Chapter Nine. Putting It All Together

Now that you’ve seen how Aperture’s tools function and how to use them to approach each part of your image organization and editing workflow, we’ll take one final look at how you can put all of these tools to work. First, though, we’re going to explore one Aperture feature that we haven’t previously covered: backup.

Performing Automatic Backup

The last part of any photography workflow should be some kind of backup and archiving process. For those of you who aren’t clear on the difference, backup is what you do while you’re working on your images so that, in the event of a crash, you can recover your work. Archiving is the process of storing your completed images.

A good backup system is one that is easy to use while you’re working on your images and that provides a simple mechanism for recovery should you need it. Archiving can be a more complex process, and we’ll discuss it later in this chapter. Aperture includes a built-in backup facility that also makes a good archiving tool.

Aperture can automatically create and manage a special duplicate of your Aperture library called a vault. You can, of course, duplicate your library yourself using the Finder. The advantage to using an Aperture vault is that it can make progressive backups. In a progressive backup system, after you’ve made your initial backup, only the new files (or files that have changed since the last backup) are duplicated. This is a much more efficient process than if you have to duplicate the entire library every time you want to back up your work.

When you launch Aperture, its splash screen tells you how many projects and images in your library have not been stored in a vault. If you’ve never backed up anything, then these numbers will include all of the items in your library. Otherwise, they’ll include only the items that have not been saved in a previous backup.

You can create your vault on the same drive as your library, but while this will give you a useful backup should your library become corrupted, it won’t help you at all if your drive crashes. So for the most secure backup, you’ll want to use a second drive: either an external drive or, if you’re using a Mac tower, a second internal drive.

Creating a vault

Before you can tell Aperture to back up your library, you need to create a vault file. This is the document in which Aperture will store your library, and as already mentioned, it’s best to create it on a second drive.

Here’s how to create a vault:

1. Open the action menu at the bottom of the Projects pane and choose Add Vault, or choose File > Vault > Add Vault.

The Vault panel will open, and any vaults that you’ve created will be listed.

2. A Save dialog box will appear. Select a location to store your vault.

Aperture will add the new vault to the list of vaults in the Vault panel. If you want, you can rename it.

For added security, you can create as many vaults as you want, on as many different drives as you feel are necessary. You can open the reveal arrow next to the vault name to see the path to the vault’s location.

The thermometer display shows how much of your destination drive’s storage space is allocated for the vault (Figure 9.1). Aperture grabs a chunk that’s a little larger than your current library to guarantee that your vault has room to grow. As long as there’s available space on your drive, though, Aperture will expand the vault as needed.

Figure 9.1. Aperture uses vaults to create progressive backups of your Aperture library. You can create and manage vaults using the controls at the bottom of the Projects pane.

Updating a vault

Though you have created a vault, you haven’t yet backed up any of your files. To update your vault, backing up all files as necessary, click the Update button next to any vault’s name. To update all vaults that you’ve created, click the Update button at the bottom of the Projects panel.

Aperture will begin copying any images that have not been previously archived. If you have deleted images since your last update, those master images will be removed from the vault and placed in a folder called <Vault_Name> Deleted Images, which will be located in the same directory as the vault itself.

Restoring from a vault

If a drive failure or other problem occurs and your Aperture library is destroyed, you can rebuild the library from your saved vault. Obviously, Aperture can restore only to the state of your last backup.

To restore from a vault, follow these steps:

1. Choose Aperture > Vault > Restore Library.

Aperture presents the Restore Library dialog box (Figure 9.2).

Figure 9.2. You’ll need to configure this dialog box to restore your files from a saved vault.

2. From the Source Vault pop-up menu, choose Select Source Vault; then select your vault file.

3. You can restore to your current library or to a completely different library file. If you’re rebuilding your system from scratch, you’ll most likely want to restore to the current library, so you can leave the Library Destination pop-up menu set to its default.

4. Click the Restore button to begin the restoration.

Aperture will begin copying your library information from your vault into your library.

If you have simply messed up your library—made bad edits, reorganized things in a way that you no longer like—you can restore over your current library. Your library will be completely replaced, and any images that were in your library will be placed in a new library file called Aperture Library_Old.

Performing Manual Backup

You can perform your Aperture backup manually, using any of several techniques. If you want to back up your entire library, you can simply drag the Aperture Library document to another drive. However, it’s better to use Aperture’s vault system for this purpose, because your future backup operations will be much faster, thanks to the vault system’s progressive backup architecture.

Using the Export Versions command that you learned about in the previous chapter, you can export your final images to any drive, or export them and then burn them to a CD or DVD. Similarly, you can use the Export Master command to export your original images for backup and archiving.

However, because versions are final, rendered files, you won’t be able to go back later and adjust any of your edits, and your master images won’t have any adjustments applied to them. Remember, your edits are stored in the version files kept within your Aperture projects, so to create a backup that preserves the editability of your images, you need to back up your Aperture projects.

You can back up a project by selecting it in the Projects pane and then choosing File > Export Project. The entire project—versions, masters, books, albums, and any other objects—will be written to a file.

You can also export a project by dragging it from the Projects pane to the Finder.

To import a project into Aperture, either drag the project file from the Finder to the Projects pane or choose File > Import > Projects. Aperture will copy the project into your library.

Putting It All Together

By this point, you’ve spent some time with all of Aperture’s features. Hopefully, you’ve seen that not only does the program provide most of the image editing features you need, and very smooth integration with applications that have any other features you want, but that these features are so seamlessly integrated that you can quickly move from task to task without the hassle of saving files, invoking specific modes, or saving special versions.

So now we’ll sum up by taking a look at a real-world example of how you might use Aperture. There are many ways to exploit Aperture’s power and this is just one possible workflow, but hopefully this description will help you understand how to use all the tools you’ve learned about in an Aperture-driven approach to your photo post-production work.

Assuming that you’ve returned from a digital shoot with a camera full of images, here’s how you might construct your editing pipeline:

Copy your images to your hard drive

Aperture can import images directly from your camera’s media card, but I prefer to first copy the images to my Mac’s drive. As you’ll see later, this approach facilitates a specific long-term archiving strategy. Also, copying images to your hard drive using the Finder is speedier than copying directly from the media card. If you’re shooting in the field and need to free up your media card as quickly as possible, this speed difference may be important.

Import images into Aperture

After you’ve imported your images to a folder on your drive, import them into Aperture. Because Aperture’s Import dialog box shows you image thumbnails, use the Import step as the first major edit of your selection. While some people insist on importing every image, because you never know what you might need, there are usually some images that are plainly bad. Don’t bother importing the wildly out-of-focus images, the images that are plainly too over- or underexposed to be usable, lens cap shots, and so forth. If your shoot went well, you’ll already have enough media to wade through, so why complicate your work? If you’re not sure about the exposure or focus of an image, import the image anyway; you can always delete it later. Stack your images in the Import dialog box, as this will give you a leg up on your organization efforts.

Sort, organize, rate, and keyword your images

Using the tools you learned about in Chapter 4, get your images organized. Aperture is very flexible in this regard, and you have lots of tools and options at your disposal. Organize your images into stacks to keep related shots together, and start selecting your pick images. If you find images that plainly aren’t usable, delete them—again, there’s no reason to clutter your library. You don’t have to apply keywords, but they can make your future organization and image access much easier. You don’t have to apply ratings, either, but you do need some way to keep track of your pick images. If you’re diligently stacking your pictures, then use the stack pick feature.

One of the best ways to keep track of your picks is to create an album for them within your project. You can either use a regular album and drag your picks into it, or use a Smart Album and configure it to include five-star images or images with a particular keyword—whatever marker you like for tagging your best images.

Edit your picks

Once you’ve found your picks, you’re ready to start editing. If you’re shooting raw, you’ll have some additional editing controls, but of course with Aperture, there’s no separate raw conversion step that you have to work into your pipeline. Your raw controls sit right alongside your other editing tools.

If you’ve placed your picks in an album, you can simply work your way through that album and edit each image—you won’t even have to look at your reject images. Sometimes, once you start editing, you may realize that the edit you want to make is not possible on your pick—perhaps the image doesn’t have enough usable data, or there’s an exposure problem you didn’t notice earlier. If your images are stacked, you can immediately open the stack and look for a better candidate, all without ever leaving your album of pick images.

If you want to experiment with different edits, create new versions. And remember: if you need to perform any edits in Photoshop, try to do those as early as possible in your editing process.

Create your output

After editing your picks, create whatever output you need. Depending on your workflow needs and the needs of your client, you may actually start outputting before you’re done editing. For example, if you need to show proofs to a client, you may put up a Web site or make some sample prints. Often, as you prepare outputs, you’ll recognize additional edits that need to be made. As you saw in the last chapter, these edits can be made without returning to any kind of special editing mode.

Outputting your images will often lead you to create additional versions, as you may need special corrections for prints or other output. As you saw in the previous chapter, you may want to create Smart Albums to keep track of versions of images that you have tailored to particular types of output.

You may go through several output steps as your clients refine their ideas, change their minds, decide they need additional types of output, and so on. You should find that Aperture’s flexibility makes short work of these issues.

Back up your images

How often you should back up depends entirely on how much work you’re willing to lose. Personally, I don’t want to lose even a day’s worth of work, so at the end of each workday I fire up the drive that contains my vault and then click the Update button to update my backup. If you’ve just finished a particularly difficult group of edits that you absolutely could not re-create, consider performing a backup then. Since Aperture’s progressive backup scheme is fairly speedy, this is not a terrible inconvenience.

Archive your images

Because Aperture currently limits your library to a single volume, it’s not always practical to keep all of your images in your Aperture library. Fortunately, for most day-to-day work, you probably don’t need access to all of your images. If you’ve been following this procedure, then your Aperture library currently contains only your select images, adjusted and ready to use. The initial image copy that you placed on your computer may contain many additional images, including copies of some images that you may have deleted after importing into Aperture. If you copy this original batch of images to CD or DVD for long-term storage, then you’ll have archived copies of all of your original master files. You can then delete the files that you copied to your drive in the first step of this process.

Catalog your archive

With your original images burned to disk, you’ll want some way of keeping track of them. Using an image cataloging program like iView MediaPro or Extensis Portfolio, you can build a thumbnail catalog of all of your archived media.

You now have easy access to all of your images. Your Aperture library contains all of your edited select images, ready for printing (and if you’ve properly stacked your pictures, you have easy access to related alternates). Your Aperture library also contains all of your output—Web sites, books, prints, and so on. Thanks to Aperture’s nondestructive editing and flexible interface, you can quickly get to your images, edit them, create new versions, and output them in multiple ways. You can throw together portfolios, post sample images, and more, without having to wade through lots of unused, irrelevant alternates.

If you need to open an image in Photoshop, you can launch it in Photoshop from within Aperture. For safekeeping, your Aperture library itself is archived on another drive.

Finally, if you need access to an image that’s not in your Aperture library, you can search for it in the catalogs that you’ve built with your image cataloging program, and then import the image from one of your archived CDs or DVDs.

Hopefully, with an Aperture-driven production, you’ll find that your editing tasks are easier, and that you’re spending the bulk of your time working with your images, rather than simply managing them.

With all that extra time, you can go out and shoot more!