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How do I delete a project, but keep the photos in "Photos"? #1
Luke Pingel's picture
by Luke Pingel
March 18, 2011 - 12:10pm

Before I bought and watched the “Import” video, every time I imported something it ended up in a new project. Now I have 50-100 useless projects, each with anywhere between 1 to 1000 pictures in it. I want to ditch the projects, but keep all the photos viewable in the Photos/Faces/Places tabs.

I already know that deleting the project doesn't necessarily delete the actual files (which are referenced on an external drive AND backed up to a Home Server)….But every time I delete a project it removes the photos….

Thanks in advance.

Luke Pingel

David Edge's picture
by David Edge
March 18, 2011 - 9:17pm

Luke
I believe that every photo has to live in a project. ‘Photos’ is effectively a smart album that draws all images from all project. You can always merge all of the projects into one, and when importing select that project.
d.

d.

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
March 20, 2011 - 7:32am

Luke,

David is correct. All photos have to live in a Project somewhere. You can have as many or as few projects as you like, however I’d recommend not using just one. Performance will slow down. I break projects into days or events, and if it’s a big one (over 1,000 photos) I’ll start breaking it out into multiple projects.

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
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Luke Pingel's picture
by Luke Pingel
March 20, 2011 - 10:08pm

Interesting. I think I need to do a bit more work on my underlying “referenced” file structure and my import strategy. As I mentioned, I now understand the power of the “Import” feature thanks to your vidcast…. On my old wintel machine I had them organized by year/month/day/event, but Importing 10 years of photos will not be as simple as pointing to the year and letting Aperture suck in all the nested folders thereunder. It looks like I’ll have to import each folder individually if I want it done right.

Thanks for the reply and for the effort you put in here. Very helpful to have someone share the “practice” of Aperture not just the mechanics.

L.

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
March 20, 2011 - 11:10pm

Luke,

Your current folder structure sounds very organized and should work just fine. If you choose File > Import > Folders > Folders as Projects… your yyyy/mm/dd/event structure in the Finder will be recreated in Aperture. Be sure to set the structure option to Import Folders as: Folders and Projects [screenshot] and that way every folder will be imported as a folder (the year, month and day) except the last one (event) which will come in as an Aperture project.

If you’re going to follow a naming structure similar to the one in my lesson, the historical import won’t get a unique name for each event, so you may want to choose a generic name like “historical”. Up to you.

Finally, since your structure in the Finder is currently yyyy/mm/dd/event, if you decided to again follow my preferred structure of yyyy/mm/event, it may be easier to rename the event folders and move them up a level in the Finder than in Aperture. It’s just easier to do mass moves and renames in the Finder—before importing into Aperture.

For any big renaming jobs, check out Name Changer from MRR Software. That’s a long-time favorite of mine.

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
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Luke Pingel's picture
by Luke Pingel
November 28, 2011 - 10:30am

Joseph - It’s me again, Luke. I’ve got a WEIRD import question that falls in this same vein.

After this strand of questions was answered, everything worked perfectly (or so I thought). I successfully imported 10+ years of nested photos in folders, organized as yyyy/mm/dd/event and it went VERY smoothly.

Now, many months later I went back to look at my 2006 year and subfolders in the Aperture finder menu. Curiously, there is a nice nested folder structure, but there are no projects inside the month folders and there are no photos visible when I highlight the year. Recall from above that I used a yyyy/mm/dd/event structure that worked perfectly for all other years.

The originals are still saved on a stand-alone drive AND saved on a Home Server (where they are duplicated) and i’ve checked everything in those locations, so everything is fine….but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why 2006 should have been any different than 2002-2005 or 2007-2010 when I initially imported everything in one gigantic Import as follows: File>Import>Folders>Folders as Projects….

One small item: On import when I uncheck “do not import duplicates” all the pictures show up as being available to import. When I re-check the “Do not Import Dupes” box, they all disappear. What accounts for the fact that I can’t get these pictures to appear in Aperture, but they are there in the folders in Finder?

Thanks in advance.

L.

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
November 29, 2011 - 2:14pm

Luke,

Any chance you have a search term entered in the Library Search field? [screenshot]. Make sure “All Items” is selected.

@PhotoJoseph
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