Aperture and DAM

mercphoto · July 9, 2008

Some time ago I got enlightened by "The DAM Book" by Krogh. As a result I organized the files and folders on my disk in DVD-sized "buckets", no matter what the files actually related to. I then used iVMP3 to organize all the files in those various buckets into meaningful catalogs.

I'm now using Aperture and I started by importing all my images from all those folders, each folder got imported into a project based on those buckets. But I'm wondering if this was a mistake -- would it be better to import the images directly into the projects that reflect what the images are for? Because now I find myself with these projects based on which folder an image came from, and then having to make new albums, folders and projects to group the images by content.

I'm early enough in that I could re-import and start from scratch if I wanted to. I'm toying with this, and toying with letting Aperture manage the library entirely (rather than using my disk structure).

Richard · July 9, 2008

IMO, using a file hierarchy structure or file naming conventions is ancient thinking, and not a good basis upon which to organize your photos. Rather, you should use keywords and IPTC metadata to identify and access your pics and a database system that provides all the dimensions you need to structure your searching. I'm not a Mac user, so I can't suggest the best way to use Aperture. But the key to a successful system is to ask yourself what sorts of searches you are likely to need: by client? by genre? by location? by shoot? Then make sure that you are encoding these data in an easily searchable way with the software you are using. Your DAM system should keep track of the physical locations for you without you having to think about it.

mercphoto · July 9, 2008

Richard wrote:

IMO, using a file hierarchy structure or file naming conventions is ancient thinking, and not a good basis upon which to organize your photos. Rather, you should use keywords and IPTC metadata to identify and access your pics and a database system that provides all the dimensions you need to structure your searching.

Thanks Richard, but this is precisely the system The DAM Book recommends and that I have been using thus far. The file hierarcy is "bucket" sized, unrelated entirely to what is stored in the folders. The naming convention is, bascially, a date-and-sequence number, to insure all image names are unique. iVMP3 is then used to enter keywords, and I stuff images into one or more catalogs for sorting.

I guess I'm still having learning pains with Aperture. I've been trying to use it like I used iVMP3, but that isn't actually going so well. I'm not grasping the differences between projects, folders and albums and how to nest. Actually, I don't understand why there isn't just one thing (album perhaps?) that can be nested under itself to any depth. This is exactly what iVMP3 does with Catalogs. Works very well, is very simple. Don't even get me started on smart albums and how much a pain that has been so far...

I've bought the Aperture 2 book by Long/Harrington/Luna and I'm not very impressed so far. And that book seems to be pushing me to importing into "projects" based on what the primary use of the image is. Hence my question.

T. Bombadil · July 11, 2008

mercphoto wrote:

The file hierarcy is "bucket" sized, . . . iVMP3 is then used to enter keywords, and I stuff images into one or more catalogs for sorting.

. . . I'm not grasping the differences between projects, folders and albums and how to nest. Actually, I don't understand why there isn't just one thing (album perhaps?) that can be nested under itself to any depth. This is exactly what iVMP3 does with Catalogs. Works very well, is very simple. Don't even get me started on smart albums and how much a pain that has been so far...

. . . the Aperture 2 book by Long/Harrington/Luna . . . seems to be pushing me to importing into "projects" based on what the primary use of the image is.

I don't know what is meant by "bucket" sized nor what you are calling a catalog, but i can tell you that Aperture's approach annoyed me at first. Now I have decided that it makes a lot of sense. I just wish it were explained better.

In Aperture, all images are held in Projects. Projects hold images that are related, but the relationship might be different for each Project. For example, if you have clients, you would likely have a project for each client. If you have some clients for whom you do recurring work, you might have a Project for each job you perform for them. Your personal images might be in Projects named for an event ('2008 Summer Vacation', 'Family Reunion', etc.) or topic ('Flowers').

Projects can be grouped in Folders. You might have a top level Folder to hold portrait Projects, with a Project for each client in that Folder. You might have a Folder named 'ABC Corp.' to hold the Projects for the recurring work you do for them. You might have a 'Travel' Folder to hold your vacation Projects.

Smart Albums can go at any level in your Library, but where you place them determines what universe they select from. Put a Smart Album in your 'Travel' folder if you want to have it pull from all of your vacation images. Put it in the 'Italy' Project if you want it to only select from those images.

Projects can be hidden from the Library view to keep that list showing only what you are interested in working with at the moment. You also can move images around if you change your mind about the best organization.

There is another type of Folder that goes in a Project to organize any Albums in that Project. This Folder is a different color than the Folder that organizes Projects - and the distinction is not described well in the books I have seen. There is some good reading here:
http://www.bagelturf.com/aparticles/library/index.php

mercphoto · July 11, 2008

T. Bombadil wrote:

I don't know what is meant by "bucket" sized nor what you are calling a catalog

In Krogh's The DAM Book he defines a "bucket" to be a directory that is no larger than your preferred backup medium. In my case that was DVD, and hence my bucket was about 4G in size, max. You start putting images into folder "001" until it maxes out, then you move to folder "002". Etc. The idea is that it is extremely easy to move directories to your backup medium. Also, by looking at the modification date of the directory itself, and the write-date of the DVD, you can easily tell if that directory needs a new disk burned. The directory structure is designed so that it is easy to manage your back-ups, not so that you can find images. They are found through a different mechanism.

The "catalog" is an iVMP3 term. Think of it as an iPhoto album. And it is here where images are grouped together. The same image can appear in multiple catalogs. For example, a landscape I shot while on honeymoon in Hawaii might belong with landscapes, vacations, Hawaii, beaches, honeymoon, etc. This is the primary reason why images aren't stored in folders based on their use. Where would I put this one particular image, for example? In the vacation folder? The landscape folder? The honeymoon folder? And if I choose any of those three, when I go looking for images of the other types how do you find them?

This is part of the problem I'm having with this notion of "project". It seems to run counter to my old way, described in The DAM Book (digital asset management), and which seems to just make so much sense. Aperture seems to want to have images organized by primary use. I do realize I could be very wrong about this, as I'm still new to this tool.

I can continue along my old path, or do the new way of doing things that Aperture seems to want. But I'm thinking, if I get convinced of the new way, do I want to restructure my current archives in the new way as well or just leave things the way they are?

This weekend I hope to get a screen capture of my current organization of projects, folders and albums. I think if I have that picture to talk from somebody will be able to say "hey, you're doing this particular thing wrong, and if you start doing this particular thing it will all be easier."

T. Bombadil · July 11, 2008

mercphoto wrote:

In Krogh's The DAM Book he defines a "bucket" to be a directory that is no larger than your preferred backup medium.

I see. That makes sense. You could continue to use that approach and import your images into Aperture as 'referenced' images - but I would only do that if I wanted to continue to backup to optical media. Do you? IMO, hard drives are cheap enough and more convenient (but I'm an amateur, dealing with small volume). Aperture can probably back up to optical media (i haven't thought to look), but it might be less efficient for you to find a particular image in the backup.

mercphoto wrote:

The "catalog" is an iVMP3 term. Think of it as an iPhoto album . . . The same image can appear in multiple catalogs. For example, a landscape I shot while on honeymoon in Hawaii might belong with landscapes, vacations, Hawaii, beaches, honeymoon, etc. Where would I put this one particular image, for example? In the vacation folder? The landscape folder? The honeymoon folder? And if I choose any of those three, when I go looking for images of the other types how do you find them?

OK, makes sense. Am I correct in assuming that the catalog(s) develop over time? In your example, that Hawaii/beach/honeymoon/vacation image would start out in one 'album' (maybe Vacation) and be associated with the others (Beach, Hawaii, etc.) over time as you realize it has these other associations? Or is it automatic after you assign keywords?

You can use Albums in Aperture in much the same way. Just because an image is in a particular project does not mean that it can't appear in an Album somewhere else (it is essentially 'referenced' to the image's home project). So if you like to organize your photos by browsing through them and dragging them into the groups you want - then that might work for you.

If you assign keywords, then you can continue to use keywords and make Smart Albums your friend. I know you mentioned some difficulty with Smart Albums. Is it resolved?

mercphoto wrote:

This is part of the problem I'm having with this notion of "project". It seems to run counter to my old way, described in The DAM Book (digital asset management), and which seems to just make so much sense. Aperture seems to want to have images organized by primary use. I do realize I could be very wrong about this, as I'm still new to this tool.

I can continue along my old path, or do the new way of doing things that Aperture seems to want. But I'm thinking, if I get convinced of the new way, do I want to restructure my current archives in the new way as well or just leave things the way they are?

I think the 'Project' approach was selected by Apple for two reasons (pure speculation on my part) 1) they wanted an identifiable container for master images so groups of master images could be handled (you can backup a Project, export it to give it somebody else or put on another machine, etc.), and 2) it is a metaphor that resonates with a lot of professionals.

I don't think you have to be as concerned about your Project organization as was necessary with directories/etc in the past (with your solution, or any other). A project is where a master image lives, but you can have versions of that master appear in as many locations as you like. I know my comfort level with Aperture rose significantly when I realized that I had been trying too hard to make all Projects exist for the same reason (I started out by creating Projects to cover a specific period of time. now I have some that are misc. images for a time period, some are specific events, some hobby related, etc. - and I have done a lot of re-arranging of images, moving them to different projects as my sense of what I want becomes clearer).

mercphoto · July 14, 2008

T. Bombadil wrote:

I see. That makes sense. You could continue to use that approach and import your images into Aperture as 'referenced' images - but I would only do that if I wanted to continue to backup to optical media. Do you? IMO, hard drives are cheap enough and more convenient (but I'm an amateur, dealing with small volume).

Yes they are. And, offline backup is becoming cheaper over time as well, such as Smugmug vault and other offerings. Part of the reason I went with Aperture was to simplify -- instead of using iVMP3 to catalog and ACR/CS3 to develop, I now have one tool to do both. If I let Aperture manage where the image lives as well, then that is one less chore again for me to do.

OK, makes sense. Am I correct in assuming that the catalog(s) develop over time? In your example, that Hawaii/beach/honeymoon/vacation image would start out in one 'album' (maybe Vacation) and be associated with the others (Beach, Hawaii, etc.) over time as you realize it has these other associations? Or is it automatic after you assign keywords?

Correct on the first. And I would manually assign keywords myself. iVMP3 then let you easily find all images from a given keyword, or that had a combination of keywords in common.

If you assign keywords, then you can continue to use keywords and make Smart Albums your friend. I know you mentioned some difficulty with Smart Albums. Is it resolved?

Possibly. What was happening is that I didn't put my smart album under a project, and thus it had nothing to grab from. What I did was I created projects for the importing of images. I then made albums and dragged related images into the albums. But those albums where not under the projects. I then tried to create a smart album under the album. I would have thought that would work, but apparantly you need them under a project in order to have images to grab from.

I don't think you have to be as concerned about your Project organization as was necessary with directories/etc in the past (with your solution, or any other).

I'm starting to agree with that. By the way, here is a screen shot of how I currently have things. But I've pretty much decided to re-import everything and let Aperture manage the files from now on rather than keeping them in-place. I have things kinda "wrong". All the images were imported into the project Archive, which has folders for Year, and albums for disk directories. I imported images into the album associated with the directory it came from. The other projects, such as Cars, have albums under them that I dragged images from the Archive project. And I think this approach is just fundamentally flawed.

CatOne · July 14, 2008

mercphoto wrote:

Yes they are. And, offline backup is becoming cheaper over time as well, such as Smugmug vault and other offerings. Part of the reason I went with Aperture was to simplify -- instead of using iVMP3 to catalog and ACR/CS3 to develop, I now have one tool to do both. If I let Aperture manage where the image lives as well, then that is one less chore again for me to do.

Correct on the first. And I would manually assign keywords myself. iVMP3 then let you easily find all images from a given keyword, or that had a combination of keywords in common.

Possibly. What was happening is that I didn't put my smart album under a project, and thus it had nothing to grab from. What I did was I created projects for the importing of images. I then made albums and dragged related images into the albums. But those albums where not under the projects. I then tried to create a smart album under the album. I would have thought that would work, but apparantly you need them under a project in order to have images to grab from.

I'm starting to agree with that. By the way, here is a screen shot of how I currently have things. But I've pretty much decided to re-import everything and let Aperture manage the files from now on rather than keeping them in-place. I have things kinda "wrong". All the images were imported into the project Archive, which has folders for Year, and albums for disk directories. I imported images into the album associated with the directory it came from. The other projects, such as Cars, have albums under them that I dragged images from the Archive project. And I think this approach is just fundamentally flawed.

Whoa. That's not how I'd do it at all. I have a project per job. Projects are what hold files -- not folders or albums. You have some gigantic, messy projects there.

mercphoto · July 14, 2008

CatOne wrote:

Whoa. That's not how I'd do it at all. I have a project per job. Projects are what hold files -- not folders or albums. You have some gigantic, messy projects there.

That does it. I'm reorganizing and re-importing. Fortunately I only started using Aperture recently, so I don't have much invested in what I've done so far. And I'll let Aperture manage the files rather than me managing where they are stored.

T. Bombadil · July 14, 2008

mercphoto wrote:

That does it. I'm reorganizing and re-importing. Fortunately I only started using Aperture recently, so I don't have much invested in what I've done so far. And I'll let Aperture manage the files rather than me managing where they are stored.

I wouldn't necessarily re-import. You can move your Master Images from one Project to another. You can re-name Projects. You can create Folders to hold Projects (then drag whichever Projects into them you like).

I suggest that you re-organize what you have without re-importing. It will increase your comfort level with what is possible with Aperture. You can use "Browser only" view and sort the thumbnails by Image Date (presumably that will put most images from specific events/jobs together) - which will make it easy to re-organize (and you'll be getting a feel for Aperture). Should be quicker than re-arranging files outside of Aperture and re-importing.

In another message you said you had Smart Albums that contained nothing (because they weren't in a Project). Something doesn't sound right there. I have 4 or 5 Smart Albums that are not in a Project - and they draw images from the entire Library. You might want to try Smart Albums again.

Looks to me like you could use some top-level Folders to hold some of your Projects (for example, where you had a Project for "Wedding and Engagement" I would have used a Folder that holds Projects. Then I would put all my Wedding (and Engagement) Projects in that Folder (using a separate Project for each client). Similarly, the "People" Project might be better as a "People" Folder with a (or many) Projects for "Family", etc.

Don't forget, at the top of the "Projects" tab you can specify to show "All Projects" or "Favorites" (you decide which are Favorites with the gear icon) or "Recent" projects. So don't worry about having too many Projects - it will not be a problem.

Notice when you drag images that the little indicator by the mouse is different when you are moving a Master Image from one Project to another than it is when you are just putting a version in an album. Also notice that when you delete an image from an album the "warning" dialog that pops up will tell you what you are deleting (if you read the message, you will soon see the difference between deleting the actual Master and just a version that appears in another place. You can look at the Metadata ("General" view) and see what Project holds the Master for any image you have selected.

mercphoto · July 15, 2008

T. Bombadil wrote:

I wouldn't necessarily re-import. You can move your Master Images from one Project to another. You can re-name Projects. You can create Folders to hold Projects (then drag whichever Projects into them you like).

I suggest that you re-organize what you have without re-importing. It will increase your comfort level with what is possible with Aperture.

Not a bad idea and well justified. Question: this Aperture library is set to manage the images in their current location. But if I want Aperture to start managing the library entirely can I still do this w/o starting all over?

In another message you said you had Smart Albums that contained nothing (because they weren't in a Project). Something doesn't sound right there. I have 4 or 5 Smart Albums that are not in a Project - and they draw images from the entire Library. You might want to try Smart Albums again.

I know what I did wrong there. My Smart Albums were not under the Library at all.

Looks to me like you could use some top-level Folders to hold some of your Projects (for example, where you had a Project for "Wedding and Engagement" I would have used a Folder that holds Projects.

I also need to get a better feel on what can be nested under what. So projects can be under folders (didn't know that). And I still have only a fuzzy understanding of the distinction of projects from albums from folders.

I know Projects are what actually store the master images themselves, and what reside in Albums are just references to images that actually reside in a Project, correct? Projects are where images reside, albums are for organizing images in multiple ways. So that leaves the folder as a concept I don't know the rational for.

T. Bombadil · July 16, 2008

mercphoto wrote:

. . . if I want Aperture to start managing the library entirely can I still do this w/o starting all over?

I also need to get a better feel on what can be nested under what. So projects can be under folders (didn't know that). And I still have only a fuzzy understanding of the distinction of projects from albums from folders. I know Projects are what actually store the master images themselves, and what reside in Albums are just references to images that actually reside in a Project, correct? Projects are where images reside, albums are for organizing images in multiple ways. So that leaves the folder as a concept I don't know the rational for.

I don't know the answer to your first question, but I suspect those referenced images could be brought in to the Library. You might selecting some (click on one, hold Shift down and click on another further down the list) and then Control-Clicking on one. The second item on the menu that pops up is "Manage Referenced Files" I can't do anything with that because I don't have any Referenced Files - but I suspect it will give you the opportunity to pull those images into the Library.

Yes, you are right - the contents of Albums are just references to images that actually reside in a Project.

Folders can serve in 2 ways, and I think any one Folder can only serve as one of the following:
1) a container for Projects (and Folders of Projects), or
2) a container for Albums (including Books, Web Pages, etc)

Create a Folder in your Library that is 'top level' (exists furthest to the left in the list) and it will have a blue icon. You can drag Projects into that Folder and you can drag other blue Folders in to it also.

Create a Folder in a given Project (select that Project, then select "File, New Folder") and the icon for that Folder will be brown. You can put Albums (and Books, etc.) in that one.

I think a good way to describe the purpose of all of these containers is as follows.

1) Projects hold master images, and each Project is named either for an event or a topic (somebody's wedding, or 'Pets' for example). The images for an event were probably captured on the same day. Images for an on-going topic of interest might be captured throughout the year(s).

2) You will soon have many Projects (especially if you are a professional, as you would likely have at least one Project for each client), so you will want to gather some of them up and put them in Folders to keep the Projects organized.

3) Since a Project contains all the images from an event (or on-going work on some topic), you will want subsets of those images for various purposes (make a web page, select some for publishing/printing/sharing). For that you create Albums in the Project. (Maybe one to hold your Favorites, and on to hold images you plan to have published in a magazine). Sometimes you might even have need for several Albums in a particular Project - so you can create Folders to keep those Albums organized. In this case the Folder has a diff color icon (brown) and it doesn't show its contents in the Browser. It is just to keep Albums organized (I don't have any Folders like this, but you might).

My Library has a Folder called "Travel". That Folder contains several Projects (California, Italy, Russia, etc.) and also contains two Folders (Canada, and U.S.A.). The Folder "Canada" contains two Projects ("Nova Scotia" and "New Brunswick).

Does that help?

Somebody wrote a couple articles that are probably more clear on this issue. Take a look at these two:

http://www.bagelturf.com/aparticles/library/fivesimple/index.php

http://www.bagelturf.com/aparticles/library/brown/index.php

I think those explain some of this better than I can.

mercphoto · July 17, 2008

T. Bombadil wrote:

I don't know the answer to your first question, but I suspect those referenced images could be brought in to the Library. You might selecting some (click on one, hold Shift down and click on another further down the list) and then Control-Clicking on one. The second item on the menu that pops up is "Manage Referenced Files" I can't do anything with that because I don't have any Referenced Files - but I suspect it will give you the opportunity to pull those images into the Library.

Very interesting. Will try that in a few days. I'm currently away on business.

What I did try to do, and I believe it worked, was to export masters to a new scratch directory. I then made a project for those files and re-imported them as managed files. The big reason I did it this way was to make sure I didn't lose any keywords and metadata I already put onto the images by exporting the ITPC data as well. Unfortunately, my star rankings were lost.

The articles helped as well. I guess what it boils down to is Projects store masters. Albums organize images in multiple ways. A master can be in only one project, but can be in many albums. Folders simply store projects and/or albums, but not images.

Aperture and DAM

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