File (Image) Management

[Eric Patdu]

Hello photo gurus,

Can you share how you manage the tens of thousands and years old photos you have? I mean, the what, where and when info of your photos. I'm really interested how you keep track of your photos for future reference. Do you use a database or an archiving software?

[ppaaoolloo]

I let Apple Aperture manage my photos. It does it in two ways: managed and referenced images

What Are Managed Images and Referenced Images?
Aperture lets you choose how you organize your photos on disk. You can store your photos in the Aperture library, or you can import images by simply linking to the image files in their current locations, without placing them in the library.
Images whose masters are stored in the Aperture library are called managed images. Managed images are always accessible, and are easily backed up to vaults, to name just two benefits.

Imported images whose masters haven’t been placed in the library are called referenced images. Using referenced images in your Aperture system provides a number of substantial benefits to your photography workflow. For example, you can incorporate your existing portfolio of images into Aperture without changing the current location of the files. Importing images by reference does not result in a duplication of your image files in the Aperture library, thus saving hard disk space. You can also connect and disconnect hard disks holding your referenced images’ masters as you need them. This allows you to keep masters for less-used images offline or to make specific types of images available for editing or adjustments as needed. Using referenced images in your Aperture system lets you build a flexible image management system customized to your work style.

You specify whether an image will be a managed image or a referenced image when you import it. When importing images, you can:

• Specify that masters be stored in the Aperture library

• Import images as referenced images, so that their masters remain in their current locations

• Move or copy image files to a new location.For example, you might decide to have a certain group of referenced image files, such as photos from 2008, placed in one hard disk location, and another group, such as photos from 2009, placed in a different hard disk location.

You can work with referenced images—creating versions, making adjustments, cropping, and adding metadata—just as you can with managed images. Versions that you create from a referenced image are stored in the library. In order for you to make adjustments to a version from a referenced image, the referenced image’s master must be available on your hard disk or other storage device. For example, if you delete a referenced image’s master in the Finder, Aperture no longer has access to the master and so no longer allows you to change your versions or create new ones.

To help you identify referenced images, Aperture marks them with a badge overlay that you can display or hide. When a referenced image’s master is missing or offline, its badge changes to show that the image is not accessible. For example, if you disconnect a hard disk that holds masters for many referenced images, Aperture automatically marks the referenced images in the Browser and Viewer as offline. If you reconnect the hard disk or other storage device later, Aperture accesses the masters automatically and you can work with and change their versions again.

You can also relocate masters, moving them out of the library or moving referenced masters to different hard disk locations. If needed, you can also move referenced masters into the Aperture library by choosing the Consolidate Masters command in the File menu.

You can search for images based on whether they are managed images, referenced images, or online or offline images. Aperture also provides robust file management tools that let you quickly determine which images are offline and easily reconnect images that have been moved to different volumes.

What I like about this is that I can search, segregate, arrange, prioritize and generally manipulate how the photos are presented to me based on metadata like EXIF.

Like I arrange based on forms of photography, then segregate to subjects and albums that are specific to an event. I also have smart folders that auto segregates the photos based on camera model, lens model, date it was taken and how much I like it.

Since upgrading to Apple Aperture 3 I can now use the built-in Google Maps to tag photos to specific places, auto-tag faces using its face recognition feature, export to Facebook and Flickr, and do non-destructive RAW editing without the need for Photoshop.

Adobe has a similar product called Lightroom which runs on both Windows and Macs. If you prefer the Adobe workflow that may be a better fit for you.

[Eric Patdu]

Thanks Paolo for your patience in explaining in detail your workflow. Just one question though, if you edit an image's metadata to enter additional info and save it, do you also risk altering the image data?

[ppaaoolloo]

Eric the image itself will not change. It is like having a .txt = meta and .jpg = image inside a folder = raw. When meta is changed it tells Aperture what changes has been made while keeping intact the original image. Like say I want to insert GPS coordinates it just another field. The nice thing about it is that the file size increases minutely from the original unlike destructive editing where in the image increases or decreases based on your edits and layers.

Software like Aperture and Lightroom were designed to make you use Photoshop less, organize your photos for you and speed up your workflow. Photoshop is 300% of what photogs need while Aperture/Lightroom is 99% of what photogs need.

You can download the Apple Aperture 3 User's Manual at documentation.apple.com/en/aperture/usermanual/Aperture%203%20User%20Manual%20(en).pdf to see screenshots and workflows.

As for GPS in Aperture you have the option to pin it down manually, draw GPS location from your GPS device's waypoints and your iPhone's GPS.

When I was evaluating software I placed emphasis on the computer organizing the images for me and making my workflow as efficient as possible. My main limitation now is LCD screen size and GPU.