Aperture Workflow

See some recent posts on Fraser Speirs blog:

http://speirs.org/

The first week or so of Jan 2008 has some interesting Aperture comments.

http://speirs.org/2008/01/06/my-photo-editing-workflow/
http://speirs.org/2008/01/06/when-i-delete-a-photo/
http://speirs.org/2008/01/08/organising-projects-and-folders-in-aperture/

Joe,

I'm a photo hobbyist and typically shoot a few hundred photos for each project. Here's my Aperture workflow. Remember that there's more than one way to do it! Be sure to check out the how-to articles on this site.

I mostly target web output and make occasional prints. Each of my Aperture projects corresponds to a day trip, vacation, etc. For each of those projects, I'll make a smart folder of images with one or more stars that I'll export for my web site. I have a smart folder that pulls every photo with three or more stars for a "best of" gallery.

1. Import photos into a project and use a metadata template to fill in the essentials (location, credits, etc.).
2. Make a quick pass through the photos and assign ratings. I try to mark most of them as discards.
3. Make a second pass through the remaining photos to refine ratings. I'll often use the compare/select tools to pick between similar photos at this point and may make some quick adjustments.
4. Finish entering metadata, particularly keywords.
5. Make edits as needed to the photos with one or more stars and write headlines and captions.
6. Create the smart gallery for photos with one or more stars and export them to a directory where my web authoring software can find them.
7. Create an online gallery for those images.

This hopefully gives you some ideas.

Cheers,

Andreas