Sometimes I want to split an Aperture project into two or more smaller projects. It's pretty rare though, since my projects are simply time-based (one a month) due to the relatively small number of photos I take. Also my picture taking is incidental to the other things I do: there are no clients, locations, models, or weddings for me.

For others this may not be the case and project splitting may be a more regular activity. For instance, after a day in the field with five CF cards and two people, the images associated with similar activities during the day will be split across cards. It's probably a good idea to dump all of the cards into one project and then split the images into several projects by client, shooter, location, or other category that ties them to their acquisition.

Splitting an Aperture project into two or more projects is as simple as dragging thumbnails. Here is a small example project called Home and Garden with 13 images:



And here are the images:



I'll split it into two: one project called Home, and the other called Garden. It is not possible to create a new project from a selection as can be done with albums, so I have to create a new empty project and fill it. Pressing command N with the Home and Garden project selected gives me a new empty project that I can rename:



Then I double click and rename the original project to have the two projects I want:



To move the images I select the project I want to move from, make the selection (manually in this case, but a filter will work too), and drag them to the project I want to move them to:



I wait a little while for the move to complete, and I now have two projects with the original images split between them. (If I had held Option down as I dragged the cursor would have gotten a green plus sign and the move would have become a copy operation)

If it makes sense, I can group these two projects into a blue folder. This will let me filter both of the projects at the same time, selecting all the images in both projects by day or keyword, for instance. To create the blue folder I select the enclosing folder (or the library if I am at the top level) and hit shift command N:



I name the folder Home and Garden, and then drag the two projects into the folder where they are automatically put into alphabetical order:



I can see all of the images in two ways. Either I click on Garden and then option click on Home to get two browsers:



Or I click on Home and Garden folder and get them all in one place:



When a project is split, the import sessions are split as well. Both the Home and the Garden projects have the same two import sessions in my case because I moved photos that were in both. This allows the images to retain information about their source.

Another thing that happens when projects are split is that all the albums that reference the images are adjusted to suit. It doesn't matter where the albums are located: they can be in the project just split or anywhere in the library. One way to organize albums affected by project splits is to give them their own folder to live in:



Selecting the Albums folder does not display the contents of the albums, however.

But before splitting a folder, ask yourself some questions first. The idea of projects in Aperture is to represent the circumstances in which the images were acquired. This is a separate system from the actual file storage (referenced masters do that) and from the image presentation (taken care of by albums, metadata, and filters). Am I splitting because I want to use the new organization to get images out? (don't -- use albums or metadata). Or am I splitting because I want to better represent how the images were acquired (do).