Hello,
I work for a sculptor and I have been tasked with organizing all of the photos of his projects. (As well as some of his family) There are about 91,000 in all. I bought Aperture because I was told it made organizing things much easier. I have combined a total of 4 different iPhoto libraries into 1 using aperture, however I now have a massive amount of stuff to sift through. Hindsight is now telling be I should have organized 1 library at a time. There are hundreds of projects and I am at a point now where I am unsure where to start.
What we want to do is this; Create 2 folders (or projects of whatever is most appropriate) one with work stuff, the other with Family stuff. The family stuff we want to have chronologically, and that is about it for now. The work stuff we want to list chronologically then sort into specific sculpture projects. My main question would be this, can I delete all existing projects and folders without deleting the files totally? My guys says, “Yes, dummy of course you can.” but I want to be sure, this is his life's work after all. Is there a way to view only master files in the library?
My boss never really named files in a consistent way, or dated them. So I feel like the best way to ensure I organize all the photos would be the way I described above. I just want to unclutter (declutter?) Aperture so it will be easier to do.
Also, in the library there are a great number of duplicate files, even though I told Aperture not to keep duplicates as well as ran Decloner. As you can see my issues are vast, I appreciate any insight you could provide for me.
If you delete a project … it will delete the photos contained in it as well. All your images, video, etc. must be in a project. They can be held in a folder within that project, but because they are in a Project, if you delete the project … the images go with it.
I would recommend that you check out some online tutorials on organizing in Aperture before you go much further … that way you can adopt best practices now … and not have to break any bad habits later … be open minded on what Aperture can do from an organizational standpoint … getting everything sorted may not go as you envisioned … but once completed … you’ll have something that can stand the test of time. You need to be willing to ignore the old filename/file folder type of system and employ the resources of keywords, ratings and labels applied to a true database system that will allow you to find and utilize your images effortlessly … no matter who is using the mouse and keyboard.
There are several good video tutorials on youtube … and you can always sign up for a trial at lynda.com to get you started … Joseph also has some great learning tools on this site.
Thanks for the advice Butch. I have gone through and made all the folders and projects I want to sort the photos into and have started to go through the hundreds of albums. Reading the manual for Aperture I noticed that there are two different types of files; versions and masters. Many of the projects, when I hover the cursor over them say that they have 7 versions. I mentioned earlier that I have many many duplicates, is there a way to locate all the master files?
Thank you