Q: Aperture 3: Can I reorganize masterfolders in Aperture library?

If you are concerned with the way the masters are stored you need to go to a referenced master setup. Then you can arrange the masters any way you like in the HD. If you stay with managed masters then you have to accept how Aperture stores them.

Hi Carsten,

My top suggestion is to organize your _Images_ using Aperture's superb organizing tools, and ignore the organization of your files.  (This is a difficult step for many.  It may help you to realize that your file storage organization is already mostly fake: there is a translation layer between what appears in Finder, and where the files and bits of files are actually located on your drive(s).  The organization you see in Finder is a _logical_, not a _physical_ scheme -- just as the organization you create in Aperture is a _logical_ scheme.  The best use of Aperture is to replace Finder's logical organizing of files with Aperture's logical organization of Images.)

Here is a good question: what need do you have for your imported files to be organized in Finder?

For many, that need is trivially met by Aperture and/or Finder already.  A good file-renaming convention (applied on import) can usually meet any additional need you may have or foresee.

Prodigychild wrote:

 

It maybe doesn't affect my work with the photos, but it bothers me a lot that it is organized wrong. All of my imported photos shot after that date is imported correctly.

Unless this has been changed, your imported files are sorted into Finder folders by import date.  What do you mean by "All of my imported photos shot after that date is imported correctly"?

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

Prodigychild wrote:

 

It maybe doesn't affect my work with the photos, but it bothers me a lot that it is organized wrong. All of my imported photos shot after that date is imported correctly.

 

As managed masters are stored by Aperture under the date they are imported into the library I would guess that new imports appear to be saved in the library 'correctly' because the shot date and import date are close enough that they appear to be stored by shot date.

But there is no reason for you to be concerned with this. As I wrote if you need to have more control over the way the masters are stored you will need to go over to a referenced master setup.

good luck

Yep the masters if managed (stored in the Aperture library) will always be stored on the HD by import date.

How they appear in the Library tab of the Inspector is another matter. There you can have them appear there anyway you wish.

Bringing a NAS into the discussion changes things. First off the Aperture library must be on a local OS X formatted disk. Putting it anywhere else will cause problems. See Aperture: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library

Now some users have had luck putting referenced masters on a NAS some have had problems. Whether having masters on a NAS is supported by Aperture is open to debate. It's not specifically prohibited like it is for the library but then it isn't  specifically permitted either.  Some users get it to work some don't. It seems to be a case by case basis.

BTW your English is fine. And don;t worry about the solved thing, we;ve  all hit the wrong button at one time or another

regards

Carsten,

You may want to take a deeeeeeep breath and start reading some of the threads on the nature of Aperture. One of the first things you will notice is that with a non-destructive image processor like Aperture or Lightroom:

-- The physical location of the Master file has nothing to do with the logical arrangement of images in Apeture. Indeed, the whole point of Aperture is that you are never limited to only one arrangement. You can arrange by date, location, subject, and all at the same time. This is the power of a data base as opposed to a file browser.

-- The Master image file - the one that came out of the camera, is never edited and, for that matter is never the image that you actually see. All of your edits (called Adjustments) are stored in a separate file called a Version. This is what you actually see, even if it contains no changes from the Master. This means that there is generally little reason to access your Master files from another program as your adjustments will not be visible. And even if you want to use another editor, say a pixel editor like Photoshop, you are better off letting Aperture create a new Master file and sending that off to the external editor.

Thus issues like file format, location, recompression of JPEG, rotation, etc., are meaningless in Aperture.

Some quality time with the Aperture tutorial or one of the better books will really pay off. Aperture is an image manager, NOT a file browser. Once you grasp the zen of Aperture, it is unlikely that you will ever go back.

Welcome to the club! (And don't worry about your English, we can cover quite a few languages on this forum.)

--

DiploStrat

Carsten-

Specifically, the solution for your expressed problem is to make time-based Albums for your old iPhoto imports such as 2008, 2009 etc. Then sort those old iPhoto files by date and drag them into the appropriate Albums.

Originals should be backed up before import into Aperture or any other images management application. Those backups of originals can live in date-based folders on an offsite drive. Not only is that the only proper way to back up originals, it also allows your backup to consist of a more "literal" organization scheme.

Personally I use the same name scheme from the start:

• The camera card is uploaded on to the computer  into a date-named folder named for the Project such as 110829_KJones_Wed. Date/time organizing Projects IMO is important because that is the way Aperture sees Projects.

• The camera card is ejected. An important step, because fatal errors to original images can still occur while the card remains in the computer.

• Then the original folder on the internal drive gets split up as needed to maintain Project sizes less than ~400 pix and/or for naming convenience (110829_KJones_Wed_A, 110829_KJones_Wed_B, 110829_Boyd_Construction, etc.). Note that the sortable date 110829 or 20110829 for Aug 29, 2011 is very intentional; dates like 08/29/2011 are not good. Computers see time as a string year-month-day-hour-minute-second and we should name similarly.

• The new folder(s) with the new originals in them get backed up to an exernal drive that will live off site. I leave the same folder names but append .bkup to them so I know that they are backup files rather than referenced Masters. Only after this step is complete can the camera card be reformatted, in-camera (not in-computer).

• After all of the above is complete import into Aperture can occur. To reference Masters on external drives (recommended) have the files to be imported located on an external drive and select "Store images in their current location."

My comments from an earlier thread on Aperture organization:

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First, Projects should be just that: individual-shoot based projects rather than some kind of organizing tool for all the architectural photos or whatever. For performance reasons personally I keep each Project under 500 20-MB images, making a second Project if the shoot is large (e.g. 110829_KJones_Wed_B). One or more albums will always organize the KJones wedding pix together anyway.

Folders are indeed flexible organizational tools but IMO often overused. Folders can effectively hide contents from view and therefore require users to remember how folders are nested and what is inside them. Folders were the only way to deal with single-original film, but are IMO limiting to image database thinking.

The way I look at it conceptually:

Aperture is a database, and each image file lives in one Project.

Albums are just collections of pointers that point to individual image files living in one or more Projects. Since they just contain pointers, albums can be created or deleted at will without affecting image files or taking up storage space. Very powerful.

Keywords can be applied to every image separately or in batches. Keywords are hugely powerful and largely obviate the need for folders. Not that we should never use folders, just that we should use folders only when useful organizationally - - after first determining that using keywords and albums is not a better approach.

As one example imagine the keyword "flowers."  Every image of 100k images that has some flowers in it has the keyword flowers. Then say we want to put flowers in an ad, or as background for a show of some kind, or to print pix for a party, or even just to look for an image for some other reason. We can find every flower image in a 100k-image database in 2 seconds, and instantly create an Album called "Flowers" that points to all of those individual images.

Similarly all family pix can have a keyword "family" and all work pix can have a key word "work." Each individual pic may have any number of keywords.

So by using keywords and albums we can have instant access to every image everywhere, very cool. And keywords and albums essentially take up no space in the database.

Another approach is to use a folder "Family" for family pix, a folder "Flowers" for flowers pix and another folder "Work" for work pix. IMO such folders usage is a very poor approach to using an images database (probably stemming from old paper or film work practices). Note that one cannot put an image with family in a field of flowers at a work picnic in all three folders.

HTH

-Allen