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Aperture organization - Projects vs Folders

I am new to Aperture. When do you create a project vs a folder and visa versa? What is the difference? How do you usually organize your photos?

For example...

- Vacations
-- 2009
--- Europe
---- Italy
---- France
-- 2010
--- Hawaii
---- Oahu
---- Maui
---- Big Island

Is this a good way to organize? In this example what should be a project vs a folder?

Thanks for your patience and insight!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.2), NA

Posted on Mar 22, 2010 2:38 PM

Reply
11 replies

Feb 1, 2011 1:31 PM in response to WebDevGuy

Use one Library, that way all your photos are searchable at one time.

After that, there are as many ways to organise things as you want.

Personally, I have Folders for years, containing Projects. These projects then have Albums associated with them.

I also use keywords extensively and so can make albums on a Library wide basis:

I keyword on a
Who
What
Where basis (The When is in the photos's Exif metadata). I also rate the pics on a 1 - 5 star basis.

Using this system I can find pretty much find any pic in my library in a couple of seconds.

So, for example, I have a batch of pics titled 'Seattle 08' and a typical keywording might include: John, Anne, Landscape, mountain, trees, snow. With a rating included it's so very easy to find the best pics we took at Mount Rainier.

File -> New Smart Album
set it to 'All"
title contains Seattle
keyword is mountain
keyword is snow
rating is 5 stars

Or, want a chronological album of John from birth to today?

New Smart Album
Keyword is John
Set the View options to Sort By Date Ascending

Want only the best pics?
add Rating is greater than 4 stars

The best thing about this system is that it's dynamic. If I add 50 more pics of John to the Library tomorrow, as I keyword and rate them they are added to the Smart Album.

Keywording takes time to set up, there's no doubt about it. But in the end, organisation is about finding the pics. This system works for me.
Regards

TD

Feb 1, 2011 1:31 PM in response to WebDevGuy

Hi Rob,
In your example i would make a folder for the year. But i also make sub folders for each month.

00 Old projects.........................folder
01 2010 Projects.......................folder
01 January..............................subfolder
02 February............................subfolder
03 March................................subfolder
03 March.............................Project
03 March.............................Project

I used this structure in Aperture2 Before it was possible to customise it. but it is still good, because i use referenced files, it keeps my hard drive in nice order. Allan

Feb 1, 2011 1:31 PM in response to Yer_Man

Very similar myself. I have folders for different sources, i.e.:

Clip Art
Digital Photos
Scanned Images
etc.

Inside my Digital Photos I have folders for the years, and another for a month, then I use Projects for each event. That's probably a throwback to using film, as I still tend to keep my images collected as though they were film rolls. I've also found that keeping Projects as small as possible, it does help speed up many operations. If there's different subjects in a Project, I'll break them into Albums.

The beauty of Aperture is that you don't have to abide by any fixed method at all, and there's not really a right way to do it. It's whatever suits your needs.

My Scanned Images folder is broken down differently. I have Projects for different subjects with those. I'm also scanning all my old 35mm films, and have been cataloguing all the negative sets into archive folders. These I've been scanning and numbering, with the scans going into a roll per Project, and a cross-referenced numbering system, so I can always find an original negative later.

Likewise, I find an extensive Keyword setup, along with Smart Albums, is so flexible, it doesn't really matter so much how the images are filed in the Projects. Even without Keywords you can search on all kinds of information, such as any EXIF data (I have some that find various camera modes, like over a certain aperture, or fast shutter speeds, those with flash, that kind of thing).

Feb 1, 2011 1:32 PM in response to Andy Hewitt

Andy Hewitt wrote:
Inside my Digital Photos I have folders for the years, and another for a month, then I use Projects for each event. [...] If there's different subjects in a Project, I'll break them into Albums.


Interesting! As a 5 year user of Aperture I decided long ago to organize Project(year)-> Folders(month and events) -> Albums(events within events)
Everything is filed in chronological order.
But... I am beginning to rethink things. One problem I never solved was moving images and versions from my laptop to my main library on the Mac Pro.
The events as projects would solve that problem nicely. Hmmm...

The beauty of Aperture is that you don't have to abide by any fixed method at all, and there's not really a right way to do it. It's whatever suits your needs.


I agree. This is a fundamental strength/feature of Aperture.

Jerry

Feb 1, 2011 1:32 PM in response to WebDevGuy

I use folders for places; projects for the individual shoots. For example, I'll have a Valley of Fire folder with 3 projects titled VoF 2008, VoF 2009, and VoF 2010.

I like grouping my shoots into folders by the place since I go back to places a lot. This makes it very easy for me to find all my images in one location. Also, in this structure you can click on the folder and it will show all your images for all the projects underneath it. That's a nice consolidated view.

Feb 1, 2011 1:32 PM in response to gbMac

My understanding is that Projects are where the actual masters are contained and that folders contain pointers (aliases) of the masters in the projects. That is you must have a project and folders are references to the images in a project.


Not quite gbMac, Folders are just containers for Projects and Albums. It's Albums that contain the references to images. Folders can contain Projects, or sub-folders, and you can have a Folder within a Project, but it'll need to contain Albums. The actual Masters are indeed contained within a Project though.

You can have Albums, or Smart Albums, wherever you like too. You can have an album in another project, and refer to images from another Project.

Feb 1, 2011 1:32 PM in response to Gerald Gifford

Interesting! As a 5 year user of Aperture I decided long ago to organize Project(year)-> Folders(month and events) -> Albums(events within events)
Everything is filed in chronological order.
But... I am beginning to rethink things. One problem I never solved was moving images and versions from my laptop to my main library on the Mac Pro.
The events as projects would solve that problem nicely. Hmmm...


Yes, that was similar to how I used to do it as well. I moved these into smaller Projects only last year, and I find things much more manageable.

Message was edited by: Andy Hewitt

Aperture organization - Projects vs Folders

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