I have learned a ton from your site, thanks for providing it!! My question is this: I didn't know what I was doing when I originally imported my pictures into Aperture. Now I have a mix of some images managed and many are referenced. Do you have a pros/cons list of managed vs referenced? I have looked but haven't found a conclusive list. Thanks again for all your help!!

Here is my list of pros and cons for referenced and managed masters:

Pros for Managed

• No file management needed
• Low risk
• All masters backed up with the library
• Can use vaults for complete back up
• Always have everything with you

Cons for Managed

• Potentially huge library
• Other applications can't access images
• Can archive by project only
• Adding storage requires that everything is copied

Pros for Referenced

• Organize and store the masters where you like
• Access them from other applications
• Masters can be backed up separately from the rest of the system
• Potentially sharable among many users and systems
• Can archive in many different ways
• Can be simple and fast to add storage

Cons for Referenced

• Must organize, manage, and protect the masters
• Risk of being caught by permissions problems
• Risk of Aperture not reconnecting them
• Must remember to back them up separately from everything else
• Not all images are with you all of the time if using a laptop
• Vaults don't have all the data
• Offline referenced masters cause filter difficulties

Don't forget that combined schemes are also possible. You can keep most of your images referenced but the last few projects managed. Once you are done with the project, make its masters referenced. To help portability you can use high resolution previews as needed.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Managed, Referenced, Pros and Cons

One problem with keeping referenced masters on removable media such as DVDs or Firewire drives is knowing what is actually on them. Mounting the disk or drive brings the masters on line and the badges change from this:

to this:

But it is difficult to see just these images among the thousands and register which ones are on the drive that just mounted.

An email from Johan Elzenga suggested an easy way to see just the referenced images that are on the mounted drive: use a pair of smart albums. This first one finds all offline images. It is set up to work only on images for my 2006-05 project:

The File status setting is found in the action (cog) menu on the top right.

Its sibling shows all masters that are referenced and online. Since managed masters are always online, the Match setting at the top is set to All and two conditions are needed:

This makes the album only show masters that are online and referenced and in the 2006-05 project. And with either of these I can also use additional filtering, searching, and sorting in the browser window where the images are displayed to narrow my choice further.

The neat thing about these smart albums is that they will change their contents as disks are mounted and removed. Put in a DVD, watch the album. Eject it and put an another. Repeat.

Tags: Aperture, Smart Albums, Referenced, Managed, Masters, Online, Offline