Dividing Aperture Library

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Level 1

5 points

Dividing Aperture Library

I take photos for family and for my kids school sports. There was a time when it was easy to scroll through the library and find images, but in the last few years I've taken thousands of photos at sports events (football - 1000 per game, basketball - about 750 per game, swimming - about 500 per event) and it's forever going through the library trying to find anything.

I thought about individual libraries for family and sports, and even indiidual for each sport, but I'm not that good an organizer.

Is there a way to hide images in a library so say I could just look at non sports or just sports?

Does someone have a solution that works for them to divide or oprganize their library (ies)?

Thanks in advance.

2X266 Ghz DDR2 FB-DIMM, Mac OS X (10.5.3)

Posted on Nov 30, 2012 2:21 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Nov 30, 2012 2:48 PM in response to askguy

What is your Aperture version?

In Aperture 3.4.3 I use folders a lot, to group projects into sections (Family, Travel, Wildlife, Architecture). All folders have disclosure triangles in the Library Inspector; so it is easy to collaps large sections of the library. Also can the folders restrict searches to a subset of albums and projects. The smart albums will be computed much faster, if they are defined inside a folder with only a few projects.

I keep the projects small, and try to weed out the images early.

In Aperture 3.4 you can mark projects and other library items as favorites; and if you set the inspector to show only favarites, you can concentrate on a subset of the projects, for example "sports", if you set your sports projects as favorites.

Regards

Léonie

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Answer 2

Nov 30, 2012 7:38 PM in response to askguy

Apply keywords on import. Devise a keyword scheme that produces the groupings that you want. At it's simplest, keyword family with a family keyword and sports (not family) with another keyword. Then exclude one or the the other -- or limit to one or the other -- when creating ad hoc groupings.

Keyword each sport by shoot: Football, Basketball, Swimming.

Additionally, put all of one in one root Folder of your Library, and all of the other in another root Folder. So you have two root Folders in your Projects branch of you Library -- Family and Sports -- with all of your family Projects (remember, the best use of Aperture is to make Project=shoot) in the Family Folder and all the Sports Projects in the Sports Folder.

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