I am curious why you say you'ree wasting aperture if you're not using referenced masters. I read the appropriate chapter in the aperture user manual on this topic last night and obviously there is less work for the user if you let aperture suck your pictures into the aperture library. From the other stuff you were saying in this thread I would have expected you to recommend managed files.
Okay, in the light of day, I will back off that statement a bit
The primary reason is that eventually your photo library is going to grow outside the size of the amount of disks you want to stick inside a computer and your backup system, and you're going to have to either start a new library which you're switching between, or some massive reorganization.
As for why I feel so strongly about referenced, I need to explain how I'm using my system: I do my primary image management on a laptop, with an external drive plugged in.
My library sits on my internal (tiny) drive, all the raw files are organized on the external drive. Aperture actually does suck all the files in for me, you don't need to manually copy. For my import Settings I set Store Files: (a local directory), Copy Files, Subfolders: Project name.
Now when I plug my camera in, I create a project, import the photos and Aperture automatically creates a directory in my referenced structure and imports the photos into there, no manual operations.
For all photos I want an original and a backup at all times
1) I create a directory on my internal hard drive: Backup<x> (x is the number of the disk it will be backed up to)
2) Whenever I import Aperture creates a folder Backup<x>/<Project Name> and copies the files into there -- this allows me to work on any current projects without having the external drive plugged in all the time.
3) During this time my regular backups take care of storing this working directory on a file server, so everything stays backed up
4) At some point (typically when I hit ~ 4GB) I burn a DVD with the contents of the folder, put that in an external location, and move all the project directories to my external drive, and use "Manage Referenced Files" to quickly reconnect them
I find this to be a very useful workflow that allows me to always be backed up and organized, without carrying around the external drive. When this one fills up I will just plug in a new drive and keep going, with a single Library I don't have to flip between.
There comes an added bonus -- I've set the previews to be no larger than the native resolution of my screen, and decent quality. All of those previews remain accessible in my library even when the drive is unplugged, so I can take the laptop anywhere and do a sildeshow without carrying that drive. In this way I currently have 23G of raw files, and can show all of them while only taking up 2G of space on my drive. It is like the best of both worlds -- I shoot only in raw but don't take the disk space or convenience penalty.
So essentially I get a infinitely growing library, with minimal disk requirements, and very easily manageable backups that don't require me to constantly have drives plugged in. Management-wise the only part that is additional work over a managed library is the step of burning the DVD and moving the masters -- but I don't know what I would do for that second backup otherwise.
Of course that just works for my workflow
Do you know what subdirectory in a project aperture normally files originals?
Oops. I may have made a mistake of assuming something that wasn't true! I poked in and can't find any location either. I guess that's another reason for referenced masters!
