Sorry if this has already been asked but I'm new to the Mac & Aperture.
Previously I used a Windows machine but decided to upgrade to the Mac & Aperture, I absolutely love it! The one issue I have is that in Windows all of my photos were stored in my own structure and I could see all of the individual JPG's or RAW files in my directory structure.
Now on the Mac all I see is the Aperture library, therefore I want to know if I can move the Aperture library to my own structure in my documents library?
Thanks
Gus,
The crucial question when organizing your images with Aperture is whether you store your jpg and RAW files “managed” (=within the Aperture library) or “referenced” (=within your individual file structure).
You can set this on import. Where you store or move your Aperture library is up to you, but I’d recommend you to keep it under “Images” for convenience. With a “referenced” file management you will be able to access your images via Aperture or directly via the folder structure in Finder.
I can recommend yyou to also read this post and to consider purchasing and reading the “In Depth Getting Started with Aperture 3” knowledge base. That saved me a lot of time and hassle.
Many thanks, I will buy that.
I have already imported the pictures into Aperture. If I just want to reference from within Aperture them then can I move them out now or is it too late?
d-light, thanks for the recommendation!
Gus,
It’s never too late. You can move your files in and out of Aperture all day long if you like. The command to move them out is “relocate masters”, and the command to move them back in is “consolidate masters”.
That said, unless you’re going to be storing masters on an external drive because of capacity requirements (i.e. you have 100,000 photos and only room for 50,000 on your internal drive), I highly recommend going Managed (again, letting Aperture store the photos inside its own proprietary library). That way it’s essentially impossible to lose an image, plus if you back up using Vault (read: “Aperture 3 Vaults; What’s Backed Up, and What Isn’t?”) you have a nice, easy reliable backup for your Library and all your master images.
You don’t want to be messing with the photos that Aperture is referencing anyway, because if you rename or move or delete or change one, it could be a problem inside of Aperture.
If you do want to open one of those photos in another app, Aperture has the ability to open photos in “external editors”, such as Photoshop (or any app you choose), and then Aperture is still doing all your file management for you.
I say the following with a bit of tongue-in-cheek and do not in any way mean this to be condescending — you’ve come from the Windows world, where you are expected to manage and handle and know so much yourself, but now you’re on a Mac, where you’re expected to largely just let the Mac do what it does best. I know it can be hard to “let go”, but trust in the software and in no time you’ll be rejoicing in the simplicity and all the time saved :-)
cheers,
@PhotoJoseph
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