Aperture 1.5 handling of images.

Dear members:
This may be a basic questions but I haven't worked with Aperture since I purchased it when it first came out. I understand that version 1.5 is a huge improvement over 1.0 and that it has changed the way it works with images - one is no longer forced to import images into its proprietary library.
My questions:
1. Can images be kept in folders of my choice while I use Aperture to just "browse" these folders in the same way I currently do with Adobe's Bridge ?
2. In this case Bridge creates a sidecar file for every RAW file I have and uses it to store all the metadata associated with the image. What method does Aperture use ? In case it keeps the metadata associated with images in its own internal library, how can one transfer an image and make sure that the metadata will accompany that image ? Does it keep a cache file in the folder as Bridge does or it keeps previews of the different images in its internal library ?
3. What book would you suggest as being the best for Aperture 1.5 ? I have found a few on Amazon but don't have any references on which should be the best. I am looking for an in depth book that deals with basic as well as advanced issues, and is also well illustrated if possible.
Thank you in advance,
Joseph Chamberlain

Hi Joseph,
Yes the video card is at the low end of Aperture's needs .... esp. with bigger RAW images. I believe the X800 was the upgrade for the PCI-X bus. A couple of generations back now but rumors say that they are being made available again.
Aperture speed is not associated with library size (although there have been a few considered thoughts that maybe very large library sizes do have an impact). The limit is 10,000 images per project (i.e. event, occasion) and after around 8,000 images in one project I did see slow-downs, and absolutely glacial from 9,500 to 10,000. That was under v1.0, and v1.5.x doesn't suffer as much. So, the speed you get with 25 images is the speed you'll get, assuming your projects are under 9,500 images big. My biggest library is 150Gb and is full of 250Mb scanned TIF's along with 8Mpix RAW's. The TIF's need a very high end 256Mb video card for reasonable performance.
My personal view of DNG is close to unprintable. Far from an industry standard, it was Adobe telling the world, but the world did not listen. The way Aperture implemented DNG is essentially irrelevant as it is merely the RAW encapsulated in a DNG wrapper. That means if the RAW decoder goes away, you lost your image. The key point of DNG was for universality (such as JPG), but that means getting the camera manufacturers to output in that format. However, if they did this, the benefit of RAW manipulation becomes an issue.
As to Adobe integration. I used to use CS2 daily and was my 100% tool of choice. Now I use it 2-5% of the time. Round tripping from Aperture is seamless and well implemented. The additional keyword metadata doesn't flow, but the standard EXIF does. I've not tried exporting the metadata so I cannot add more to the question.
Hope this helps,
G.

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