7 days in to my 365 project, and about the same time in to my aperture trial. actually, i’m only 3 days in to my new trial since i upgraded to aperture 3.0, and the 30 day trial window started all over. bonus.
even though my experience with the previous version of aperture was limited, the improvements made to the latest version are immediately visible. the editing options are more robust, which is an obvious difference, but there are a number of features that i think are going to help with the cataloguing, as well.
someone asked me what i was doing for file naming, so here is the latest process.
i created my own preset for when i import in to the aperture library to create a folder inside an “originals” folder with the format “year-month-day project name”, and i enter a project name in the import window. i haven’t done any portrait sessions yet, but when i do, it’ll be the client name. for now, i’m just using a descriptive text like “HDR shoot” for the ones i did last night.
for the file name, ideally i would have liked to rename the master files to something that included the project name + index, but in the presets, i didn’t see an option to do that. so i have it set to a custom name + index, and i can just enter the project name in to the box the same time i put the project name in to the library section, and that will work for now.
in the old days, i didn’t do much renaming, so lots of my images on flickr still have the DSC_0391 name. my folders were mostly named date + subject, and i was able to find most things that i was looking for; the only time i wasn’t was when i didn’t dump the card between shoots and was too lazy to import the different shots from different subjects in to different folders, but i haven’t done that in awhile. so i think the schema and structure i’ve outlined above will work going forward with aperture.
really, though, with any of these library management tools, the folders and file names aren’t that important if it works for you. the only thing i’m going to use either of those for is to find the original raw file that i want to edit in capture nx (which with aperture 3.0, i’m guessing i’ll use nx less and less). otherwise, ranking and keywords is where it’s at. with ranking, i can narrow my view to get rid of some of the images i know aren’t worth processing and just focus on the ones that are. i can also rank portfolio shots as 5, and keep adding to them as shoots come in. i can then use aperture to look across my entire library for all of the 5s and focus on my top 20, removing images that are old or that don’t make the top 20 cut by just changing their rating to a 4.
on the keyword side, that’s going to really help me find images, although it’s going to take some practice. i only recently started adding tags to my flickr library, which will make it easier for me to find stuff but also make it easier for other people to find images of mine that are public. visibility is good. same thing applies in aperture, but it also takes good, consistent practices to make it effective. i’ll have a few basic keywords that i’ll use regularly (portrait, architecture, etc.), and then i’ll add other keywords that will help me find pictures based on what’s in the shot, or location, or anything i think i might need to find a picture in the future. “i remember taking a shot in florida last year that had some sot of flower” = “florida flower 2009″. it’s going to take some work going back and tagging all my images, but the plan is to always tag the new stuff coming in, and then work on the existing library in my spare time watching television or something.
another thing that’s going to help is the face recognition in aperture 3. i only dabbled a little with it in iphoto, but if it works as advertised, it will be pretty neat to be able to find all pictures of a certain person across the library.the jury is still out on this one for me, but i’m going to play with it a bit over the weekend.
walter, i hope that answers your question (and then some). if anyone has any suggestions or questions, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me via twitter or e-mail!
2 Comments
The problem i see in the faces is that, as the more faces you have – the more clunky the software will become (the problem i face in iphoto).
The problem is not too apparent in Aperture 3, but being a speed demon myself, anything which have pauses does get me agitated… so No Faces for me. I LOVE LOVE so much the Places functionality though. That is awesome.
that’s a good point, both on the faces and on the places. i don’t think i’ll do the faces for everyone, just friends and family, not everyone i shoot. the places will be awesome, except the only camera i have with GPS is my iphone!