Apple Aperture - Manual (Page 90)

90 Part I Interface and Acquisition
Planning Your Import Strategy
Before you import images into Aperture, it’s a good idea to plan the organization of
your images. Eventually your image library may contain many thousands of images that
you’ll want organized in a flexible and easy-to-manage system. It’s important to take a
long-term view of what makes for an effective and efficient organization of your
projects based on your specific type of photography.
You may already have a large digital portfolio that you eventually want to import into
the Aperture Library. As an import strategy, it’s best to try out importing images in a
series of steps:
 Open and use the sample project as you explore Aperture features.
 If you have an iPhoto Library, you can import it so that you can use your images in
Aperture. For more information about importing your iPhoto Library, see “ Importing
Your iPhoto Library ” on page 112.
 Make trial imports of a small group of images directly from your digital camera or
card reader. Learn about the filenaming and automatic metadata features of
Aperture. For information about importing from your digital camera or card reader,
see “
Importing from Your Digital Camera or Card Reader ,” next.
 Plan how you want to import your legacy digital images. Because you may have many
thousands of images previously stored on disk, you need to decide whether you’ll store
newly imported images in the Aperture Library, or store them as referenced images,
leaving them in their current hard disk locations. You can also copy or move images to
a different hard disk location when importing them. Also, plan the project organization
you’ll need to hold the images. For more information about importing files, see
“
Importing Image Files Stored on Your Computer ” on page 97.
 Try out the different methods for importing individual files into your system. You can
import individual files, import files stored in folders, and drag files or folders from the
Finder into Aperture. For more information, see “
Dragging Files from the Finder to
the Projects Panel ” on page 110 and “ Importing Folders of Images from the Finder ”
on page 111.
Once you’re familiar with Aperture, you can begin to create and organize your
professional image management system.