Hi, my whole Aperture Library is based on referenced files. I already had a document structure in my Pictures folder before I started using Aperture. Now I dragged these folders right onto my Library icon inside Aperture (as you suggest in one of your tips). However there's one thing I really, really miss: How can I completely delete pictures? When I do photoshotings I use to filter my photos, look for the best results and then delete the bad ones. Appearently this doesn't work. I get a notification and then the file is deleted from my Aperture Library. However it's still on my harddrive. Is there a way to delete a picture in both the Aperture Library _and_ on my harddisk?

There is a misunderstanding here that is causing some confusion. By dragging your photo folders into Aperture you created a project inside the library and also caused Aperture to copy those images into its library: your images are actually managed, not referenced. The dialog you saw:

Shows this to be the case. If you were attempting to delete any referenced images, then you would have seen this dialog:

which includes an option to trash the masters that are outside the library.

In order to import your images as referenced masters you will have to use the File > Import > Images or File > Import > Images Into a Project items from the menu. Once you do that to bring up the dialog makes sure that the Store Files: option is set appropriately, in your case to In their current location:

But your question raises an interesting problem. What if I were to delete my library images but not move the referenced files to the trash? Where does that leave me? It leaves me with a problem. I now have masters on a disk somewhere that are not connected to the library in any way. So if I want to delete them or use them somehow later I am out of luck. I have no way to find or isolate them to delete them. I will call these orphaned masters.

How To Recover Orphaned Masters

Here is a folder on my disk that contains referenced files. There are sixteen of them:

I imported all sixteen by reference so that the masters were left in this folder and the Aperture library just contained pointers to them. Then I deleted three images, but did so without letting Aperture move the masters to the trash, so in this folder are three orphaned masters. But which three?

Here is how to find out. First in Aperture I select everything that could be in the folder (project, album, import session, or whatever does it) and then relocate those to some temporary location, choosing to move the masters, not copy:

Now look at what is left in the original folder:

Just the three that Aperture did not know about: the three I had deleted. So now I can delete them for real or move them or do whatever else I want. Once that is complete I can use relocate again to restore my masters to their original position if that is what I want.