Now what do I do?

Folders of folders of projects of folders of albums and folders and books and images and galleries. That's what Aperture gives you to organize your photos; and it is very, very confusing at first. Worse, since anyone new to Aperture already has a lot of photos they want to import, they face having to make decisions about library organization before they do practically anything else. But this is Apple and things are not what they seem. Actually to get going, all you need is to understand a few simple rules.

Simple Rule Number 1: Don't Panic!

The reason you must not panic is that, as far as I can tell, it is impossible to get your library organized in a way that prevents you from later efficiently getting it organized into a different, more helpful way. In other words, you really don't have to make big, important decisions right up front, because they can always be changed. The only caveat to this is that reorganizing the library can take a little while, both for you to make all the right selections, and for the computer to do the work.

Simple Rule Number 2: There Are Two Types Of Folders And Yet Nobody Tells You

In an error or gargantuan proportions, the Aperture documentation fails to distinguish between Blue Folders and Brown Folders. Blue Folders live above Projects and Brown Folders live below Projects. So Blue Folders exist to help you group Projects together and brown Folders exist to help you divide individual Projects into smaller, named pieces.

Simple Rule Number 3: Each Master Image Exists In One Project Only

You have to store your negatives or originals somewhere, and since there is only one of each, each can only live in one place. Think of a shoe box full of slides. A Project is the shoe box. Master images are the slides inside it. Can you reorganize your master images into new Projects? Yes, just as you can reorganize your slides into new shoe boxes. But still, as you reorganize, nothing is duplicated. Each slide only ever lives in one shoe box and each master image only ever lives in one Project.

Simple Rule Number 4: Albums Are Just Collections Of Prints

When you make a real physical album, you never paste in the slides or negatives. If you did, they would be hard to see and would have to be removed from their shoe box to stick on the album. A dangerous state of affairs. You make prints of the slides and paste those into the albums instead. Prints made from a single slide can be used in many albums at once, even modified or destroyed, and the original stays in its shoe box untouched. Aperture's Albums are the same way. An Aperture Album is a collection of copies of master images.

Simple Rule Number 5: Smart Things Are Your Assistants

"Make me prints of all the pictures of Paris that I shot with a wide-angle lens at night". In Aperture, Smart Albums and their cousins operate like assistants. When you open a Smart Album, your assistant notices you doing so and quickly scurries about picking out all the relevant masters and making prints for you to look at in one place. If you add another photo to one of the projects he is aware of, he'll quickly make a print of that too and bring it to you.

Here is an example of the flexibility that the Blue Folders give you. You photograph buildings and structures all over the world (lucky you) and you have three very different types of client: government bodies that are almost always divided geographically, big companies who hire you for specific projects related to their facilities, and retail chains who are driven by fashion seasons. So at the top level, you set up three folders:



For commercial work, you divide by client and then put individual projects in there:



For government, you divide geographically where it makes sense, and then create projects:



For retail, seasons come first because the outsides of the stores are very different at different times of the year. Then to help distinguish regular projects, there are folders of years:



From here, take a look at the article on Brown Folders. After that try Importing a Hierarchy or Advanced Importing for a look at the features that Aperture 1.5 has added.