Hi,This week I made the switch from PC to Mac and have installed Aperture but I'm not sure how best to replicate my old workflow on the macbook.
I'm a sports photographer, working primarily online but with a need for hi-res for print later and an archive where I can easily track down players (and different players together in the same pic).
I regularly take 500+ pics at one time, most of which are discarded, but I keep all the originals on file for a year, and the selected pics permanently.
I process all pics initially on my PC, I copy the camera originals to a NAS, and after processing, the selected pics are filed on an external HD (which backs up overnight to the NAS).
My workflow on the PC was:
Copy pics from camera to local HD. Copy that folder to the NAS. (500+ pics)
Go through the original folder and cull the discards.
Crop and colour correct the remainder in Picasa (yeah, I know…but any portrait work was processed in Photoshop!)
Copy that folder which will later be moved to the external HD for archiving and facial recognition. (50-100 pics)
Do a final cull and resize of the initial selection for publication (30-50 pics). Publish.
Move the 50-100 selected pic folder to the external HD, run the facial recognition program on Picasa and sync with picasa web albums
And finally copy the 50-100 set to flickr as a final back up.
Now how the hell do I do that in Aperture?
My main concern is that Aperture will want to import all initial 500+ pics from a shoot into the Aperture library and keep them there, inflating the database unnecessarily.
I only want to properly process, file and archive the selected pics - the rest are only kept in case there's something in them I didn't realise at the time.
I also want the final edited images to be kept on file on the external HD (and ergo the NAS) so I can access them from other PCs as they should be seen, not in the raw pre-Aperture unedited format.
From what I can see, I can obviously import all pics and make a selection, but can I actually really delete any from that import?
How big does the Aperture library file itself get? I'm working off a 128GB SSD Air so I intended to have the library on my SSD for speed and reference the images off my external HD. WIll it get too big very quickly?
Also, can I work with the original pics initially on my SSD (in the field) for speed (and keeping my equipment as light and simple as possible on the road) and then move them to the external HD later without breaking Aperture?
Also I thought I saw Faces puts the names into the EXIF data, but the small test import I did didn't seem to have them afterwards? Also, does it tag pics with the name in Flickr as a result?
I'm sorry to have so many complicated questions at once - I've had a look at the program itself and here, but want to do it right from day one so I don't have to start all over again later on!
Many MANY thanks to anyone who can help me with some advice…cheers!
Kevin,
Adding to Andrew’s excellent tips, and yes you should pick up some of the training to really get deep into this, let me respond to your specific questions.
Of course; you can reject (hide from view) or delete any image. Once deleted it goes to the Aperture trash; once the trash is emptied it goes to the Finder trash, and from there you can delete it permanently. Yes it’s multiple steps to permanent deletion, but I think the benefits of this far outweigh any inconvenience. Read these posts for more on that topic: Deleting Photos in Aperture 3 (First, Second, Third Time’s the Charm) and Emptying the Trash in Aperture 3—What Really Happens?. Alternatively you can simply never import it; you can preview photos in the import window and disable them from import if you like. I think this is a slower workflow, but it’s up to you.
It gets as big as your Originals (if working Managed), plus Previews (if you have those enabled) plus Thumbnails (which are unfortunately quite large now due to Retina display compatibility) plus metadata (which is trivial). There’s no way to accurately say just how big it will get, but by disabling Previews and working Referenced, or more importantly in your workflow only keeping active projects on the small SSD drive you can easily keep things manageable.
Yes, it’s called Relocate and Aperture is designed specifically for this type of workflow. Watch for my next Live Training; I intend to do something on this kind of fragmented workflow.
You’ll find that option in the Preferences; look for Export > Include Faces info in exported photos [screenshot]. This is there for privacy reasons, and is off by default. On that same note, you should also be aware of the setting Advanced > Include location information in published photos [screenshot].
If you use Backblaze, please use my link ;-)
Everything else you mention is workflow and you need to come up with one that works for you. Again look for my next Live Training which I’ll do this week (it’ll be number 023 for anyone reading this later) and check out the extensive Training both in video and ebook form. There’s a link on that page to compare the difference between the two types of video training as well.
Finally… welcome to the Mac, and to Aperture :-)
@PhotoJoseph
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Hmm - apparently this also appears to map into the “keywords” field for IPTC data as least for JPEG’s - which could be really useful later on if you’re a sports shooter.
Not sure it would replace manually key wording names for me but still a step in the right direction …
“You’ll find that option in the Preferences; look for Export > Include Faces info in exported photos [screenshot].”
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Andrew Mumford
Thanks for the replies. I spent the weekend having a few dry runs with it and playing around then did a couple of shoots with it over the last couple of days and it all seemed to work very well - much better than I was expecting, to be honest.
I think I’ll probably find ways to streamline the workflow as time goes on, but the biggest problem I had was with the external batch resizer I used for online publication which butchered my exported versions the first couple of times until I swapped for another one that did it better, but with too little control over where the pics ended up.
I suspect there’s probably a way I can custom batch resize an export in Aperture but that might be tomorrow’s experiment.
So far though I am hugely impressed. I’ve even got the name tags converted into keywords which are being picked up by Flickr and by Picasa on the PC. That was the holy grail of file management for me. I’m a very happy bunny.
And how good are the quick brushes? Love it.
Now to explore more - I’ll be having a look at getting your videos very soon. And likewise with the Backblaze - I hadn’t heard of it before coming here. Seems a very good deal if it’s reliable.
Thanks again!
Kevin,
You said:
There certainly is. Remember in Aperture, nothing is ever scaled or resized until you export, and those exports are meant to be discarded once you’re done with them. It sounds like in your case you want to keep them, and that’s fine, but for most workflows it’s unnecessary.
What you’d want to do is create an export preset (or series of presets) that export at the size you need, then it’s just a case of selecting the images you want to export and scale, and choosing that preset on export. Dead easy.
If you need multiple sizes, we also have a yet-to-be-released AppleScript that allows you to select multiple export presets at once, so you get a collection of exports all in one go. Pretty neat.
@PhotoJoseph
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From one sports shooter to another … experimentation and exploration is great and no two workflow solutions are exactly identical … though I would advise you very strongly to research proven methods that can stand the test of time, rather than trying to replicate that which you have done in the past … it can save hundreds of hours per year in the process. Not to mention mass quantities of valuable HD space.
If you have not worked with a true database driven management system before adopting Aperture, you will quickly discover there may be many steps you are accustomed to handling manually that can be achieved with much less effort, time and clutter to reach your end goal. It doesn’t help to establish bad habits which can cost you more work later on … even years from now.
I would recommend Joseph’s offerings as well as the myriad of tutorials and videos available on the web before possibly getting too far off course at the beginning of the venture. I have been helped greatly by Peter Krogh’s book “The DAM Book (DAM=Digital Asset Management) … while not Aperture centric … the fundamentals the book contains are valuable building blocks on creating a system that can stand the test of time, regardless of the individual preference of software choice used to manage the system.
Everything you are talking about is possible, but in more than one way.
1. You should invest in some of Josephs training materials - they will explain everything in much more depth and better than the forum can.
2. Caveat #1 - Your NAS needs to be Mac filesystem formatted, HFS +, to work properly with Aperture & your Macbook - if it’s not, time to figure out how to do that or look to upgrade.
3. You will need to decide on a good flat file folder scheme / naming system on your large storage, YR/MTH/DAY, YR/MTH/PROJ - you probably have that already, make sure you’re happy with it.
4. If you’re in the field and ingest locally to your laptop, make sure that you replicate that system on your local storage so you can migrate images between local / NAS storage easily.
5. Invest in some good quality “sync” software to copy & verify images between local / NAS storage. Yes, you can drag & drop, but poop happens and this is the best way to make sure it doesn’t. A lot of people here like Chronosync.
6. Fully understand the difference between Referenced & Managed libraries - again Joseph’s training materials will explain this better than I can.
7. Aperture only supports the IPTC core spec’s for metadata - it doesn’t even officially support the 1.1 update. It also doesn’t support embedded IPTC metadata very well, so settle for a sidecar workflow and make sure you always preserve them.
8. Joseph Boyd a member of this site and a full time pro sports shooter use’s Aperture exclusively so I would defer too any advice he has too offer.
9. Consider maintaining a large Master library on an external HD and working on smaller Shoot based Libraries, maybe create a template Library to work with in the field and then import the smaller libraries into the main one once they are somewhat static.
10. Get some offsite backup - best, but most user intensive is rotated external hard drives stored at your local bank or similar. Easiest is cloud based storage, a lot of people like Backblaze, Joseph & myself included.
Lot’s more to add but do step 1 & 2 first.
My Tuppence.
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Andrew Mumford