Aperture Organization By Year

First don't think this is nit-picking but it is best if we all use the same correct terminology for the parts of Aperture. So what you wrote should just be smart albums there are no smart folders. As I wrote folders can only hold other containers not images.

To answer your question, it depends on where the images are coming from. If you have a library with images in it and some of those images are from 2012 and you want to move those from their current project to a new project called 2012 you're pretty much stuck doing it manually. You could automate the process of finding the 2012 images with smart albums but you would have to manually move them to the 2012 project.

If you're asking about images you are importing now (and taken now) you can direct Aperture to import the images into any project you wish, so you could designate the 2012 project as the destination for all imports. And in January you could designate a 2013 project for the imports.

Hope this answers your question

regards

A couple of mildly pedantic points:

-- Generally speaking, you want your Projects to be a small as possible for speed. Thus in your structure, I would recommend using a Project for each month/week/day, rather than each year. Use Folders for larger groupings.

-- Remember that, in Aperture, there is no longer a one-to-one relationship between images and files. Each single image consists of many files (versions, previews, etc.). This is mostly transparant to you, but it means that there is no longer any particular virtue to sticking to one single file arrangement as there was when you were managing physical files.

-- One of the advantages of Aperture is that you can have many different views of your images at the same time. Hence my argument against organizing by date - Aperture gives you that facility for free. Think of the old classrooms, students, teachers organizational challenge. With Aperture you are not limited to picking one of the three as your only organization - you can have all at the same time, either by dragging and dropping or by using Smart Albums.

Aperture is a very, very powerful tool. Read the manual and enjoy!

DiploStrat wrote:

The only limit is that you should not have over 10,000 images in one Project.

I'm curious. When was a project size limit established?

I have several projects with over 30,000 images. Am I flirting with disaster?

Jerry

Obviously not. (Yet)

The 10k limit was published by Apple 'way back when. I read it in the User Manual to Aperture 1.5 or 2.0 and have kept it as gospel ever since. I may be guilty of repeating outdated information. If so, I am sorry.

As a practical matter, you should find that the smaller your projects, the faster Aperture will run as you will spend less time opening images, scrolling, etc.

DiploStrat wrote:

As a practical matter, you should find that the smaller your projects, the faster Aperture will run as you will spend less time opening images, scrolling, etc.

My current Project is now at about 18,000 images. I think it runs pretty fast and have had no problems that I can identify or blame on project size.

BTW- My recollection is that in 2007 I ran into an Aperture message that my project was getting too large. That year I divided the year it in half using a 2007_1 and a 2007_2 for each project name.

2008 came and there were no warnings about project size. That project has been used since that time and is at about 14,500 images. The Library containing that project and some other annual ones is at about 123,000 images. I'm sure I have heard of Aperture Libraries well over 200,000 images.

I have begun a new Library for this year and did it for organizational and backup reasons not because of deteriorating Aperture performance with the older, larger Library.

In fact, in early 2010 when Aperture 3.0 was first introduced I delivered my entire Library, including the 2008 and 2009 Projects each with over 10,000 images to Apple in Cupertino so they could use it to diagnose a problem many were having in the Aperture 2.x to Aperture 3.0 upgrtade. My Library at that time was more than 800 GB. There was no mention that my projects were over 10,000 images. I doubt that there is any limit unless it is related to slowing down Aperture processes on an idividual basis or as in my case an effort to be more efficiently organized.

Jerry

The 10,000 limit was for AP 1.5.

See 5th bullet point in linked post about Apple removing the limit in AP 2:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9258-9278

😉

I stand corrected. Cool! 🙂

Again, however, the Project is intended to be the smallest organizational element (beyond a single image) in an Aperture Library. To me that corresponds to a roll of film, a day's shooting, or perhaps a single trip. Beyond that, I tend to want folders of some sort.

The good news is that you now have even more flexibility.

Ok as I wrote before it is most important that we keep the terminology straight or else we'll be talking past each other.

There are 4 main parts to Aperture, the Library, projects, albums (smart & regular) and folders.

The Library holds all the other parts.

Projects are the main items in an Aperture library. They hold the physical image. All images imported into Aperture HAVE to be in a project. An image can only be in one project.

Albums hold references to the images in the projects. Think of them as pointers back to the project image. Images can be in as many Albums as you want there is no restriction.

Folders are containers that hold the other parts, projects, albums, and folders.

So what you wrote about in regards to 2013 makes sense, you have a project with albums under it. What you wrote about 2012 is difficult to understand because those images in the 2012 folder have to be in a project somewhere. So the question is where is the project that holds the 2012 images?

The reason you can;t drag the images from the 2012 project to the 2012 folder is because as I wrote previously folders do not hold images they hold other containers.

As ou have a 2012 project started the easiest thing to do is to locate all your other 2012 images and move the ones not alredy in the 2012 project then make the smart albums under the 2012 project.

And also keep in mind that while there is no software restriction on the size of projects some users have reported better perfomance with smaller project sizes. As you say you only have around 800 or so images in a year I don;t think that shoul dbe a factor but it is something to keep in mind.

regards

This short guide may help.

Here is my longer post on organizing.

Super-short version:

- Import shoots into Project. One shoot = one Project.

- Put Projects at the end of your storage branches, e.g.: Folder➞Folder➞Folder➞Folder➞Project.

- Put Albums at the end of your retrieval branches, e.g.: Folder➞Folder➞Folder➞Folder➞Album.

If any of it makes you more confused, just skip it.

Kirby I was going to reference those but hunting down the posts while writing a reply was onerous.

Please turn those into user tips, it would make everyones life so much easier 😢

Not the blue saddy face! I can't resist! 😉

Thanks for the request. Will do. Maybe this morning -- I misjudged (by a factor of 8) how long it would take to relocate an accretion of Originals, and now I can't do much except watch and try to not crash the machine.