Imaging Tip: Aperture Quick Tip

IMAGING TIP: Aperture Quick Tip
by Rich Seiling

One of the complaints I’ve heard about Apple’s new Aperture software is the supposed "proprietary database" that stores the images. The truth is that any of the photographs stored in your Aperture Library can be accessed without Aperture, if you know how. Here are two ways:

1. The quickest way is to do a search for the filename for the photo you want to access. As you can see here, when I search for DSCF2094.JPG, it finds the version buried deep in Aperture’s database, where I can easily access it.

2. You can also select any Aperture Library, and use control-click to access a contextual menu, where you can choose Show Package Contents to navigate through library files.

While this dispels the myth that your photos are locked away forever, Aperture’s Libraries are organized in a format that is less-than-friendly for finder viewing. To solve this new problem, we need a different solution.

Keep Two Copies of Your Digital Files
While Aperture offers a nearly complete set of tools to manage, edit, and correct your digital photographs, you don't have to do everything with Aperture. That includes where and how you store your digital images. As you learn the ins-and-outs of the program, I think it's wise to have two copies of your digital camera files.

The first copy, which we’ll call the primary archive, is simply a series of folders containing your files...probably similar to the way you organize them now. These files can be easily accessed and navigated through the Mac’s finder, and should not be modified by any program at any time. They are, in essence, your digital negatives.

With Aperture you can import these folders and create a secondary archive, which you can work on with all of Aperture’s powerful features, leaving the primary copy untouched.

To perpetuate this model as you make new photographs, don’t download your digital files directly into Aperture. Instead, make a new folder in your primary archive and put them there first. Then import that folder into Aperture and work away to your heart’s content, safe in the knowledge that you can go back to your primary archive at any time, with any software you choose.