Projects and Albums

IftiBashir wrote:
When should each be used??

Folder can be used to store either projects or albums, to better organise, I assume.

When should an Album be used, and when should a Project be used??

Right a folder is an organizational tool, it doesn't directly hold images. You use it much as you do outside of Aperture in the finder to organize similar files into cohesive groups.

Projects are Apertures top level images storage box. Every image has to be in a project and (except for exceptional reasons) in only one project. A number of users (myself included) feel that 'Projects' have been misnamed. To most of us a project is a collection of images you put together for a particular goal. It may be long lived or it may come together for only a short time.

Projects in Aperture are more like the negative carrier that you put your negatives into when you were shooting film, only they'll be easier to find and organize. So Projects are where you put your digital negatives when you import them into Aperture. How you label them and how you decide which negatives go into which Project is a highly personal decision. Some do it by date, some by content, some by shoot. You'l need to come up with a scheme that makes sense to you.

Albums are where you bring images that relate to each other together. So you could have an Album that contains all the images of you dog or of the trip you took last summer. Or it could be an album of images you are currently working on. Images can be in multiple albums, you can remove an image from an album without removing it from other albums or the project it lives in.

This is a basic description. I'm sure others will jump in with there ideas. If you have any more specific questions let us know.

All images must reside in a project and can only reside in one project. Albums are used as organizational tools. An image can reside in an album that's within or outside of the project where the image resides, but the image is still part of that project. An image can reside in as many albums as you wish and even in albums that are in other projects, but the image is not duplicated and is still part of the project where it resides.

See Basic Components of Aperture page 111 of the user manual:
Aperture uses the following basic components in your image management system:
• Masters: The original image files imported from your digital camera, memory card, computer, or external storage media.
• Versions: Files derived from the masters and used to display your images with any changes you’ve made, including image adjustments or changes to metadata.
• Projects: The basic containers used in Aperture to organize images by shoot. Projects can hold versions, folders, and albums.
• Albums :Containers that hold versions. You can create albums to organize images within projects or outside of them.
• Folders: Containers used to organize projects and albums.
• Library: The Aperture database that records and tracks your masters and all corresponding versions. You can also create multiple Aperture library files in different locations. The library tracks all the information about the projects, folders, and albums you create to organize your images.

I find that quite a number of users miss these basics in the beginning.

DLS

No apology necessary -- it's non-intuitive.

Note that Aperture comes pre-built with folders for years. In Project view, click the icon in the top border of the Browser to sort all Projects into folders by year.

That means you can either duplicate this in your Library structure (many people do), or use your Library to create a different structure (one not built into Aperture).

Read my post in this thread for a bit about why I recommend the latter:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2654297&tstart=0

From what you've said, make Projects out of things such as "Day Out" and "Birthday Party". Where they sit -- how you structure your Library using Folders and Albums -- is entirely up to you.

Take some time to decide. Set up some trial Libraries with different structures. Work your way through your workflow in order to determine what works best for you.

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

OK now I am confused so thinking out loud: I am a database guy. I see this as a standard Object Oriented database structure.

A project holds everything of substance: The links to the masters, the versions (which are just the attributes of the masters which are changed by Aperture 3). In database speak that is an object.

Then an album and a folder just store the link (alias) to the object and these are maintained manually i.e. you put the alias in the folder or albums by dragging the object in. A smart album is one based on an attribute filter like date, keyword, etc. It is automatic in that any object with that attribute will have a link to it inside the smart album

Did I get it right or confuse all of you too (which is all too fair since I don't want to be in my confused state alone.

One thing you got wrong is the bit about folders. Folders don't contain images. They can contain projects, albums and other folders but no images. This is a bit confusing because if you click on a folder you'll see all the images contained in the containers in the folder so it looks like the images are in the folder. But if you try to drag an image to a folder you'll see that you can't drop it.

And remember projects can contain albums and folders but not other projects.

Are we having fun yet?

I have just created 8 new folders with general category names ranging from assignments to travel. Under each I dragged old projects and dropped into the new folder. Like magic, each folder accepted the intact project with ease. The already created albums are intact where they were, all is well. Now I am organized with Folders/projects/albums. Thanks to everyone on this thread for your great help. I believe the next step is to relocate the masters in each project file. Fun fun fun.

Thanks for clearing up differences between Projects and Albums. However when i create an Album with 4 images (all versions ) , the album shows both masters and versions. Is there a way to create an album with only versions???
pam

Everything you see in Aperture is a version. The master is never altered. If you create multiple versions of an image, they are stacked by default, and stacks stay together. You could unstack, but it's better to make the image you want to display your album pick then close the stack. This allows you to have different picks in different places. All this is under the Stacks menu.

DLS

How about creating a Smart Album. Then, you can filter it in many different ways.

Projects are such a headache. I like to store screen captures along with the rest of my camera photos in Aperture. I drag and drop 1-2 screenshots into Aperture and it creates a project for it. A day goes by and I do this again, another day etc. By the end of the week I have 7 untitled projects.

I keep having to go into each and every one of these projects and move images to a catch-all project called "captures" just to stop my list of projects from growing indefinitely! In iPhoto it never did this. It created an event that did NOT appear in the left pane where organization occurs.

I didn't use events in iPhoto and I find the obsession with projects, the events equivalent, a pain in Aperture. I only browsed images by date, and albums. Is there anyway to get Aperture to stop making me waste all this time of moving images from untitled projects into catch-alls from frequent drag and drop import operations?

I guess one solution is to always use its import tool which lets me specify where images will go, but then I lose the quick and easy single-drag import technique from the Finder that iPhoto spoiled me with.

Hi arielauthentic -- welcome to the user-to-user Aperture forum. Lot's of good advice and advisors here.

Generally, you should start a new topic with new questions (especially if the topic has been marked "Answered"). This makes your question the topic, and allows you to mark posts as "helpful" and "solved" -- each of which aids others as they browse and search the forum.

On to your question. Fwiw, after months of using both Aperture and Lightroom and Capture One Pro, I settled on Aperture precisely because Projects gave me an additional level of organization which the others did not have. (I also preferred the interface.) YM, as you know, MV -- but don't knock Projects until you really know them.

You should know that you can easily merge existing Projects in the Projects view. Just drag one (or more) onto a target Project. All of the images in all the Projects will be moved into one Project.

You should also know that you can drag-and-drop images directly into a Project listed on the Library tab of the Inspector. So just drop your screen-shots on your "Captures" Project.

You might be able to drop files on a Project in Project view. Worth testing (and easy to test).

You may find [this short intro to the parts of Aperture|http://discussions.apple.com/messageview.jspa?messageID=13124533&stqc= true] helpful (I posted it in response to another query).

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

Is there anyway to get Aperture to stop making me waste all this time of moving images from untitled projects into catch-alls from frequent drag and drop import operations?

You should be able to select the 'catch-alls' project first and then drag to the browser to add the new screen capture to that project.

At least that is how it works on my machine with AP 3.1.2. 😉