convert projects to folders

Hi Brian. I know you've thought this through, and so I'm curious: what advantages does having a permanent, massive structure like you want bring you that simply (as an example) using Photos view, which can be easily sorted by date and easily filtered to any date, dates, or range of dates, does not? It seems that what you are after is to sort by date-time (completely hard-wired into Aperture at the Image level, and available everywhere) and group by individual date (easily done using Filters). My thinking -- for myself, but you seem similarly interested in organization -- was that such a set-up is costly to create, cumbersome to navigate, and hard to confirm, while adding nothing at all to the out-of-the-box utility that comes with Aperture. Projects, and Projects View, combined with the whole "build-your-own-Library structure", hands you the tools to create an organizational structure that complements the built-in "by date" function, rather than mimic it. My encouragement is that you, at least, look into take advantage of this. In short, Aperture automatically creates a date-time index, and makes is frictionless to find any Images by date. Why spend so much time and effort duplicating what already exists -- and committing a terrific set of tools to a task that is already capably handled? My question is not rhetorical: I'm interested in how users use Aperture.

(Note, too, that you can with a couple of clicks immediately show/hide Images by the file format of their Masters.)

So thanks for thinking about it -- and, if you respond, for sharing your thoughts.

I will think on your request (making "4x4_old" into "4x4_new") and get back to you if I come up with anything.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of library organization I don't understand why you say you are having problems setting up your Aperture 3 library as you want.

I have a similar setup

Top level is a folder that holds the year folders (the leading underscore ensures that the folder will sort to the top)

Then in the year folders are folders for each month:

Finally in the month folders are the projects for each day:

So what about your structure is making it impossible to create?

Now for my questions, why are you making a structure for media type? As Kirby mentioned Aperture gives you such rich filtering capabilities making smart albums for RAW and JPG images is way to simple to encode that into a folder/project structure.

I know you question wasn't asking for help in laying out your library but honestly I can;t see any reason to create this structure. As for your question I don't see any reason why you can't setup your 3 library just like your 2 library is. It's going to be a lot of manual labor. You could create smart albums to gather all JPGs of a certain date together and then put those into a project or album and repeat for each type and date. That would cut down on some labor,

I think I'm following along 🙂. So your question boils down to:

I organize my picture files using Finder, and need to continue to do so. I can no longer, since Ap3, import Finder folders and get structure "4+4Old", but I can import Finder folder structure and get "4+4New". "4+4New" fits equally well into my established workflow.

• Is it true I can no automatically import Finder folders to "4+4Old" using Ap3?
• Is there an automatic way to convert my existing "4+4Old" to "4+4New", so that my database going forward is consistent? If there is not an automatic way, is there a good way?

Just checking.

Added: Is the file-naming limitation still present in Ap3?

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger -- added Q.

I need to catch up on what you and kirby ave been discussing but in the meantime just wanted to answer your question:

Frank - you have a somewhat similar organization to myself - do you create it manually?

No I have an Applescript that runs when I import into Aperture and it takes care of creating any folders that are needed and then creating and naming the project for the dates of the images beining imported then moves thei mages into the correct project.

regards

Not a problem, I'll need to package it up a bit better should take a day or two.

Do you have any Applescript experience? Not that you need any to use the script but knowing where you're at Applescript wise will let me know how detailed an explanation I'll need to include.

regards

Brian,

Finally got the scripts up on my website see Aperture Import Action Scripts. Been a bit pressed for time and I just got back to my main machine.

The instructions are a bit sketchy but it should get you going. Just remember to have a good working backup before trying them out. I would suggest making a copy of your library and playing around with them on that until you are comfortable.

Let me know if you have any other questions

good luck

Glad to help. The instructions are a bit on the minimal side, like I said I've been a bit pressed. Let me know if you need any help getting the scripts installed, either here or through the web site.

good luck

Frank, I agree you are a star this looks like a great script. However, I do get this error when it is running that stops it from completion...

error "Aperture got an error: Can’t get image version id \"YNd6yyqURqyPqmLytVcYlw\" of library id \"LibraryFolder\"." number -1728 fromimage versionid "YNd6yyqURqyPqmLytVcYlw" oflibraryid "LibraryFolder"

I have no idea how to search for the file with version id \"YNd6yyqURqyPqmLytVcYlw\" can you tell me about the aperture naming conventions and how to diagnose then fix this problem?

You're going to have to bring me up to speed here, the thread you are adding to is almost two years old!

What script are you running, what is your OS and Aperture versions and has the script worked and now you get the error or has it never worked?

OS X 10.8.4 Aperture 3.4.5 Script: http://crystal-objects.com/blogs/frank/aperture_import_action_scripts091511

The script successfully opens Aperture and creates the year, date, day folder structure you described but after about two minutes running successfully I get that error. I tried rebuilding my library to no avail. It has not yet run to completion successfully.