Initial Aperture Organization

I have been using a MBP and MBA for while now, but I just decided to migrate my primary desktop from a PC to a 27" i7 iMac. Along with this comes a change to my photography tools.
I am planning to switch to Aperture... even though I am not a pro. It is a fairly serious hobby of mine... and I want to start shooting in RAW. Previously, my pics have been jpegs.
Like many people in the PC world, my pictures are organized in windows folders by year... each with a couple of dozen subfolders for "events". As we move from year to year... there are lots of duplicate events such as "beach condo", "Christmas", "Ski Trips", etc.
I am pretty clear that I do not want to keep organizing by year... but I am not 100% where to start. I assume that my current events would be a good start. What I am not too clear about is if I should put everything into one big project with albums for the events... or if if I should create multiple projects.
I currently have 50,000 + pictures... plus I am in the middle of a negative scanning project with my Nikon CoolScan 5000 ED that will probably double the size of my library.
Basically, I am looking for help from others who have switched from Windows to a Mac... and help on how to start my new organization.
/Jim

Bix,
I have talked (online) to others that organize by year, then month, and then even day before they get to the event. Example:
2007
January
5
Bills birthday
2008
December
25
Christmas
To me... the extra date information seems counter productive and actually has less value than a simpler approach... especially since the date information should be in the metadata. I find that having just the year is enough "organization"... and in some cases... maybe even too much. Of course... my frame of reference is using "windows explorer" as my file system. I have had situations when I was looking for a particular photo... for example taken at DisneyWorld. I might know the approximate year the trip was taken, but it was tedious to open year after year of folders trying to find the correct trip.
After reading some more of RB's web site, and his replies... I am thinking of:
One Aperture Library
A few Blue folders such as "Family", "Creative Photography", "Architecture", "Nature". This will match the type of work that I do... but in reality, the majority will go into the Family blue folder.
Inside the Family blue folder: One blue folder for each year.
Inside each Blue year folder... multiple projects such as "Beach Condo", "Christmas", "DisneyWorld", "Yellowstone in Winter", etc. My intention is to mark each of these folders with common metadata such as location.
Inside each project, I could assign metadata specific to individual pictures such as peoples names.
I believe at the "Family" top blue folder level... I could have smart albums such as "DisneyWorld" which would contain all of our multiple trips across several years.
I will probably change my mind a few times as I learn more. Now would be a good time for RB to set me straight if I am dazed and confused.
/Jim

Similar Messages

Adobe Bridge / Aperture organization feature only comparison

I am curious what others' thoughts are about comparing Adobe Bridge / Version Cue to Aperture's pre-editing organizational features (meaning the ability to organize prior to doing any RAW conversion and editing). What do people see as the most important features that Aperture adds above and beyond Bridge?
Remember, these are pre-editing features only, which is basically organization. Do not include editing and/or finishing options in comments. If anyone is interested why I am asking this, Its for two reasons:
1) I'm considering a new workflow option of using Bridge and ACR, and only importing into Aperture after all conversions are complete. This basically eliminates Aperture functionality for the initial image evaluation phase, and importing only converted PSDs. Yes, that eliminates a huge part of the value Aperture offers, but perhaps it saves the ability to use it.
2) I want to know other than aesthetics what I am really losing by not just using Bridge/Version Cue exclusively over Aperture (up to now, I use Bridge, but not Version Cue). I already have my own thoughts on this, but I'd like to tap others' knowledge and advice.
Brad

Frankly I think you'd be throwing out all of the good parts of aperture.
I really, really like the way it imports from cards. I really like the auto-stacking, the side-by-side compare, the easy ratings (Bridge is just as good for rating) and it's fast for this - I love how it displays a preview on the second monitor.
Really, if Aperture didn't have the library, and were just an organizational/evaluation tool, I think I would be in love with it - it falls apart at the editing and archiving phases.

IPhoto and Aperture organization please give me your advice

Well, decided to set up my account here as I see this forum is very helpful.
I had all my photos organized in Iphoto, but because I bought a camera that shoots Raw decided to get a Aperture to edit my RAW pictures.
But now I don't know what to do, because I don't want to end up with two libraries to take care, would like something more practical, and also would save space on my
HD, anyone have any suggestions, how do you organize yourself if you have both?
Thank you !

Simply: Use Aperture. It will do just about everything that iPhoto will do, plus has much more powerful editing and organising tools. It is an excellent tool for working with RAWs, whereas iPhoto’s RAW support is pretty much tacked on.
Then if there is something that iPhoto does that you want, you can share your Aperture Previews into iPhoto (File -> Show Aperture Library) and just darg the pics over.
Regards
TD

Aperture Organization By Year

Hello,
As ever, I still struggle with organizing in Aperture and have read a variety of threads on the topic.
I know I'm supposed to think of projects as permanent storage and albums as a means of organizing images.
Is there a way to set up projects up by year and then organize by month? In other words, I don't want to look at the stacks. Instead, I'd like a project to hold all photos from 2012. Within that project, I'd like the images sorted by month. I'd then like to make a variety of specific albums or projects within that, but ultimately, the most important thing for me is having all of 2012 together and then further subdivided by month.
Thanks!
lsb

All very easy - the trick is to remember that terms like "project", "album", and "stack" are very arbitrary.
Projects are simply the place where the images are stored - I think of them like rolls of film and tend to create a new one every time I unload a card. The only limit is that you should not have over 10,000 images in one Project. So think of "Projects" as rolls, boxes, events, envelopes - whatever you consider your lowest organizational element. Mine are simply named by date and a hint e.g., 201210 - Trip to Zoo. The real retrieval data is found in the Albums above this. I use a geographic structure - Continent>Country. I don't use dates as Aperture creates Smart Albums by date automatically, so there is no need for me to reproduce this structure.
Stacks are a simply a way to group photos, usually variations of one image. For example, if you are shooting multiple frames per second, you might group each burst of images as one stack. This is simply to avoid cluttering your browser and is not really an oganizational element.
Albums will do what you want. There are two types, Smart and "dumb." Smart albums are really database queries that run automatically. Aperture come pre equipped with several, including most recent years. But you can get very clever with them. For example, I have moved to a mostly referenced master setup, so I have a Smart Album that finds all of my Managed Masters so that I can periodically move them to the referenced drive. Keywords can be very, very powerful here.
You can also simply drag an drop images into Albums. Remember that images in an Album are merely database pointers. That is, they appear in the the Album, like a copy, but any action you take actually affects the original image. (To make real copies, you must create a new "Version.")
Hope this helps.

Lightroom Vs. Aperture - mini shootout

As seen in my earlier thread, I've been playing with the 30 day trial of Lightroom trying to decide whether that tool is a better fit for my needs then Aperture.
While I've only spent a few hours with this on a small project I think I've been able to grasp some of the major elements of LR and I can compare them against aperture. I cannot say this is balanced or not, just my opinion.
User Interface
Both apps have very good but very different interfaces. I'm giving a slight edge to LR for its organization of tools but a nod to Aperture for its breadth. I think Aperture as a more rounded set of tools in the UI department. Take the loupe for instance, its better implemented in aperture. From what Ive read stacks are better also but I have yet to play with them in LR.
Workflow
LR imposes a more defined (but logical) workflow, i.e., Library module, develop module etc.
Aperture is more open ended, basically you can edit, categorize assign keywords in any order you wish
Give LR the win here but only slightly
Image adjustment
Lightroom has a more refined and robust set of editing tools. In this initial testing I've only worked on my images with default actions and LR seems to produce a more visually pleasing and accurate result. Can Aperture achieve the same level of work, I'm sure but it will take more fiddling. Can Lightroom produce even more stunning results I believe it can since Ive only played with the basic tools.
Organization
Aperture uses projects, folders, albums and smart albums.
Lightroom has folders which are logical and physical, collections(albumns). The physical organization of images occur within the app but its possible that they can get out of sync if a folder is moved in the finder.
Aperture wins on this this category, I use smart albums extensively and its really nice to set a keyword, say smugmug and have all images appear into an album (which I then export and upload to smugmug).
Performance.
Aperture runs ok most of the time on my machine, but its higher requirements locks out a lot of other machines and has bogged down on my from time to time (needlessly I might add).
Lightroom seems much more perky in interacting with the tools and images but Ill through out a little proviso, and that Im only dealing with a 100 images or so in LR and aperture has 10k. nonetheless performance is a common knock against aperture.
Printing
Ap had rudimentary printing at best
Lr has a much more flexible approach to printing but both still lack features and abilities that can be found in other apps like qimage
The winner?
Aperture Organization/categorization
LR won in Workflow, Image adjustment, performance.
Which one will I use, well I am leaning towards Lightroom but the most important area is image organization. All things being equal if I ned to spend most of my time trying to organize the images Im not sure this is the tools for me. Aperture lets me create a hierarchical structure very easily and with every shoot in a project its easy for me then to move on to image selection/keywords/editing. Its true the LR gave me better result out of the box but will it let me work the way I want to work thats the question.
BTW does anyone know when the introductory price goes away, that will also propel me into action.

A couple of additional shootout issues. The first one goes to Aperture, the second to Lightroom:
1. Aperture, it seems to me, makes better use of display real estate (and I'm not talking about multi-display support). I've been spending a lot of time recently exporting old projects from Aperture and importing them into LR folders. So I've been cmd-tabbing at high frequency between the two apps. I'm noticing that in aperture, my display feels bigger. No other way to describe it. (This is a G5 with a 23" cinema HD.) I think it has to do with the fact that in Aperture, interface element are more space efficient. lists tighter, Icons, tags, type all smaller and tighter, less space used dividing elements. And yet not feeling crowded or chaotic. LR has room for improvement in this area.
2. Lightroom, on the other hand, sports a different palpable advantage of it's own: Good Will. Now I'm a big Apple fan. I'm responsible for IT here and I've administered lots of Macs over the years (and a few PCs). I'm a shareholder even. I really believe Apple does great work, innovates in ways no other company is doing, builds great products and great user experiences. But you got to hand it to Adobe: By opening and sharing their development process with us, via the Labs site and the public beta program for LR and now PSCS3, and in a lot of other ways, they've converted a whole class of users into collaborators, and therefore stakeholders, in a way that Apple doesn't do. Where Apple keeps secrets to optimize the big product intro splash, Adobe is opening up to its customers in a variety of ways, creating an effective collaborative community. LR is a good example of the success of that approach. Apple has room for improvement in this area.
Tim Wilson
Studio Lab

Aperture 3 is showing nothing! none of my projects, no previews, no masters, no star rated, everything gone.

I have been working with aperture 3 for 2.5 years now and have run into a major problem, most probably my fault.
I have been working with my masters stored on an external hard drive. After some time I was not happy with the way it was organized, (in hindsight I should have left it alone as it was working great just a bit untidy!) so I tried to change it by creating a single folder on the external and then through aperture I used the relocate originals option to move them into the folder, which it seems to have done, but (BIG BUT!), aperture asked me to update the library after all the masters were moved, now when I open aperture there is nothing I mean nothing... no previews, no masters, no projects, albums, star ratings nothing....
Initially aperture was opening and just not displaying anything, I then tried opening different library files that it seemed to have created (or i created unknowingly??) and then finaly it would not open at all, giving me a "you do not have permissions" error message and would then just close. I then used the aperture first aid function but when i selected repair permissions the same error message would come up and the same happened with the other 2 options in the first aid function.
I have now used time machine to restore to a date just before the diaster but all it solved is that now aperture opens again but still does not display anything.
I seem to have all the masters in the folder that aperture moved them to, but I am worried that I have lost all the preview files that contain all the adjustments I have made to the images so I do not want to just re-import all the masters as I think there must be a way of retrieving the previews. I have done alot of work on a lot of photos and i am scared i have lost it all, not the masters just the work done on them
Tried to clean my room and ended up blowing up my house!
I hope someone can help me out.

Have you tried actually double clicking the library(s) to open Aperture?
It probably won't make a difference but you should try doing each in turn.
Also what version of Aperture? Check to make sure there are no filters set that are keeping the images from displaying.
It's hard to follow your first post. I've reread it a number of times and I'm still not sure of just what the chain of events were. If you could explain again what you did and what happened it might help to figure out hat is going on. I'm especially confused by the part where you say after you relocated the masters you had to upgrade your library. Did you upgrade Aperture at that point?
Message was edited by: Frank Caggiano

Aperture 3: Can I reorganize masterfolders in Aperture library?

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

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

Does Aperture work well with itunes

I recently exciled iphoto from the kingdom. I am reading that aperture is a good next step. I had lightroom but was a mess working along side iphoto (i used iphoto to sync with all my apple stuff). Question is will aperture organize, sync and allow iphone, ipad and macbook to talk at sync in itunes without a bunch of headache?
Is there a better organizer out there with more controls than iphoto without leaving copies of photos everywhere. LR kept originals and I had **** getting iphoto to operate on its own without LR controling the game.

Blevins57 wrote:
Can someone help me with how I can set up "flashget downloader" to download directly into my itunes movie library?
Why not contact their support?
-> http://www.flashget.com/en/contact.html

Aperture to Capture One Pro via Catpult - working

FYI I figured out how to make the Aperture to Capture One Pro connection work with the Catapult plugin in both directions, preserving repeated image edits in Capture One Pro. We can now use Capture One Pro as a (slightly awkward) plugin for Aperture, many people like their RAW conversion.
I think more could be done to make it simpler, but it is working.
My write up is on the Capture One Forum, here:
http://forum.phaseone.com/En/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=16675&sid=46e9c25c5f1d3770cc66 be99bda3441d

Hi,
Aperture is a versatile application, which lets you perform all or at least the most tasks to handle your digital camera image files. It helps a lot to edit files, which means you can select winners and losers very quickly and in a very sophisticated way. It renames files and adds IPTC meta data.
One thing is really cool: It imports your master RAW files und does not touch them any more. When you alter an image (cropping, brightness, white balance etc) this is only written in a data base and Aperture shows you the altered master file in a new preview called Version. This version does not exist physically. It is only a little descriptive text file. When you export your image for delivery Aperture creates real images.
It is possible to automate workflows with Apples´s Automator. Aperture organizes files in a single library but you can export master raw files or tif, psd or jpg copies. Aperture creates niece Websites, and offers book templates for PDF-output or printing via a print service. There is many more. But one thing I should point out: the raw conversion of Capture One Pro is in my opinion much better. More details, better color control. This will get better, I hope with future version of Aperture. We got a version 1.1 now and the developers of Aperture seem to know about our problems. So for me, Aperture is a very cool Workflow tool. RAW conversion is not state of the Art but equal to ACR. And having master file and derivatives alltogether without cluttering the harddisk is very clever. But I will keep my version of Capture One Pro for quality reasons.
I hope this helps a bit.
(Sorry for weak my english)
Regards,
Eberhard

Aperture file renaming

Hello,
I write this with an increasing level of frustration. I run projects in Aperture that require several shoots, or in the case of my image library, continuous shoots.
How do I rename files so that it picks up the file number from the last file, and begins from there. For example, I may have renamed 1150 files, the next time I import or rename in that project, I want the numbering to start at 1151.
Any ideas? Aperture sure is a frustrating program to use, and nowhere near as user friendly as many would have you believe.
Thank you.

No worry's. Aperture is extremely flexible and once you get the hang of how it does things you will find it make's a lot of sense.
On to your question. The file naming templates are pretty easy to use, the field that you will want to use is counter. As in "custom name with counter". This is easy to customize just choose edit... in the version name drop down in the import window. When customizing you can pretty much choose any fields you wish. Using counter you can choose how many digits and the starting number as well. If you would like to change the actual master filenames during import don't forget to check the box to do so.
If you wish to change the version names of files that you already imported use metadata->batch change...
If you wish to change the actual master file names after you import you will need to use file->relocate master, if you do not know what you are doing with referenced masters be careful with this. If you are using managed masters and want to rename, use the relocate master and then use file->consolidate masters to bring them back into the library.
Let me know if you have any questions or don't understand what I just wrote.
RB
Ps. There is a bunch of stuff regarding Aperture organization that I put together here:
http://www.rwboyer.com/RBDesign/Blog/Entries/2008/7/15_Apple_Aperture_2.1Organization.html

Stability and Performance Issue With Aperture 3

I'm running Aperture 3.0.3 on my iMac. This is a switch from Adobe products and I'm having a ton of stability and performance problems.
Environment:
* My library is about 32,000 images, about 1/3 of which are 21 megapixel, the remainder are 10 megapixels or smaller.
* I have no smart albums.
* All images are referenced and live on an external FW800-connected RAID5 array. The library lives on my internal drive.
* I have an Apple Cinema display connected through the mini-DVI port.
Here's what's happening. Initially, Aperture starts up fine and things are peachy. After a few adjustments -- particularly cloning or patching, rendering becomes slow. It becomes slow as in a minute or more. On a 21 megapixel file, this is an incredible productivity killer. Here is what I've tried to make Aperture go faster (not all at the same time):
- Log in holding the shift key to make sure nothing but core system stuff is running
- Rebuild Aperture library
- Defragment internal hard disk using iDefrag
- Export a subset of images to a separate library and work on them there
None of these has had the desired effect. Worse, if I switch to full-screen mode, the whole interface becomes balky and can become unresponsive to the point where the only way out is to cold reboot the computer. Cmd+TAB doesn't even work.
I can't imagine this is an experience shared by many users of the screaming would be deafening. Lightroom and Photoshop are insanely fast by comparison so it can be done -- and on this computer.
What are the best practices for speeding up Aperture?
Thanks,
Steve
Message was edited by: films-so-last-year

Have you tried the Bergsma BAsh?
Many of us who have upgraded our library's over time have cleaned out caches using a technique discovered by Matthew Bergsma . It cleans out some obsolete files that significantly slow aperture 3 down.
Here's what you should do:
Quit aperture
Navigate to your aperture library.
Ctrl click library and select show package contents
Open the thumbnails folder and drag contents to trash.
Then delete the entire contents of the following cache folders:
Hard Drive/Library/Caches
Hard Drive/System/Library/Caches
Hard Drive/Users/Your username/Library/Caches
You may also like to delete the preferences file but that's up to you.
~/Preferences/Library/com.apple.aperture.plist
Open Aperture:
Rebuild Thumbnails click library - photos
Then select one photo and apple(command) A to select all.
Then go to the photo menu and choose generate thumbnails.
It'll take a while to go through them all but once it's all done Aperture 3 should zip along
You can read Matthew's original post:
here http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2359859&start=0&tstart=0
Hope this is of help!
M.

Please help diagnose a problem with Aperture

Hi all,
I've noticed recently that Apertures performance isn't what it should be so came on here looking for reasons why that might be the case. I saw one person suggest making a new account to see how Aperture runs and, as I'd just created an account for my GF I tried logging into her account and to my surprise Aperture was a speed demon!
I have managed to somewhat improve the performance of Aperture by basically removing every login item and running all the maintenance scripts using Onyx but one niggly little problem persists that I can't cure. Namely that of switching out of fullscreen mode. Initially Aperture on my account was dreadful when switching into AND out of fullscreen but now switching into fullscreen is almost instant while switching out of fullscreen I get a pause where I can see both the fullscreen image and the window, this pause lasts for around 5 - 10 seconds before my Mac Pro starts to respond again.
I've noticed that in my account Activity Monitor shows many more processes than under my gf's account but I have no idea which ones might adversely affect Aperture.
I suppose my other option is a wipe/reinstall of the OS but I really didn't want to go down that route tbh.
Any ideas?

OK I've just added another 4Gb of RAM and that hasn't helped any either. I can however be a bit more specific about the problem.
As you know the problem only happens on my (Administrator) login, my newly created account (standard user) doesn't exhibit this nor does my girlfriends (also a standard user account). The problem is specific to switching OUT OF fullscreen mode. The problem also only rears its head when I switch to a new image, once I've gone into and out of fullscreen once with that image it doesn't do it again unless I switch my selection to a different image, it also does it if I switch to another image then back again.
To reiterate the problem is a long pause when switching out of fullscreen mode, it hangs kind of half in half out of fullscreen mode sometimes for up to 15 seconds.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Aperture and PS

Users of Aperture: "What is the big advantage of Aperture over PS CS 2 combined with Adobe's bridge" .
Imac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Lemke,
while Aperture isn't meant to replace Photoshop, it does for me 95% of the time now.
Basically, Aperture organizational abilities, smart albums, the amazing stacking and compare functions make organizing shoots, and picking the best images from a day of shooting far easier than Bridge can. Plus the whole versions leaving the masters untouched and letting you have multiple version each adjusted differently (B&W, super saturated, cropped) without using extra disk space is great.
I guess one of the big questions is: what type of photography do you do? What type of post processing do you do? What do you do with the images?
For me, I shoot mostly fashion/commercial. I shoot RAW, I shoot a lot of images. The end goal is to have a very small number of the best images from a shoot for print or online use.
So for my uses, here is where Aperture shines above Bridge+PS from the start of my workflow to the end:
Aperture can automatically unload from your cards or camera into a new project, and erase your card for you.
My RAWs are never touched. They can be viewed at 100% zoom without converting them.
I can auto-stack and/or manually stack different shots of the same pose. I can then use the excellent stack comparison view, full screen mode, promote, demote, reject, and pick images, using 2-up, 3-up, or more-up views. I can use the loupe tool to check details and sharpness instantly. My rejects are hidden from the default view, but never deleted. This lets me find the best image from a stack very quickly compared to Bridge, where you can only see things at a small size with anti-aliasing, and has no simple 2-up comparison view, and no concept of stacks and picks. All this lets me go from 500 images to about 30 very very quickly.
I can create a dark moody version (with lowered exposure adjustment) and a light almost-blown glowing version (with raised exposure adjustment) and a black and white version without using 4X the disk space.
I can do all of my most common types of edits/adjustments: saturation, sharpness, levels, white balance, straightening, cropping, and more quickly, with no conversion from RAW, and no damage to the master file, and no disk space use to speak of.
I can use export presets and smart albums to dump all non-rejected images at 1000px wide jpegs with my copyright and name watermarked on them onto a CD to send the model, and all 5-star selects as 16-bit TIFFs with embedded color profile for the printer or for the client, and all stack picks and solo images to 2000 px wide srgb color-spaced jpegs for my website. And it's all faster than doing batch action processing in CS2.
I can backup everything to my external drive Vault with the click of a button.
I can do all of this in a single application.
So, for me, that's the high level advantages.
Devon

Organizer crashes computer

In elements 9, the organizer is completely bogged down. This problem began when I moved a very large number of images from a external disk to organizer. On initially opening organizer starts searching for thumbnails and everything gets locked down with the beachball symbol. after about 1 hour it seems to have located all the thumbnails but if I click on one the dreaded beachball starts and the computer completely locks down. I want to completed clear organizer of any images and start again. Is this possible? I have used the elements unstaller but when I re install everything is just the same. Is there a way I can delete all the current images that are in organizer? Where are the files located that stores the organizer images? Can those files be deleted? As it is, elements is basically useless to me.
Mac OS 10.6.8 --8 GB memory---

File...Catalog...New. When Organizer is using that new, empty catalog, use that same Catalog Manager window to remove your old catalog.
Ken

Copying a single file from one project to another????

Hello,
New to Mac from a PC, tried search with no results. I have a single image I would like to display in 2 separate projects in Aperture. (As I will be writing to a disc and print later). How do I copy the image from Project A to Project B, making is available to both??? Thanks in advance!

There are two different ways to do this.
The first way is literally exactly what you are asking for but may not be what you really want. You can copy the image (and corresponding master) by holding down the option key while dragging the image from one project to the other - make sure the drop target is the actual little yellow project box and not something inside the project box. When you do this there will be two completely separate copies that have nothing to do with each other. If you make an adjustment to one the other will not change, if you delete one master the other will still be there.
The second way may be what you actually want - if you create any type of album within or even outside of a project you can drag any images from any project into it - no copies are made but the image will "show up" in that album no matter what project it happens to live in. This is usually a better way to group images together from multiple projects no matter what the purpose.
Here are some more details:
[Aperture organization|http://photo.rwboyer.com/2008/07/apple-aperture-21-organization>
RB

Initial Aperture Organization

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for