What is the best way to organize photos? iPhoto or Aperture?

If your only requirement is to manage or organize by date iPhoto is fine. If you want to have far more flexibility in both organizing, managing, backing up, and photo correction/modification go with Aperture. You can always start out in iPhoto and then move to Aperture really easy later and keep most of your organizational structure intact and all of your metadata work as well.

I would make sure that you backup more than once a year if that is what you meant.

That is a simple answer to a very complex question. You may want to invest the $99 bucks for One to One and learn both applications using your own work.

RB

I switched over to the Mac recently as well. As pointed out iPhoto does a good job at organizing by date and that's the way I organize my photos too. I know when Christmas is, I know when my kids birthdays is, our anniversary etc. That's the way I organize my photos in Aperture too. I don't store my photos in the library. I store them in the pictures folder by date (year, month, date) PLUS I tag them with key words such as the persons name and/or place, occasion, what the photo is about (skiing, swimming, dance, car, truck, etc.) Then later on all I have to do is type in the keywords that were applied to each photo to bring them back for viewing. Since they were also stored on the hard drive by date, rather than in the library, I can also go to a particular date and browse all the files that were taken at that particular time. Plus it makes them easy to find if I want to use the photos in another editing program. I don't like storing my photos in one big homogenized library file. So for ease of finding particular photos by key words Aperture is a much better program.

Just a note, there is no great reason to do what you are doing with referenced files. You are losing out on major functionality and convenience by accessing those referenced files directly with other software. It is usually a way better idea to just send them to other software from within Aperture weather they are referenced or not.

If it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy great but it is not great advice to be giving out to new users. It makes almost no sense to use referenced files unless you must span multiple hard drives.

Peace.

RB

pogster wrote:
I switched over to the Mac recently as well. As pointed out iPhoto does a good job at organizing by date and that's the way I organize my photos too. I know when Christmas is, I know when my kids birthdays is, our anniversary etc. That's the way I organize my photos in Aperture too. I don't store my photos in the library. I store them in the pictures folder by date (year, month, date) PLUS I tag them with key words such as the persons name and/or place, occasion, what the photo is about (skiing, swimming, dance, car, truck, etc.) Then later on all I have to do is type in the keywords that were applied to each photo to bring them back for viewing. Since they were also stored on the hard drive by date, rather than in the library, I can also go to a particular date and browse all the files that were taken at that particular time. Plus it makes them easy to find if I want to use the photos in another editing program. I don't like storing my photos in one big homogenized library file. So for ease of finding particular photos by key words Aperture is a much better program.

rwboyer wrote:
Just a note, there is no great reason to do what you are doing with referenced files. You are losing out on major functionality and convenience by accessing those referenced files directly with other software. It is usually a way better idea to just send them to other software from within Aperture weather they are referenced or not.

If it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy great but it is not great advice to be giving out to new users. It makes almost no sense to use referenced files unless you must span multiple hard drives.

Peace.

RB

pogster wrote:
I switched over to the Mac recently as well. As pointed out iPhoto does a good job at organizing by date and that's the way I organize my photos too. I know when Christmas is, I know when my kids birthdays is, our anniversary etc. That's the way I organize my photos in Aperture too. I don't store my photos in the library. I store them in the pictures folder by date (year, month, date) PLUS I tag them with key words such as the persons name and/or place, occasion, what the photo is about (skiing, swimming, dance, car, truck, etc.) Then later on all I have to do is type in the keywords that were applied to each photo to bring them back for viewing. Since they were also stored on the hard drive by date, rather than in the library, I can also go to a particular date and browse all the files that were taken at that particular time. Plus it makes them easy to find if I want to use the photos in another editing program. I don't like storing my photos in one big homogenized library file. So for ease of finding particular photos by key words Aperture is a much better program.

Everyone has their own reason for choosing their own work flow or file system and I take it she is looking for ideas. You can stay warm and fuzzy doing things your way, I'll remain warm and fuzzy doing it my way, but since there are advantages and disadvantages no matter which way she chooses, let's just present her with options and let her make her own decision.

I'm not a professional either, just a grandma with a love of digital photography who takes lots of photos. We used to live in a motorhome full time, so we had lots of opportunities to take many photos.

I personally like Aperture better than iPhoto because I like to use some of the NIK software/plugins where I can do the adjusting right in Aperture and don't always have to send the photos to PhotoShop. Also you have a bit more flexibility as to file set ups with Aperture. In iPhoto you don't have as many nesting capabilities. iPhoto is great, but pretty basic.

I had my photos set up as files on the PC, long before I got my first Mac. So I set them up the same way. I'll try to explain

In Finder:

Pictures (in side bar on left in Finder)
Folder - My Photos
2nd Folder - by year
In the year folder I have a folder by date ie: 2000 0722 (year,month,date) and the photos from that date in there.

Once I got to using Aperture, I have my years set up as "projects" and the dates set up as "Albums". When importing the whole set of photos into Aperture, it was easy. I highlighted the "library", then did a right mouse click and selected "import folders as projects". That imported the photos into Aperture the same way I have them in finder.

Once everything is in Aperture, and you have new photos to add, I make an album under the corresponding year and import.

I do all my photos as referenced and don't duplicate them again, as I have them backed up in a couple of other places.

IMHO you can't back up enough! Don't wait and do it only once a year! Hard drives have a way of crashing and you'll loose all your photos. Use DVD's, thumb drives, ext. hard drives or what ever works for you. But always back up.

When I take my photos off of the memory card, I immediately send a copy to the back up external HD. Once the photos are adjusted etc. I make sure I have a copy elsewhere too. Only then do I erase them off of the memory card. Might be a bit redundant, but I'm not about to loose any of my photos. When we lived in the motorhome we were always aware of the possibility of theft or fire. So I got in the habit of taking some time to reduce the size of the photos and keep them on a thumb drive that I kept out of the RV. If anyone broke in or we had a fire, I'd still have the photos. Maybe not the originals or the bigger size, but we wouldn't loose them either.

If you want more info on non professional filing, send me a PM and I can send you a photo of my file hierarchy . (suemach (at) mac (dot) com)

Allie

Another mom chiming in with 2 cents here. Also having made the switch from PC to Mac recently.

The decision on iPhoto vs Aperture is easy - it all depends on the level of detail and control you want/need.

Since you were not using a DAM (Digital Asset Management) application on the pc, and there is a lot to learn during the transition from PC to Mac, my suggestion to you is that you start with iPhoto.

When or if you become frustrated that you want additional features, switch to Aperture. Any work that you've done in iPhoto will import.

In my case, I have scanned thousands of old family prints from 1920-1990, and I paid my teen daughter to scan all of our family negatives from 1990-digital cameras. I needed intense software to alter the EXIF dates (from date of scanning to date of intellectual content) a lot of control over organizing the images so I could identify the who-what-where-why of each image.

There's no wrong answer here. Both are good options. Start with the free one that came with your computer.

HTH
Marion in NY

mcgeheeks wrote:
I'll ask you the same question I asked pogster b/c you all seem to be "talking" to each other...not really clear on what either of you are talking about in terms of referenced files.
When you originally download photos from your camera are you downloading them to iPhoto, Aperture, or some other file in the Finder (hard-drive?). When I download my computer wants to pick/open either iPhoto or Aperture. Should I be getting out of that and going directly to a Folder on the hard-drive through Finder? When I open iPhoto or Aperture will that program just be opening the photo from the Folder in the Finder then?
Thank you!

If you choose to import into iPhoto then the originals will live in iPhoto's library. If you choose to import into Aperture the originals will live inside of Aperture's library. The default way that Aperture works is what is called "managed" where the location of all of your images and versions of those images are taken care of by Aperture. There is an option called referenced masters where you decide where the originals will be stored and Aperture uses them. Aperture provides the option of either way of managing the location however my it is my recommendation that you choose a managed library to start out and maybe switch over to a referenced library when there is a really good reason to do so, you have the flexibility to move back and forth or even mix the two methods but there is usually no great reason to use referenced images.

RB

sorry - we're using terminology that you aren't familiar with. If you google APERTURE REFERENCED MANAGED, you'll find lots of explanations.

In a nutshell:
REFERENCED = what we're familiar to from PC-world. We control and choose what folder on our hard drive or external hard drive the photos are on, and tell Aperture to leave the photos where we put them. Referenced files can live anywhere - on an archive DVD, backup hard disk drive, etc.

MANAGED = iphoto or Aperture brings in the images into its Library, and decides where to keep the images.

Here's a more detailed explanation:

http://www.apertureprofessional.com/showthread.php?t=1668

HTH

mcgeheeks,

If you have already purchased Aperture, you might as well just start using that. I think that you will find that it has far better editing tools.

Regards - Scrags

rwboyer wrote:
You can always start out in iPhoto and then move to Aperture really easy later and keep most of your organizational structure intact and all of your metadata work as well.

Is this true? I did a small test, importing some photos that had Ratings from iPhoto to Aperture (drag&drop from iPhoto to Aperture) but the ratings did not appear. Did I do something wrong?

Regards,
Johan Rydström