Aperture 2 Problem - Folder organisation and Finder

First question is -- are you using Referenced or Managed Masters? Some of what you want to do is not possible with Managed Masters, but is probably also unnecessary.

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(1) If you let Aperture manage your pictures, you can find them in the Finder, but I wouldn't recommend it: Aperture manages your pictures, you can access Aperture's library from every open/save dialog in the system and search Aperture's database with spotlight. Just don't fiddle with them.

If you want to manage the pictures yourself (referenced masters), Aperture leaves them where they are physically stored.

(2) When you create a folder in Aperture, it creates a folder within the Aperture Library package.

(3) It sounds as if you have created one big project with subfolders and albums instead of one project per folder. So this is expected behavior. Aperture uses the metaphor or projects, blue folders which contain more projects, albums, books, etc. and brown folders which are subfolders of projects.

I definitely recommend against keeping everything in one project. Apart from speed issues (not sure if they have been solved with Aperture 2) with projects that contain too many pictures, you don't use the correct metaphors.

I would also suggest that you change your workflow slightly: create a project for each, well, project, drag all pictures in it and start sifting through them. It's no longer necessary to move them afterwards and much more effective in keeping separate thing separate.

benmadrid said:

1) if moving images between projects in Aperture will mean they also move in finder - I'll have to test that I guess next.

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If you let Aperture manage your pictures, yes of course! If you manage your pictures manually (referenced masters), no, because that's what referenced masters really are. IMHO you should let Aperture take care of it. You can always (and selectively!) start managing pictures manually.

By the way, as with iPhoto: don't manipulate files in the Finder! This may bork your project (because you have deleted folders Aperture doesn't expect to have been deleted). Every open/save dialog allows you to access your Aperture library (Media > Pictures > Aperture Library). Drag-and-drop from Aperture instead of doing so in the Finder.

benmadrid said:

2) I'm presuming that the best workflow for me when I import new work will be to first create a folder in finder, dump all the photos on a certain subject from the camera in there, then import that new folder again into Aperture as a new Project. Does that sound about right?

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No, it isn't. (Again, just my opinion.)
Create a new project within Aperture, click in Import and voilà. Definitely make use of the opportunity to autogroup shots (use the time slider) and name the location, etc. of your shots. It'll save you work. Click in Import and the download begins. After finishing, it will ask whether you want to delete the images on the card. You will have to confirm if you click in yes.

benmadrid said:

OK, but how do I do that? There doesn't seem to be a setting for that - is it simply a case of when I first (or later) import my images in Aperture I choose 'copy to aperture library' instead of leaving images 'in their current location'? I would prefer not to duplicate all my images in Aperture library for space reasons.

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It does so by default -- copy to Aperture Library just means that. I would definitely recommend that you let Aperture manage your library, especially when you're a noob. You should make a backup of your current library with its whole folder structure. Put it somewhere safe.

benmadrid said:

OK, but will this create a new real folder in my Finder? If not, and I stop using Aperture one day, how will I find the photos?

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As I've said above, yes, but only if you let Aperture manage your library. If you do it manually, well, Aperture assumes that you want to create folders manually.

It will still create a folder inside the Aperture Library, but not inside your directory structure. As I said before, if you choose to manually manage your pictures, you have to do just that.

The Aperture Library is a package, a special type of directory (well, it is a directory with a special flag set that tells the Finder not to show its content by default). The directory structure is essentially identical to your Library within Aperture. Note that only projects (which are packages again) contain pictures, albums and books contain only references. You can export your pictures with Aperture at any point or create high-quality jpgs by drag-and-drop (it actually creates images according to the settings in the export prefs).

You can copy subdirectories of the Aperture library, but Aperture will create subdirectories for each image (that's where image versions are stored, for instance). You shouldn't do it manually, much to cumbersome and there is really no point. Let Aperture do it for you. I've been running it since last summer and unlike iView Media Pro, it has not lost one single picture (which iView was prone to do, I spent hours manually reconnecting pictures, ugh).

My advice is the following: forget about your current directory structure, it makes things a lot harder at this point.

(0) Get an external harddrive if you don't have one already.
(1) Back up your old folder structure (you should have backups of your images anyway!!). Don't touch the backup except to copy images back.
(2) Start with Aperture from scratch. Let Aperture manage your pictures.
(3) Create a File Vault on your external harddrive -- in addition to Time Machine (if you use Leopard). File Vaults keep track of even deleted images which you can access very easily. I usually import all pictures, sync my File Vaults, delete all bad pics and sync again. This way, they don't waste space on my internal harddrive (I have a ProBook, so space is at a premium), but I can access them if I want to.

Enjoy Aperture

benmadrid said:

2) I'm presuming that the best workflow for me when I import new work will be to first create a folder in finder, dump all the photos on a certain subject from the camera in there, then import that new folder again into Aperture as a new Project. Does that sound about right?

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The whole point of using Aperture is so that you can work quickly by saving steps in your workflow. So why not use Aperture to it's full advantage? Try importing the image files from the memory card directly into Aperture and just don't mess with folders in the finder.

If you do this it is much faster. Aperture even lets you start editing, organizing and making selects before the import operation is finished.

Back in the dark ages when all we had were folders to help us organize our photos it made sense to make sub-folders with names like "rejects" or "selects" and move the good and bad images to folders. But now we don't have to we simply rate the images in place and then use filter criteria to tell the computer to show use (say) only those images marked as "selects". We no longer have to care what folder an image file is in.

Software like Aperture or even iPhoto alows us to organize our images as many ways as we like. for example I can make smart folders for images based on f-stop and keep all my f/4 images together and my f/2.8 image in another folder and at the same time keep other folders that group images by the hour of the day so all the ones shot at between 2:00pm and 2:59pm are together with other folders for the 3 and 4 o-clock hours. Yes this is silly but it would do no harm The images would all be managed by Aperture and Aperture would keep only one copy of each image on the hard drives but I could make it look like each image was in 20 different folders sorted by the model's shoe size, f-stop and hour of the day. I can invent now organization systems on the fly when ever I want.

benmadrid said:

I appreciate what you are both saying, thanks. I think I'm just scared of letting Aperture take control because I am so used to knowing exactly where my images are... and if I ever want to stop using Aperture one day, then it would be really useful to have that structure in place.

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Just don't be. Give it a try and if you don't like it, you can switch back easily.

This is why I use Lightroom. I like the fact that it uses my Folder structure and when I move photos in Lightroom, it will move within Finder as well. In Aperture, I had to keep relocating masters or finding them again.

If you work with referenced images you can have the same folder structure in Finder. That's what I do... main reason being in case I ever want to jump ship from Aperture.

To the OP you really should take the time to watch Apple's very good quicktime tutorials and read the manual. If you screw this up you will regret it and there is no 'right' answer, that is why there are so many options

You can get started here http://www.apple.com/aperture/tutorials/#organizeimport-importbasics

Hi Ben

Sorry, I did not realise that your request related specifically to not only importing as referenced files but also directly importing an existing folder structure.

When I first got aperture my folder structure in Finder needed some tidying up, so I found it easier to one folder at a time into a project structure I created myself in Aperture. If I remember correctly I also had a few problems such as you describe (projects containing albums when I only want to import the folders into seperate projects).

So I am sorry but I don't know the solution there.

The structure I ended up with was having high level folders and then I individually imported my finder folders into projects within those folders.

For example in Aperture for my photos which are sorted by place I have a folder Library>Places and then within that a sub-folder for each country and then within that the projects themselves

So I ended up with Library>Places (aperture folder)> Finland (aperture folder)> Helsinki (aperture project)

Then I imported my Finder folder 'Helsinki' to the Aperture project.

Long winded if you have a lot of folders I know, so hopefully someone can offer you a more elegant solution.

Good luck and let me know how you get on.

benmadrid said:

One last question, now that you have that structure set up, when you now import new photos into the structure, do you put them into a finder folder first and then repeat the process outlined above? Thanks for your help. Ben

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No, once you have things set up it is much more straightforward. Imagine you have an 'abadia' project in aperture and an equivalent folder in Finder. You want to import more pictures to the project from a memory card.

Start up aperture and go to the abadia project. Plug in the card (or camera), then the import dialog box will appear and you can specify which images you import, where they go in Finder (e.g. to the abadia folder or somewhere else), and you can also rename, add keywords, etc.

So in other words once you have set things up you can do pretty much everything via aperture (and in more ways than I described above, I am still learning too).

I am not absolutely sure, but aperture even seems to keep track when I subsquently move images between projects... although I am still getting the hang of how this works.

Cheers

I am currently still in evaluation mode comparing lightroom versus aperture 2 and trying to decide on which program I should take the plunge with. I am torn since I really like Lightoom's WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) approach in making sure the physical file structure you see in finder mirrors what you see in Lightroom. On the other hand I exclusively use smart folders in iTunes and don't know if I can live without them in a photo organization program.

My view is that I should always be able to copy my entire photo library from Finder without having to do an export (I understand I will lose any of the changes done in the photo database software).

I would like to set up aperture to automatically create a physical directory structure on my hard drive as follows that mirrors the same organization in Aperture:

<year>
--> <name of photo shoot>

an example of this would look like the following:

2005
2006
2007
2008
--> vacation xyz
--> Christmas
--> Trip to the beach
--> portraits of X

If I move a picture from "vacation xyz" to "Trip to the beach" I want this change to be reflected in Finder as well (obviously I won't do this type of operation in finder). I don't care if this structure is set up with blue folders or yellow folders in Aperture or whether there are multiple projects or a single project.

benmadrid said:

Hi,

2) When I move images from my 'to sort' folder to another new or existing folder using drag and drop in Aperture, it leaves a copy of the image in 'to sort'. I want to move the images completely out of 'to sort' and into the other folder, with that also happening to the actual files in Finder at the same time.

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You are missing the whole point of Aperture.

Aperure never "copies" your files. You can make 20 folders and copy the same image into all those foldrs but there will only be one image on the disk, not 21. Also when you edit that one image it will change in all 20 folders. This way if you can a photo of a gilr in a red dress you can put it in a folders cann "red clothing", "girls" and "dresses" but not clutter up you disk with multiple copies of the same image.

As for moving images in the finder DO NOT do that. Ever. not if you are using aperture.

If you are going to use Aperure you have to think using its terms. Import the photos into a "project" then sort and rate them inside the project. make some folders and file the images there but just know that you NEVER use the finder to get to an image. If you need to use the image outside of Aperture use the "export" feature.

kudukudu said:

If I move a picture from "vacation xyz" to "Trip to the beach" I want this change to be reflected in Finder as well

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Why do you care about seeing the photos in Finder?

Think of the Aperture library like a public library. Using Finder would be like wondering around the shelves looking for a book. Not a usfull thing to do in a large library. Better to use the card catalogs or even better on e of the coputers to do a search. Using Aperture's smart folders and metadta searches is like using the public librarie's search tools.

ChrisA said:

Why do you care about seeing the photos in Finder?

Think of the Aperture library like a public library. Using Finder would be like wondering around the shelves looking for a book. Not a usfull thing to do in a large library. Better to use the card catalogs or even better on e of the coputers to do a search. Using Aperture's smart folders and metadta searches is like using the public librarie's search tools.

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I want to maintain a usable physical file structure so when I stop using Aperture (notice that I say when and not if - it is unlikely that Aperture will be the best of breed photo management system 25 years from now) I can copy over my files without any issues to whatever new OS/application makes sense at the time.

To build upon the library analogy, lets assume that the card catalog or computers are lost in a fire but the collection itself was saved. It is important that the books are organized in some kind of logical fashion so that the card catalog can be easily rebuilt.

kudukudu said:

I want to maintain a usable physical file structure so when I stop using Aperture (notice that I say when and not if - it is unlikely that Aperture will be the best of breed photo management system 25 years from now) I can copy over my files without any issues to whatever new OS/application makes sense at the time.

To build upon the library analogy, lets assume that the card catalog or computers are lost in a fire but the collection itself was saved. It is important that the books are organized in some kind of logical fashion so that the card catalog can be easily rebuilt.

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I'm not disagreeing with you. I have the same thoughts. But 25 years? Are you sure jpgs will still be readable? Are you sure you'll still use file structures like you know them? Are you sure you won't be looking at holographic images that you access through thought?? Who knows

That is a trade-off: do you a) set up something that works easily now, and how to adjust to future change, or do you b) do your best to be "adaptable" for the future, even perhaps at the expense of the easiest way today.

I decided to put the concepts of "present value" to work, and figure that known savings in time today is of greater value than possible or theoretical savings in time in the future. So, I went the "a" approach after years of wasting time wringing my hands over the "b" approach.