This is a series of new-to-Aperture observations and tips conceived by Stephen Guy, the new assistant here at ApertureExpert and PhotoJoseph’s studio. These are things that as a Lightroom user, Stephen found particularly interesting, compelling, or otherwise noteworthy. These aren’t necessarily in-depth tips, however they are designed to highlight interesting features, and encourage you to explore and learn more about them.

It’s very easy to hop into Aperture for the first time and import photos into your library to immediately get started, but you would be missing out on a multitude of things you can do to your photos before they even meet your library.

There is a drop down menu with all of Aperture’s import setting in the top right of the import window, under the loupe icon.

Be sure to explore the Import Settings menu — there’s a lot you can do at the time of import

Browse through all of these and set up each one as you wish, and just don’t pass them up. For example, renaming your photos on import can help you to better archive pictures in a manner that will allow you to search and sort them easily. You can even create your own fully customized renaming preset with the date, time, index #, original file name and more so it’s easy to be consistent every time you import more photos. Clicking the drop down menu for Rename Files, then Edit…, will bring you to this customization screen. You can then duplicate a preset and fully customize it to your liking.

You can do the same thing for Metadata Presets, or even apply Effects Presets (i.e. different “looks”) to your photos on import.

Combining these custom settings to your imports will make you more proficient and organized, and save a lot of time in the long run.