I am a photographer and travel to various "Locations." I am having a workflow problem with Aperture and image storage. It seems to me that there is probably an easy fix either in Aperture or in modifying my workflow but the Apple discussion group is unable to grasp my problem. One kind responder pointed me to your site and so perhaps you would allow me to ask my question. While traveling I download from the camera to my laptop MacBook Pro each day. Dependent upon opportunities I sometimes need to download from the SD cards directly to a Wolverine battery operated hard drive while continuing to shoot. I then copy from the Wolverine to my MB Pro at the end of the day. I use Aperture to rate, cull, add keywords, put into projects etc etc. As the laptop's hard drive is too small to store all of my images i usually need to make additional DVD backups of my images and erase the files from my laptop. This is where the problem starts.

After I erase the master files the images and ratings etc still appear in Aperture but of course the images show as off line. Upon returning home I copy all of my images onto my eSATA hard drives (from DVD or from Wolverine). Now I want to have Aperture look for the master images on the eSATA drive and re connect, but cannot figure out how to do this. The only solution I have so far is to re do the rating, culling, keywords etc referencing the images on the eSATA drive and erase the older versions. This besides being time consuming is for me fraught with peril. My administrative skills are almost non existent.

You can reconnect the copied masters with the Referenced File Manager. I have an article that describes how to do this called Burning Masters To DVD and The Referenced File Manager. However, you can make all of this workflow faster and less perilous by working with complete projects rather than individual masters. And you won't have to go near the Referenced File Manager to do it.

As you import images into the Aperture library on your laptop, make the projects fairly small. Do your rating and sorting. When your laptop is too full, export these projects a few at a time.

You can check that the projects look OK by dropping them onto an open TextWrangler document and seeing if the expected files are present:

Looks good to me. Also check the size of the project in the Finder as a sanity check:

My project has 18 images of about 2.5MB each, so that looks right.

Burn as many as will fit onto a DVD, verify the DVD, and then delete the project in the Aperture library and empty the trash. Emptying the trash is necessary because the deleted masters in the projects will be moved there. Repeat with all the projects you want to move. You'll have to come up with a foolproof scheme for naming these projects so there is no chance of deleting the wrong thing.

Now when you get back into the office, just import the projects into Aperture's library. That's it. Mount the DVD and drag the projects to the library:

If you trust that the keywords coming in with the projects are well-behaved (ie match the scheme you are using, have the correct spelling etc.) then before importing the projects, unlock the keyword HUD by bringing it up with shift H and clicking the lock icon. This will give the newly-imported images the same keywords are are already used in the library. If you leave the keyword HUD locked, the imported keywords will be added to a separate keyword hierarchy called Imported Keywords and have to be merged later.

The big advantage of using projects to move images around is that they are self-contained. They include all the masters, versions, keywords, ratings, albums, adjustments, and everything else needed to work instantly as soon as they are put back into the library. They even contain thumbnails, so you won't have to wait for them to be regenerated once you are back in the office.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Masters, Laptop, Workflow, Projects, Reconnecting