Workflow/organizing question

Question

Workflow/organizing question

I am have some difficulty with my workflow regarding location my masters.

My situation is that I work with a MBP and travel. At home I keep my masters referenced on a desktop hard drive. On the go if I don't return home after shooting I like to download to my MBP and review and work only photos. IIt appears that I am using the same library but with master both referenced and local. This makes moving the masters tedious for me. Am I missing something here? Should I have a different library for this travel work, one with out the same structure of folders and projects ?

I am certain that many on the site do the exact same thing regarding travel away from home base. I would love to hear how others mange this.

Thanks in advance for any input.

17 " 2010 MBP 2.66 GHz i7, 8 GB Mem, Mac OS X (10.6.7), Aperture, FCE, 3 External Hard Drives

Posted on May 16, 2011 8:11 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kirby Krieger

Level 6

12,542 points

May 16, 2011 8:46 AM in response to Michigan One Fly

Every image has a Master. The Master can be either Managed or Referenced. Aperture doesn't care which. Aperture makes it very easy to convert Managed Masters to Referenced Masters, and vice versa, any time you want to, as often as you want to.

I import all new files as images with Managed Masters. This allows me to make adjustments on my laptop wherever I am. I keep my main Masters store on an external drive at work. I relocate all Managed Masters older than 45 days to this external store -- but I keep all 4- and 5-star image's Masters as Managed (in my Aperture Library on my laptop drive) in order to be able to tweak, print, and export full-size whether or not I am connected to my external drive. I find this works really well.

This is easy to administer. What are you finding tedious?

I can think of no reason to have multiple Libraries for your needs as stated. If you had two computers -- a MacPro at work, and a roving laptop, then I'd advise exporting and merging Libraries. But you have just a laptop, and it is your primary Aperture computer. This is, in many ways, an ideal Aperture implementation.

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

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Answer 2

May 16, 2011 9:42 AM in response to Michigan One Fly

Kirby,

Thanks for your help with this. I think I might be making too big a deal about this.

Where I felt tedious while relocating masters was because I let things go for a while and had a bunch of master to relocate. With a mix of referenced and managed masters in the same library I had a difficult time determining which master were where. With the external hard drive ejected it was easy. I just set the view to masters and It told me which were off line very quickly. But once the drive was hooked up I had to view referenced files for each group of photos to tell. Is there an easier way to do this? I can see where getting a better system of storing new work temporarily would help. But what about when I want to add to an existing project or folder?

thanks again,

Tom

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Answer 3

May 16, 2011 11:17 AM in response to Michigan One Fly

To deal with the managed / referenced files, I made a smart album at the top of the library level (so as to filter all of the photos in the library). The smart album has rule "File Status" set to "managed". That smart album will always contain all of the managed files in your library. To see which project a photo lives in, click on the photo and either use the menu File->Show in Project or you can right click the photo and pick the "Show in Project" option.

I run a mostly referenced photo system but I keep some managed photos. There are times when I import managed (mostly when I'm importing in the field or shooting tethered) but this smart album has made it easy for me to make sure those photos eventually are relocated to the external drive.

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Answer 4

May 16, 2011 11:40 AM in response to Michigan One Fly

Hi Tom. Rob has a good suggestion above (I do the same). I'm not sure what you are asking, though. Sorry -- I must be being thick today.

The status of every image is shown by a Badge. There are Badges for

Referenced Master (and by extension, "no badge" = "Managed Master" as long as Badges are included in the Metadata Overlay)
Off-line Referenced Master
Missing Referenced Master

All of Aperture's badges are shown on the Badges page of the User Manual.

Each of these (Aperture calls them the "file status") can be used in the Filter HUD via the Rule "File Status".

I have Smart Folders (kept in an "Administration" Folder near the top of my Library) for:

Images rated 3-stars or less, older than 45 days, with Managed Masters, and
Images with Missing Masters

I periodically convert all of the Masters of the images in the first Smart Folder listed above to Referenced by Relocating Masters. This allows me to keep the bulk of this Library on an external drive, while retaining full adjustment, exporting, and printing of all new images and all 4- and 5-star images. (NB: Sadly, it's not quite this straight-forward, but this seems enough for right here.)

If that doesn't help, please ask more.

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

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Answer 5

May 16, 2011 5:16 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

Rob & Kirby,

I think the two of you have hit the nail squarely on the head for me. The smart albums might just be the way for me to handle this. I'll give this a try and see how I do.

Thank you, both of you for the insight.

I find this and the FCE forums to be 2 of the most helpful forums. The replies are both accurate and very timely. You never have to wait very long for help.

regards,Tom

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Answer 6

May 17, 2011 7:12 AM in response to Michigan One Fly

In the way of an update.

Last night I brought in some photos as managed. Created a smart folder. When I went into the smart folder I found my new imports and low and behold there were over 10 photo masters that I missed when I was relocating my masters the other day.

This smart folder is going to be great. Thanks agin Rob & Kirby for the suggestions. 🙂

I am also paying more attention to badges. In fact I have printed off the pages from the manual with the symbols and there definitions. Sort of a cheat sheet to use for awhile. 😎

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