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Photo Workflow on the Road - A Hitchhiker's Guide to Aperture
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Online Options

Online storage has taken off in the past couple of years. You can now purchase server space (though it's still pricey) and store anything you want on a secure server somewhere in cyberspace. There are a few online storage options that are designed specifically for photographers. Digital Railroad and PhotoShelter were designed to allow photographers to archive their work online and to give them a myriad of marketing tools on the level of a small personal photo agency.

I really can't say which service is better as they both have their pros and cons, but if you're looking for some server space for your images, they're both great options. These days, when I finish editing a shoot, I upload the full resolution JPEG versions of my selects, along with their untouched masters. Now, my most important files are stored on a redundant server, and I can easily access them, and show them off to clients.

Moving Images

In version 1, all image files imported into Aperture had to be stored in Aperture's library package. While it was possible to have multiple libraries, the catalog and the images needed to be together as one.

With 1.5, you're able to store images wherever you like. Whether it's external hard drives, CDs, DVDs, or even a jump drive, you have total control of where your master files are physically stored. Along with a flexible library, Aperture 1.5 has added a number of tools for managing images. For the traveling photographer, these tools are of utmost importance because they allow you to easily transfer your image files from place to place, making library management a snap.

The image import panel lets you control how Aperture deals with your images by giving you the option to import them as managed files, have them placed in a new folder as referenced files, or simply leave them in place.

I like to import images as managed files shortly after a shoot. This is usually because I'm on location with my laptop and don't want to bother with attaching an external drive.

At any time, you can query a set of images in Aperture based on File Status. To search for Managed, Referenced, Offline or Online files using the query HUD, click the + symbol located to the right of the search box in the HUD and add File Status to the search. You can then select which type of status you want to search for and Aperture will display all the pertinent files.

I have a Smart Album set up which is simply a query of all the managed files in my library. This makes my life easier when I want to move the original images offline. I just click the Smart Album, select the images I want to move, and then under the File menu, click Relocate Masters.

Relocating Masters

The Relocate Masters function, located in the File menu, opens a dialog box, which allows you to pick a new location for your image masters. This location can be an external drive, or another folder on your laptop's hard drive. You can even send the images to a burn folder if you're sure they'll fit on one DVD.

For the sake of organization, I use the Year/Month/Day subfolder option. This way, all images are sorted into folders as I go. I can continue to transfer pictures to my external hard drives at any time. The images get added to the pile, neatly organized by their capture date.

One of the benefits of keeping the masters as referenced files is that you can build multiple Aperture databases, which reference the same master files. You can also create a database that references these same files using another software package such as iView Media Pro or Extensis Portfolio. This makes working with multiple people in a studio situation possible.

As mentioned before, Aperture's flexible library system makes working with multiple databases very easy. With the temporary Aperture library on my laptop, I can use the Relocate Masters function to move images to my LaCie external drives. I then use the Export Project function to move the Aperture project file to my desktop. All that's left to do is import the project file in my master image library. The project can then be deleted from the laptop database or left in place for previewing images in iLife.

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