digits hoping for a new Aperture version. We're sure to see OS X Mavericks released. Will the refresh to the MacPro - clearly targeting professionals and power users - bring a new Aperture in its wake? Only Apple knows.

Irrespective of a new Aperture, I'm certain of one thing. I'm looking at an upgrade next week. At a minimum, a new OS X. I also think there'll be an Aperture dot release so it runs on Mavericks. And - dare I dream - a shiny, new Aperture X?

This past weekend, I began my preparations for an upgrade. If you've purchased my Aperture workflow book or read my workflow blog posts, you'll know I run multiple machines and do a lot of library importing and exporting across the systems. This means I have multiple libraries.

When Aperture is updated, that usually means an upgrade to a new library version, and sometimes database changes under the covers. For separate libraries, that means touching each library once a new Aperture is installed. This is one of the reasons I run a single library. The pieces on my mobile system are temporary and are always folded back into the single master library back in the studio.

To get ready, I've:

• Finished up all work for my on-the-go libraries on the mobile system
• Merged the on-the-go libraries back into the studio
• Backup, backup, backup. This includes Time Capsule backups of both the studio and mobile system, and a refresh to my offsite backup. 

I'm still shooting of course, but being very diligent of getting libraries back into the studio system in short order. When Mavericks (and Aperture X?!?) arrives, I'll upgrade my mobile system first. Once I feel the OS is stable, Aperture is working, and my Aperture plug-ins are happy too, I'll upgrade the studio system.

So ... how are you getting ready for an upgrade?