Whats the difference between and Album and a Smart Album

Question

OK, just upgraded.... So, whats the difference between an Album and a Smart Album?  
Also, I like to organise my stuff, so if I create a folder for each year, and then a project within that year, why is it that the photos are always in both - and then again if I chose to create an album specific to a project, they are there again.
So it might look:
          Folder (2012 Equine Photography)
               Project - Specific Events
                    Album - Big Barn Dressage May
Does this mean the individual photo is stored 3 times and using 3 times the space?
Thanks guys!

Answer 1

Mrsthebraggster wrote:
So it might look:
          Folder (2012 Equine Photography)
               Project - Specific Events
                    Album - Big Barn Dressage May
Does this mean the individual photo is stored 3 times and using 3 times the space?
No. Conceptually the Master only lives lives in the single (time based) Project you import it into. Albums are just collections of pointers that point to  images in various Projects.
"Big Barn Dressage May" could be a Project, but only if it is only one day and a limited number of image files; otherwise an Album. "2012 Equine Photography" should be an album or a Folder of Albums. "Specific Events" could be an Album or a Folder of Albums.
A Project should not be used as a Folder.
From an earlier post of mine:
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 (DB), 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. Very powerful. And Albums of pointers take up almost zero space, so they are fast and do not make the Library size grow.
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 a 100,000 images Library 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 in another few seconds 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. Such pic characteristics (work, family, flowers, etc.) should not be organized via folders.
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; but it is instant with keywords.
HTH
-Allen