Projects and Albums

Hi! I'm a little late here... Considering your way of organizing things up, what should you do if you travel to Belize again? Would you put the new pictures on the same Belize project (and separate them using albums) or create a new project?

If you have a year folder structure and have a 2010 folder with Belize project inside and travel again to Belize in 2011, what should you do?

How about the "Birthday Party" project, do you use it for all the parties (family, friends and so on) and separate them using albums or create different projects?

I'm studying that know to decide how should I proceed. I'm new to Aperture, coming from iPhoto. Thanks!

PS: Of course anyone can help me with those questions, sharing opinions!

DLScreative wrote:

IMHO you should have a project for each event. You can then organize those projects into folders. For example, I have the following folders each containing multiple projects: Personal, Portrait, Commercial, Event, Documentary, Stage, Travel and Stock. I then use albums within projects to organize similar images. in the Travel Folder, for example, I have a Belize Project and in that project I have an album for underwater, another album for wildlife, another album for people etc.

In your desired structure, Make a folder for each year then make projects such as 'Birthday Party'. You can then use albums in the projects to narrow the subject matter further for things like "Birthday Cake", "Clown", "Games", "Gifts"....

Also, don't overlook the power of keywords for organizing your images: in the Travel Folder I have a Smart Album that draws underwater images from all the projects in that folder.



DLS

A bit of what's what.

A bit of what to do with it.

(Added:) Aperture is powerful, flexible, and comes unassembled. There are too many variables to tell you what would work best for _you_. (iPhoto assumes a generic user; Aperture does not.) I preface all of the Projects holding the travel photo shoots in my personal Aperture Library with "Travel: ". If I want to see just my travel shoots, I simply sort either Projects view or the Library Inspector for "Travel:". But note that I rarely retrieve Images by Project. I develop them in Projects, and then retrieve them based on their metadata.

(And also added:) The most important thing to keep in mind is that, today, everything is _always_ indexed. Your storage structures need not be your retrieval structure. Images can exist in several structures _at the same time_. You could have Albums for 2010, for Belize, for Travel, for Baseball, etc.

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger, twice.

I've already read both of those articles and many others but they are all similar: "you can do anything with Aperture". Ok, I understand Projects and so on, I've been studying it. But I'm kinda stuck thinking of those questions I've written. If I am supposed to mix Events (yes, iPhoto concept) that happened in different time in the same Project (like 2010 and 2011 friends gathering on a restaurant) and split them using albuns, what happens in the situations I've pointed? I really don't know what should be the best practice.

The example of DLScreative's library is good. Suppose you have a "by year" folder structure and have a 2010 folder with Belize project inside it. Then you travel again to Belize in 2011. If a shoot = project as you've suggested before, it should be a new project, but I cannot use the same name. If I put those photos inside the same Belize project I already have and separate the two trips using albuns, there is a problem with the year folder (project Belize is inside 2010 folder but there are photos from 2010 and 2011). See? Deciding that is really confusing... Thanks.

thiagocfm wrote:

Deciding that is really confusing... Thanks.

Yes, it is. You say you read both of the posts I linked to, but then you say things that indicate that you have not.

thiagocfm wrote:

If I am supposed to mix Events (yes, iPhoto concept) that happened in different time in the same Project

I recommend against that. The easiest-to-administer workflow, IME, is to always stick to "one Project for each out-in-the-world shoot". That's because the one "innate" structure we bring to Aperture is the time-line. If you stick to "one Project for each shoot", then you have an inviolable, un-knot-able chain: every Image is hung on your time-line, and the time-line is grouped by Project. This gives your Library a fundamental and useful order.

... 2010 folder with Belize project inside it. Then you travel again to Belize in 2011. If a shoot = project as you've suggested before, it should be a new project, but I cannot use the same name.

1. It can have the same name. Just not within one Folder.

2. Why do you _want_ it to have the same name? (Forgive me, but that's like separating your socks by color, and then putting them in three drawers each labeled "Socks".) How 'bout "Belize, Family Vacation, Spring 2010", and "Belize, Thea and Marco's Wedding, December 2011"?

If I put those photos inside the same Belize project

Don't. That clearly violates the "one Project for each shoot" suggestion.

Now if you want to group all of your Images from Belize, you have several ways to do it. You can use Aperture's Places feature. It's very nice. You can search Projects View or the Library Inspector for "Belize", select the Projects you want, and switch to Browser view. If you've keyworded your Images with "Belize", you can filter "Photos" for Images that have the keyword "Belize" applied. You can put these Images in an Album. You can save your filter as Smart Settings for a Smart Album. You can store those Albums anywhere in your Library you would like.

HTH.

--Kirby.

Hi. Thanks for the prompt reply, Kirby. I'll skip the part where you suggest I am lying because I don't like that kind of behavior, but I did read the articles.

Kirby Krieger wrote:

thiagocfm wrote:

If I am supposed to mix Events (yes, iPhoto concept) that happened in different time in the same Project

I recommend against that. The easiest-to-administer workflow, IME, is to always stick to "one Project for each out-in-the-world shoot". That's because the one "innate" structure we bring to Aperture is the time-line. If you stick to "one Project for each shoot", then you have an inviolable, un-knot-able chain: every Image is hung on your time-line, and the time-line is grouped by Project. This gives your Library a fundamental and useful order.

Well, someone did recomend that and I mixed up who did it, my bad. The one shoot = one project is what I've been doing for years in iPhoto and wanted to keep doing in Aperture. Thanks.