Aperture 3: Can I reorganize masterfolders in Aperture library?

Question

I have having a bit of a problem, and it bothers me.
The thing is that I last year in December finally chose to go with Aperture 3. In an earlier stage I imported the iPhoto library to my Aperture. Well, my problem is that Aperture organized all of my imported photos under Masters, and then under 2011 and then under 12 (December) and then 18. Is there a way to reorganize all the affected photos by shot date under masters, and not like it's now by import/consolidate date?
It maybe doesn't affect my work with the photos, but it bothers me a lot that it is organized wrong. All of my imported photos shot after that date is imported correctly.
Looking forward to from you
/Carsten

Answer 1

Carsten-
Specifically, the solution for your expressed problem is to make time-based Albums for your old iPhoto imports such as 2008, 2009 etc. Then sort those old iPhoto files by date and drag them into the appropriate Albums.
Originals should be backed up before import into Aperture or any other images management application. Those backups of originals can live in date-based folders on an offsite drive. Not only is that the only proper way to back up originals, it also allows your backup to consist of a more "literal" organization scheme.
Personally I use the same name scheme from the start:
• The camera card is uploaded on to the computer  into a date-named folder named for the Project such as 110829_KJones_Wed. Date/time organizing Projects IMO is important because that is the way Aperture sees Projects.
• The camera card is ejected. An important step, because fatal errors to original images can still occur while the card remains in the computer.
• Then the original folder on the internal drive gets split up as needed to maintain Project sizes less than ~400 pix and/or for naming convenience (110829_KJones_Wed_A, 110829_KJones_Wed_B, 110829_Boyd_Construction, etc.). Note that the sortable date 110829 or 20110829 for Aug 29, 2011 is very intentional; dates like 08/29/2011 are not good. Computers see time as a string year-month-day-hour-minute-second and we should name similarly.
• The new folder(s) with the new originals in them get backed up to an exernal drive that will live off site. I leave the same folder names but append .bkup to them so I know that they are backup files rather than referenced Masters. Only after this step is complete can the camera card be reformatted, in-camera (not in-computer).
• After all of the above is complete import into Aperture can occur. To reference Masters on external drives (recommended) have the files to be imported located on an external drive and select "Store images in their current location."
My comments from an earlier thread on Aperture organization:
First, Projects should be just that: individual-shoot based projects rather than some kind of organizing tool for all the architectural photos or whatever. For performance reasons personally I keep each Project under 500 20-MB images, making a second Project if the shoot is large (e.g. 110829_KJones_Wed_B). One or more albums will always organize the KJones wedding pix together anyway.
Folders are indeed flexible organizational tools but IMO often overused. Folders can effectively hide contents from view and therefore require users to remember how folders are nested and what is inside them. Folders were the only way to deal with single-original film, but are IMO limiting to image database thinking.
The way I look at it conceptually:
Aperture is a database, and each image file lives in one Project.
Albums are just collections of pointers that point to individual image files living in one or more Projects. Since they just contain pointers, albums can be created or deleted at will without affecting image files or taking up storage space. Very powerful.
Keywords can be applied to every image separately or in batches. Keywords are hugely powerful and largely obviate the need for folders. Not that we should never use folders, just that we should use folders only when useful organizationally - - after first determining that using keywords and albums is not a better approach.
As one example imagine the keyword "flowers."  Every image of 100k images that has some flowers in it has the keyword flowers. Then say we want to put flowers in an ad, or as background for a show of some kind, or to print pix for a party, or even just to look for an image for some other reason. We can find every flower image in a 100k-image database in 2 seconds, and instantly create an Album called "Flowers" that points to all of those individual images.
Similarly all family pix can have a keyword "family" and all work pix can have a key word "work." Each individual pic may have any number of keywords.
So by using keywords and albums we can have instant access to every image everywhere, very cool. And keywords and albums essentially take up no space in the database.
Another approach is to use a folder "Family" for family pix, a folder "Flowers" for flowers pix and another folder "Work" for work pix. IMO such folders usage is a very poor approach to using an images database (probably stemming from old paper or film work practices). Note that one cannot put an image with family in a field of flowers at a work picnic in all three folders.
HTH
-Allen