Bear with me this is long and annoying but it is important IMO.
So I'm not sure who else is using Aperture 1.5, but this is something that really needs thought before you start importing a large library.
As of 1.5 Aperture does allow you to store your files on the filesystem in any folder structure you want. This is great but there is more to it then you might think, it definitely requires a great deal of thought before you start.
My files pre-Aperture (I use Photo Mechanic) were organized like this:
Pictures
|-> Year
----|--> Shoot Date
--------|--> Processed Files for Printing
--------|--> Processed Files for Web Usage
--------|--> HTML Gallery
Aperture's library has the following basic organization structure in terms of what you see as a user. It's definitely important to learn all the rules about this structure. The documentation doesn't really explain this all that well mention the ramifications for how you organize your work:
Project - Basic unit of organization
Folder - Contained within a project or another Folder
Album - Contained within a project or a folder
Light Table, Web Gallery, etc.. - Same containment structure as Albums
With the ability to store your files outside of the Aperture Library it has a new import feature that will let you import your filesystem structure into Aperture. It works well and it imports files quite quickly. I imported my files from the last 3 years and it did it all in about an hour and a half.
Here is what I did:
1. Create a project for the year
2. Import all my dated folders for that year into the Aperture project (this is one step in the import.
What Aperture created is as follows, and it looks intuitive.
- The year Project has a folder for each of my shot date folders
- Within each folder there is an album that contains the pictures shot on that day, with the name "Images from XXXX" where XXXX = the shot date.
- Subdirectories within my structure such as print processed files, web galleries, etc.. were created as folders, with their own albums inside that folder.
This looked great to me, it imported just how I would expect, it all made sense, etc.. all my files were in the same place, Aperture was just storing it's metadata, etc.. about them in it's library file. (As far as I can tell)
Yesterday I went to download a card from my camera into aperture for the first time. I got a rude awakening on how it works.
Aperture can only import files into projects. Master files do not actually live within any structure in Aperture except for projects.
So what happens when I tell it to import my card, store the files in a dated folder within my folder structure, and import to the project "2006"?
Aperture copies the files into the filesystem exactly as you expect. And then nothing appears in it's project/folder structure. I was expecting to see a folder created under my 2006 project in Aperture that contained the new files. Nothing of the sort happened.
What happens is the new files are now visible if you select the 2006 project. Along with all the other files in the project (thousands). You have to go and find them all yourself, and then create a folder with the date matching the one in the filesystem, and then create an album under that folder, and drag the files from the project view to the album. This doesn't actually move the files, it simply references them in the album.
So the key point here is everything you see within Apertures structure inside the app is completely referential. No matter where you store your files, there is no real link between your filesystem organization and how the files are organized in Aperture. The entire tree of folders, etc.. is just a UI into it's search mechanism. In reality the only place files are stored is the projects.
Other notes/gotchas:
- Files cannot be moved from one project to another as far as I can tell. Once they are in a project, that's where they live. You can drag them into another project, but it simply creates references.
- Albums, Galleries, Light Tables, etc.. can reference any photo anywhere in the aperture library. (This is good)
If you're importing from a card on a regular basis you're going to need to think about your project structure very carefully. I think the application was designed for the way a studio shooter works. Create a new project for each client/shoot and stick everything in there. Then create folders, etc.. within the project to group the files within that shoot. When you start a new shoot you create a new project. I'm not sure but maybe studio shooters don't go back through their work as often? A set of files from a given shoot are all that is needed to organize a project for that client? Whereas say a landscape photographer is more likely to collect a group of photos from a large number of shoots and organize them together?
The problem with this is you're going to end up with hundreds or thousands of projects in your library if you create a new project every time you import files from your camera.
If you instead continually import to the same project you're going to have to rely on Aperture's search/query functionality to find the pictures for that shoot. You can manually keep everything organized but it requires some thought and organization.
It can all work of course but you really have to think about it. Hierarchical project structures would have made it much more intuitive IMO. (Projects that can be contained within projects)
