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Projects, Albums, and Folders
When I last asked what confused people the most about Aperture, many people commented that folders, albums, and projects were confusing. This week, we're going to take a few minutes to review this fundamental but potentially confusing topic.
Projects are the key place to start. Projects are where your images are actually stored--when you import images, they are imported into a project. You will typically have multiple projects in your library, and they're displayed in the inspector. Make sure the top drop-down is set to show All Projects and not just Recent or Favorite. Projects are indicated by the little yellow file-cabinet-like icon. If you click on the project in the Inspector, you will see all of the images, potentially a lot, within the Browser, ungrouped.
Albums are a specific group of images. They contain references to images, not the actual image files themselves. Two albums can have the same image within them, but you'll only have one copy of the image that resides within the project and not either album. If you have a project (or something within a project) selected in the Inspector and choose File > New > Album, you will create an album within a project. You can tell it's within the project because it is indented slightly and the project will now have a black disclosure triangle to the left.
Albums are a great way to group images within your project. For instance, you might have a "Post to Web" album and a "Send to Client" album. If you delete an album, the images won't be deleted. But if you delete a project, all the images from the project and albums underneath the project will go away.
It's also possible to create global albums which are at the top-level of your library along with different projects. The easiest way to create one is to select the Library in the Inspector and choose File > New > Album. This is useful to create an album with images from multiple projects such as "My Best Ever Images."
Here's where things can get confusing. Regardless of if they're at the global level or within a project, albums can contain images from other projects. You can even drag a global album within a project and vice-versa. Try creating a few albums, dragging images into them, dragging the albums around, and deleting them.
Smart albums are a special type of album where rather than dragging specific files into the album, you create a query (e.g. "all images taken in 2008") and Aperture automatically adds images to the album based upon the query. Like regular albums, smart albums can exist within a project or at the global level.
What's confusing about smart albums is figuring out what images they're searching. If you click the magnifying glass next to the smart album, its inspector will appear. In the title bar, after the album name, you will see a project name or "Library" within parenthesis so that you know what images are being searched. What's a bit odd is that if you drag a smart album from within a project to the global level or vice-versa, it doesn't change what images the smart album is searching. Instead, create a new smart album at the appropriate level.
Next up are folders. Just like on your computer, folders are a way to group related files around, and in this case, the files are albums and projects. Folders are most useful when you have a lot of albums or projects. For example, if you have a project for each wedding you shoot, you might make a global folder called "December 2008 Weddings" and move all your wedding projects from that timeframe into the folder. Then, you could collapse the folder so that you don't have to see all those projects in your list.
To make a folder at the global level, select the Library in the Inspector and choose File > New Folder. Notice that it has a blue icon. As you might expect, you can also make a folder within a project. This time, select the project and choose File > New Folder. Notice that its icon is yellow. Folders within projects are useful for grouping project files, like albums, books, light tables, and websites together.
With any luck, this short review has cleared up any confusion you might have had. Please feel free to ask questions and post any hints you have for working with projects, albums, and folders in the comments. Last but not least, happy new year!
Excellent explanation. I love smart albums -- I base a lot of my organization on creating big projects and subdividing those using keywords and smart albums that filter by keywords.
On a slightly related topic:
I hope the next version of Aperture tweaks these organization options.
For example, I'd like to be able to create smart albums within smart albums -- say, within my 2008 project, I have a Family smart album, and within that, my Christmas album. Or for work, within my Client X project I want a Company Parties smart album, and within that, an Xmas Party smart album.
Also, some better Filter options. I'd like to have the filter show me a "BUT NOT within a certain album or folder" -- show me all images from March 2008 BUT NOT those from the trip to Vermont. This is not a random thought -- it's something that would have been useful lately.
Joe, one thing you could do is create a folder for those different smart albums and just keep creating ones with further criteria (e.g. date is 2008, date is 2008 and keywords contain christmas). It wouldn't be as pretty has having everything grouped under one higher-level album, but it'd be a start.
Check out this blog post I wrote some time ago. It covers how to setup NOT keyword filters.
Very nice explanation - I think the confusion is the flexible nature of the folders and albums - because you can create anything, anywhere, you end up not quite knowing where you should be creating things!
This helps, thank you.
I love smart albums too. But as far as I can tell there is no way to search for, say dec 24, without specifying the year. It would be nice if one could do that, for example to have all photos taken on my birthday from all years in the library.
Great post, VERY useful, and right on time (I just started digging into Aperture's organization today, the 31st of Dec). Thanks a lot!
What is the difference between a folder you create within a project and an album created in that project?
Thanks
Marc, an album can contain only images whereas a folder can't contain images. Rather folders contain files like albums and other folders.
What I keep repeating is that projects (and blue folders) provide the primary way of organisation. Albums offer a secondary, completely independent way of organising images (any album can contain images from any project).
Projects tend to be input-referred, ie, where an image comes from (from which context) decides which project it goes into. Albums tend to be output-referred, ie, they are a way of grouping images for a special usage.
This explanation has been helpful. The organization of Projects, Albums, and Folders isn't as I had suspected. I'll try some test imports now to see if your teaching has sunk in.
In a somewhat related topic, might you offer some help in understanding what happens when Images, Albums, Projects, and Folders are deleted. I have accidentally lost images because of what seems like a confusing set of choices in the dialogue boxes. I am especially concerned about deleting my original RAW images that are simply stored in the Mac file structure and that have been copied into Aperture. I don't regard Aperture as the primary storage medium for original RAW files, but perhaps I am being too timid.
This explanation has been helpful. The organization of Projects, Albums, and Folders isn't as I had suspected. I'll try some test imports now to see if your teaching has sunk in.
In a somewhat related topic, might you offer some help in understanding what happens when Images, Albums, Projects, and Folders are deleted. I have accidentally lost images because of what seems like a confusing set of choices in the dialogue boxes. I am especially concerned about deleting my original RAW images that are simply stored in the Mac file structure and that have been copied into Aperture. I don't regard Aperture as the primary storage medium for original RAW files, but perhaps I am being too timid.
Ah, just on time. I'm writing a book about a charity I volunteer for ( about a rescue dog) and trying to organize photos according to chapters for the publisher. I've got the trial version of Aperture, ready to buy, I think.
I came from Adobe Album off former PC and have been trying to correlate Aperture in terms of keywords (like tagging in Adobe Album?) and setting up hierarchy of images. I have been really confused until this article and now I'm excited to try and set things up, not only for the book, but for over 20,000 other images. Yikes!
I'll be sticking around and reading some more. Thanks again.
I have a question. I have top-level folders and projects down, and I use it to manage many many projects, that are within folders.
My question is regarding Albums within projects. I have this problem all the time and I've abandoned the use of albums for this reason--I must be doing something wrong.
If I have a project with 2 stacks, each with 5 images in it. And say I want to create an album with just the "Pick" image from both stacks (say "upload album"). When I select just the pick images (two in total) and say "create album from selection"; when I go to view the album, all ten images (the pick and the rest) are in the album. Furthermore, I noticed that deleting the non-pick images from the album also causes unexpected results.
Can you please explain what I'm doing wrong. Thank you.
I have run into a total brick wall with my organization. Maybe someone could help resolve this issue I have ran into:
So I use top level folders to organize photos by years (then second level - months, third is projects).
I recently scanned in some old photos to one project under the folder 2004. It was unorganized and I was going to come back to it to reorganize it. Some of the photo's were from 2001 so i created a project in 2001 high level folder and moved some of those photos to that project (and it says so in the photo metadata). Now when i click on 2004 folder, it shows those images as being in entire 2004 folder, even though they were moved out of the project beneath 2004 and to the folder 2001. I have no way of deleting them from that 2004 folder view. Thoughts?
Alex, if you have a stack of images, you can't just grab one image from the stack to put in the other album. You could remove the image from the stack and put it in a different album, though. Could you explain more what you mean by "unexpected results" for deleting an image?
Rob, are you sure you moved (and didn't copy) the images to the 2001 project? What happens if you rename your 2004 folder something like "2004.old" and then recreate it and move the projects from 2004.old to 2004?
Ah, thank you so much for this quick to the point explanation. I think Aperture has just become very useful to me!