Switching between managed and referenced files is actually pretty easy. If you have files in the Aperture library, for example, and you would prefer to have them referenced to a location somewhere on your hard drive, you can carry out the following steps:

To do the opposite, carry out the following steps:

One of the options in the Metadata section—Keywords (if you have enabled it)—is to set what keywords will be applied to the images while importing. This is something that you should think about carefully. First of all, it's a good idea to add some keywords at this stage, but it's also important to realize that the keywords you add here will be added to all the images. You can't add keywords here for specific images. So here are a few tips for thinking about what to add during import. You generally want to be as generic as possible with the keywords you choose at this stage. You can be more specific when you are sorting and organizing.

Normally, when you import images into Aperture, you import them directly into a project, whether it is a new project or an existing one. However, you can actually import directly to an album too. Here's how to do it in the following:

With the import dialog box open, you will see your library on the left-hand side with all your existing projects and albums. If you want to import into an existing album, simply select the album in this pane. You will notice that the Destination on the right changes to the name of the album. If your album is a project album, the images will be imported into the parent project, and will automatically be added to that album.

If you select a root-level album, then the images will be imported to a new project with the date of the first image as its name, as well as being added to the album. This is because all images must belong to a project.

If you don't have an album but want to import to one, you will notice that the New button on Aperture's toolbar is still accessible when the import dialog is open, even though other options are grayed out. From here you can create a new album, and again, it can be a project album or a root-level album. I recommend you only use this method for project-level albums, because otherwise you end up with a bunch of oddly named projects.

If you're wondering why you would want to do this in the first place, there are plenty of scenarios for why it makes sense. Say, for example, you're doing a travel shoot and you have a project for the city you're in. You might want to break that project down by day or location. Rather than having individual projects, you can store them all in one project and separate them by album, while you could manually sort them into albums after importing this method. This procedure lets you save time and do it during the import session.

One of the things mentioned earlier is that it is a good idea to create presets for your cameras. You may often find that when you import a RAW file into Aperture it can look quite a bit different from the JPEG or what you saw on the back of the camera when you took the shot. This is because Aperture's interpretation of the RAW file may be different than your camera. Aperture has gotten a lot better at matching the colors of the camera's JPEG images lately though. It used to be that images in RAW could be a lot different from what you expect, but Apple's engineers have become really good at profiling various cameras. Unfortunately though, Aperture doesn't have profiles for individual shooting modes that a camera may support. So, for example, if you have shot using your camera's vivid setting, when you import using RAW, all that nice contrast and vibrancy is lost. If you find yourself making certain adjustments to an image over and over again every time you import, the best thing to do is to create an effect preset. Each camera's RAW files are different, so you should consider creating one for each camera you own and tweak the setting till they are just right. However, you want to be careful when creating effect presets for use during import. They need to be fairly generic and you should avoid using adjustments that need to vary from shot to shot. Here are some do's and don'ts for creating presets to be applied while importing:

Let me give you a couple of examples. First, here is an effect for use on import, which was created for a Fuji X100 camera. The reason that this was created is that, while the RAW files in Aperture are pretty close to the camera's JPEG images, the RAW conversion doesn't support some of the camera's options such as its shadow and highlight tone curves, and also its extended dynamic range. As these options are regularly used when shooting with this camera, a preset was created that mimics these options. This is then selected when importing images from the X100.

The following screenshot shows the settings used in creating this preset:

What was done adds a tiny bit of contrast and a little bit of definition because it seemed that the RAW files were a little flat compared to the JPEG files. Some vibrancy was also added to boost the color. To simulate the camera's dynamic range optimization, some Highlight and Shadows adjustments, similar to the ones in the previous screenshot, were added.

For a more complicated example, here is an import effect that was created for the Canon 5D Mark II. In my opinion, Aperture's handling of the RAW files from the Canon is quite a bit off in terms of color. To create a preset, both RAW and JPEG versions of the same images were imported and, using a color adjustment, the settings were manually tweaked until it looked right. It required quite a bit of trial and error and several attempts to get it right. But persistence eventually paid off and the result was a preset that can be applied on import. Some other adjustments were also added, including some slight tint tweaks, very simple curves, and levels adjustment.

You will learn techniques for working with adjustments in a later chapter, but for now, here is a screenshot of the adjustments that were used in this preset:

Aperture's library is organized in a hierarchy, much like a file system on a computer. However, you can also store images in multiple albums, which work like playlists in iTunes. In some ways it's kind of an odd system, as it's neither fully metadata based like iTunes, nor fully file based like the Finder. In some respects, it's a hybrid of both. If this all sounds confusing, don't worry, it will become clearer as it is explained further.

Let's start with projects. Projects are the most important thing in Aperture. Images must be contained in a project (regardless of whether they are referenced or managed). All edits in Aperture are non-destructive because you are never working off the original files. Instead, what you see when you look at an image in Aperture is called a Version. Versions are a reference to an original, which is the actual RAW (or JPEG) file. Within a project, you can have multiple versions of an image. Because versions are just references back to the actual file, multiple versions don't mean that the image files are duplicated. They're not, you're just duplicating the reference. Think of it like an alias in the Finder. You've undoubtedly used this feature many times if you've been using Aperture for a while, but it's important to understand it from a structural perspective.

Within the Aperture library, you can have multiple projects. You can organize your projects into folders too. Folders are the highest level of organization and you can nest folders just like you can in Finder. It's important to understand the difference between folders and albums. Folders serve two purposes in Aperture:

However, you can never have images directly in a folder. Images must be in an album or a project, and always in a project at some stage.

Albums, unlike folders, can contain images. They can be at the root level of the library or at the project level. Albums are essentially playlists. You have undoubtedly made albums before so I won't go into that in too much detail, but it is important to understand the difference between root-level albums and project-level albums.

Root level versus project level

There are essentially two levels of hierarchy in the Aperture library: the root level and the project level. It was mentioned earlier that projects can be exported as libraries, and that's because inside of Aperture projects behave like mini libraries within the main library. There is one big difference though, which is that projects can't contain other projects, so you can't nest projects. When you create an album in Aperture you can create it at either the project level or the root level. You can create an album at the project level for referencing images within the project, although you can add images from other projects to an album. You can also create albums that aren't attached to any projects. These are root-level albums. When you create an album at the root level (that is not attached to any project) you can use it to reference images from any project.

Here's a quick example. Say you have a project full of images, and you select a bunch of them as your selected shots. You then create an album of these named selects. You would create this at the project level as it is referencing images within that project. However, if you wanted to keep a running album of all your landscape images, you could create a root-level album named Landscape and add images to it from multiple projects.

It used to be the case that if you create a smart album within a project, it will only search for its contents within that project, while a smart album created at the root level will search the entire library. However, in a previous update, Apple added the option to search the entire library within the smart album options. Personally, I never do this as I always create smart albums that reference the whole library at the root level (otherwise it just gets confusing).

When you create albums at the root level they go in the ALBUMS section at the bottom of the library pane of the Aperture window. This is a recent addition too. They used to be lumped in with projects in one big hierarchy whereas now they have their own section. To create an album at the root level, make sure that no projects are selected in the library and then click on the Add Album button. You can also drag albums into this section from a project and they become root level. You can organize this section with folders too.

You may be wondering about Books, Light Tables, Slide Shows and Web Journals. These all behave exactly like albums, because they're essentially just albums with special properties.

If you're working on a single shoot at a time, such as a wedding for example, then organizing your library becomes a lot easier. In this case, you could have folders for each type of shoot and within those folders, your individual projects for each shoot. Let's take the example of a wedding photographer. A typical wedding photographer also might shoot engagement sessions as well as anniversaries. So you would start with root-level folders for Weddings, Engagements, and Anniversaries, and so on for each of the other types of jobs that you do. Inside each of these folders you could have a project for each job, named after the couple. Inside each project you could then break the event down into albums for things such as the arrival at the church, the reception, the rehearsal dinner, and so on. You could then have separate albums or smart albums for your picks and selects.

An alternative method would be to have nested folders for each job. A particular wedding could be the name of the job and this would be a folder within the Weddings folder. Within that folder there are projects for each part of the day and there could also be more albums within the weddings folder to break the project down further.

If you are the other kind of more casually organized photographer, one that ends up with a lot of different events in the one memory card, then organizing can be a bit trickier. There are several approaches that can work. You can start by creating folders for each month of the year. Within those folders, import your shoots into individual projects with names for the most common type of shot on the card. So, for example, if you had been doing a photo walk you could name your project photo walk and append the date. You could also create a project called Misc and then when there are images from a session that aren't really appropriate for the project (some shots of your house, for example, which are on your photo walk card), you can copy them to the Misc project.

Outside these set of folders you can create a series of root-level albums for common themes in your photography. These can either be regular albums or smart albums, which you can tie to keywords. If you are doing some long-running photo projects then this can be the way you organize them. Say you are collecting shots of coffee cups, every time you import a shoot to a new project, you can copy any images you may have taken of coffee cups and put them into a coffee cups root-level album.

One of the things that you can do to ease your organizing chores is to create a project template. If you have created a whole set of albums and folders within a project that you find works for you, it can be useful to use this as a template for creating similar projects in the future. This is especially handy if you have created a whole set of smart folders with complex search setups that you really don't want to have to create manually again. Luckily there is a function in Aperture that makes this pretty easy. Here's what to do in the following steps:

What this does is duplicate the project, and all included albums, books, folders, smart albums, and so on, only without the images. What you get is a new and empty project with the structure you created, all in place, ready to go.

You can merge two projects into one if you need to. Simply select the two projects in the library view and from the menu choose File | Merge Projects.

The process of splitting a project is a little more involved, but still fairly simple. In the project that you want to split, select the images you want to split into the new project. From the toolbar choose the New button and then select New Project. This will then pop up a dialog box asking whether you want to move the selected images to the new project. Tick this box, give the project a name and then click on the OK button.