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

I am a mom taking tons of photos of my young children. On my old PC I used to organize everything within "My Pictures" by Month & Year (May 2008). I am a very organized, linear person and don't like to change the way I do things midstream so I am having a hard time figuring out how to organize our family photos now that I have switched to a Mac with iPhoto and Aperture. In the future I hope to learn about Aperture's professional tools (which as a mom & not a professional photographer I currently do not use). I would love to take photography classes at a local community college someday...

My questions are as follows:
1) What is the better way for ME to store our photos? Should I be uploading to iPhoto or Aperture? I basically want all of my "master photo images" in the same location in an organized fashion. I am hoping to do this without clogging up my computer. At this point I am thinking at the end of each year I will burn the year's photos to a disk for save keeping. But until then...
2) Is the "library" the over-arching place where all photos are stored? In general, I am having a hard time following the hierarchy of where my photos are being stored, how to organize them and how to completely delete bad photos.
3) Can I do everything I can do in iPhoto in Aperture? Obviously I know I can do more but is it as easy to edit/fix up photos?

I have listened to/watched several tutorials on both programs and have read through many other folks' questions/answers but I am still not sure of what to do.
I really appreciate any help/advice anyone is willing to give!
Thanks!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Jul 18, 2008 5:21 PM

Nov 23, 2008 3:59 PM in response to pogster

Hello pogster,

I have question about your post on jul 18, 2008 at 8:47 M.
What do you mean by picture folder ? Is it yellow or blue folder or perhaps album.

I want to organize my photos by date (year...) in aperture but I don't know how to do it well.
If I use project for each year, I should then use albums as events for the year
+ for solution 1 (/project / albums) : I will get number of photos per year.
- My photo are not really in the albums (referenced photos) and all the photos are put into the 200X project.

Solution 2: I use blue folder for year and then project for event :
+ : I think I will be more flexible into each project (like an event : christmas, wedding...) because I could use album, yellow folder
- : I won't get the numbers of photo per year.

Could someone help me choosing between solution 1 or 2 ?
I read a lot the forum but I can't find the answer.
Thanks in advance,
Calypso.