Recommendations for organizing my library

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Recommendations for organizing my library

First, thank you for reading.

I have managed to get my library down to 20,000 images. Prior to this I had a tremendous amount of duplicate photos (occurred in iphoto sometime between 2007 to 2012). Anyways, I want to organize by year. I have read a lot of posts on this subject and I am looking for some more tailored advice, please.

My projects are not good markers for years, some projects have photos mislabeled for date of import and this has caused havoc. Somewhere in the time that mass duplicates occurred there was an issue with import dates and some other metadata phenomenon. I am not blaming iphoto!!! I am too scared to manipulate any kind of metadata of photos and especially do not want to mess with projects. Projects to me are the equivalent of old school negatives and should be left alone.

I want to organize my entire library by years. I realize I cannot drag and drop into a folder. Should I create an album for each year? If I create an album for each year can the album handle as many as 4,000 photos? After I create an album for each year can I create sub-albums for certain events in that year, for instance the structure would be: album 2009, sub-album 2009 Trip to Fiji? Can one photo be stored in multiple albums? If I cannot organize in this manner: album then sub-album what do you recommend?

Thanks again for taking the time to read.

Aperture 3

Posted on Feb 10, 2013 6:58 AM

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Answer 1

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Frank Caggiano

Level 7

25,969 points

Feb 10, 2013 8:54 AM in response to lostindc

You should start here The Well-Trod Path: a Beginner's Guide to how Aperture's major parts inter-relate and with the Aperture users giulde especially the sections dealing with the library make-up.

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Answer 2

lostindc Author

Level 1

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Feb 11, 2013 9:08 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

hey Frank, thanks for responding. I read Kirby and your posts all the time and they have been a huge help. I love Kirby's guide that you have linked and I just read it again and it sounds like a sub-album of an album is not possible.

Anyways, if you were me, what would you do to organize my unorganized mess of a library if you wanted to track by years yet the metadata (import dates) are not accurate so a smart album is not possible? I do not want to mess with the metadata at all.

I was thinking of creating a folders such as "2009" with sub albums such as "Winter 2009", "Spring 2009", "Summer 2009", and "Fall 2009".

Thanks

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Answer 3

Feb 11, 2013 2:10 PM in response to lostindc

You can add organize that way...having a folder labled how ever you want, then make albums in each catagory. I think I'd be more specific than "Spring 2009" etc. To me it would be hard to remember what is in each album. I think I'd label each album as to what subject it is. Would be easier to see what was in each album, unless you rely on keywords to find your photos.

I do mine by year, then subject. But I keyword as well...ie: We live near Mt. Rushmore and have been there many times over the years, so I keyword all of them so when I'm looking for a specific photo at Mt. R, they all come up instead of having to look through several years.

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