# Organizing Photos



## Oakbridge (Mar 8, 2005)

I'm planning my winter project, which will be to organize my collection of digital pictures, scanned slides and negatives, and various 'archives' of pictures that are currently outside of my existing iPhoto library. I want to create some form of storage that will be better than what I have got right now. It's expanding as older relatives pass away and I end up on the receiving end of photos that go back at least 100. My cousins are going through the same thing, once cousin even has tintypes from the 19th century. 

Scanning will be done with a Nikon Coolscan V dedicated slide/negative scanner and an HP flatbed for photos with no negatives. 

My problem is that my main day to day machine is a MacBook Pro with approximately 250 Gb of total hard drive space. In addition to my laptop, I've got an iMac with a new 3 Tb internal drive. I've also got a Mac mini OS X Server. I figure that the iMac will be my main storage for most if not all of my photo library. I don't want to have my photo library stored on my laptop, it is way too big. I would like access wherever my photos end up residing from my MacBook Pro. I want to be able to import photos temporarily to my MacBook Pro such as when I am away, and I would like to be able to move what I call 'show-offs' to my iPad. 

I've decided that I will step up from iPhoto to Aperture. I haven't checked it thoroughly but it looks like Aperture can handle photos located in multiple sources. 

I'd also like to know if there is a way for something like FileMaker to have access to the metadata in pictures that are either in iPhoto or Aperture. I'd like to have more flexibility with regards to the metadata, but I don't want to move all of the data for each picture into a FM database by hand either. 

I'm looking at setting up a multiple backup strategy as well. Time Machine plus something else. 

Looking for workflow ideas and suggestions.


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

All I would say is for you to reconsider using Aperture in favour of Adobe's Lightroom.

Recent events don't make me trust Apple in maintaining any sort of support for their Pro Apps. Besides, LR is a much better product and will do all that you require. 

If it's any use, I use a MBPro and store all my images on external drives tied to LR Catalogs which are stored locally on the MacBook.


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## Oakbridge (Mar 8, 2005)

kps said:


> All I would say is for you to reconsider using Aperture in favour of Adobe's Lightroom.
> 
> Recent events don't make me trust Apple in maintaining any sort of support for their Pro Apps. Besides, LR is a much better product and will do all that you require.
> 
> If it's any use, I use a MBPro and store all my images on external drives tied to LR Catalogs which are stored locally on the MacBook.


Why should I reconsider?

I've reviewed both products. It seems that they run very close as far as features, with Aperture having an edge on things like geotagging, Faces, etc. So it comes down to price. How can you compare $300 vs. $80?

Unless I'm missing something here. I'm not a Photoshop user, I don't do much in the way of image editing, I'm primarily looking for workflow management. 

Leaving out the price difference, what makes you say that LR is a much better product?


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

I also would recommend Lightroom over Aperture, for the reasons kps stated. LR has become the industry standard whereas Aperture might very well be dropped by Apple at a moment's notice; I wouldn't put it past them. Their focus is less on software (other than the OS and iOs parts) and more on consumer electronics these days. It could die a slow, anemic death like iWeb or, reaching further back, Clarisworks. I know the cost differential is pretty compelling but these days I have my doubts as to how much Apple's management team remains committed to stuff on the margins of their colossal iPhone and iPad markets - including many of their so-called "Pro" applications.

Another consideration, in terms of workflow management, is cloud storage. Doesn't Picassa do this sort of thing very well? I imagine iPhoto will beef up too, once iCloud gets rolling, which is reportedly going to be very soon. You don't even need local storage space. Yeah, you run the risk of the cloud going down from time to time. I dunno. Depends on how mission-critical your project really is. If it's truly important, I'd investigate a dedicated terabyte external drive and build it all in LR - but that's just me. More money, yes. But I guess you have to ask what the project is worth to you, in terms of a fiscal investment. If you want to do it cheap, there are risks there as well, of course.

Finally, if you are going to be scanning all sorts of old and aged photographs, I imagine you will in time see the value of some brilliant editing tools to restore and bright out the best of such images. Both LR and Apple's product will help you there - no need to go into Photoshop at all. My essential point is that, if you're taking the time and trouble to scan all that data in and faithfully organize it, you might as well go the distance and commit to working them up into optimal shape. Might be a bit of a learning curve there but the results will be worth it.

Just my .02.


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## crawford (Oct 8, 2005)

Interesting discussion, except for the FUD about what Apple *might* do with Aperture. It's not like Adobe has never discontinued a product before. Still haven't heard any compelling reasons why LR is a much better product. The reviews I have read suggest that it's pretty much a wash. Luckily there are free trials of each product. 

However, if LR was able to export the metadata to FM, that might be a more compelling reason to spend >3x the money. 

I'm interested in knowing what else FM will be able to do with the metadata that Aperture's smart albums can not do.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2011)

You could also just use finder. Spotlight searches within all the photo metadata for you if you do want/need to search by that criteria. If you want to extract the metadata I'd suggest using something like exiftool from the command line and writing up your own little connector for FM if that's your preference. PHP5 also has built-in stuff for exif data extraction too.

ExifTool by Phil Harvey


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

Oakbridge said:


> Why should I reconsider?
> 
> I've reviewed both products. It seems that they run very close as far as features, with Aperture having an edge on things like geotagging, Faces, etc. So it comes down to price. How can you compare $300 vs. $80?
> 
> ...


Since you "reviewed both products" it seems you already have your decision. No point in me going into some tome on the subject. It would be like discussing why someone should chose Daylite over Outlook. Happy scanning!


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

Ditto. Happy scanning indeed. Never was my intention to serve up FUD soufflé. You asked a question, I tried to answer.

Best of luck on the project.


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## Todd (Oct 14, 2002)

Oakbridge said:


> I've also got a Mac mini OS X Server.


If you have a server set-up, why wouldn't you store everything there and access it from the Macbook or the iMac or where ever?

Then focus your back-up solutions on the server.


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## Todd (Oct 14, 2002)

kps said:


> All I would say is for you to reconsider using Aperture in favour of Adobe's Lightroom.
> 
> Recent events don't make me trust Apple in maintaining any sort of support for their Pro Apps. Besides, LR is a much better product and will do all that you require.


If everyone buys Lightroom over Aperture because of a fear that Apple will cancel Aperture ... then Apple will cancel Aperture because people stopped buying it.

Second, does it matter if a software product is cancelled? Your copy will continue to do everything it did when you bought it, forever, until you decide it doesn't meet your needs any longer.

Third, the price difference between Lightroom and Aperture gives Aperture a huge advantage.


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## Guest (Sep 27, 2011)

Todd said:


> Second, does it matter if a software product is cancelled? Your copy will continue to do everything it did when you bought it, forever, until you decide it doesn't meet your needs any longer.


Forever? Hardly. Lots of times OS updates break compatibility with apps. How many apps did the Lion update "break" for example ...


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## keebler27 (Jan 5, 2007)

Regardless of AP or LR - first off - congratulations! This will be a long project, but so well worth it in the end!

I use AP. I've been doing the same thing as you plan and here are some thoughts:

1. all original scanned photographs go into 1 folder on my mac pro

2. that is saved on its own to an external hard drive

3. then that folder is duplicated (on my mac pro) for editing

3.5 that edited folder is also saved onto the same external hard drive. Despite having proper backups, I've twice 'lost' the AP library and subsequent hard work so I'm a bit anal retentive about it 

4. as photos are edited, i drop them into folders named by year - month - day (as long as I have a date). If no date is available, then into a yearly or monthly folder, depending on what info i have.

5. Then imported into AP

6. the first external hard drive I mentioned is also then copied to an different external hard drive, just to be safe. Then I burn DVDs on top of that step.

Some scanning tips using that scanner (I have it):

Scan at 2000 DPI and 2x's multi-sampling. Anything more is overkill imho and creates an unnecessarily larger file.

save as TIFFs. easier to save a jpg if needed for email. It's that proverbial 3 layer sandwich - you can save it then squish it, but if you squish it first, it won't go back to that nice juicy 3 layered sandwich 

7. Have fun!

I'm doing a poor job of metatagging which is my big next job. doh!

Cheers,
Keebler


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## Todd (Oct 14, 2002)

mguertin said:


> Forever? Hardly. Lots of times OS updates break compatibility with apps. How many apps did the Lion update "break" for example ...


I think that falls into the "... until you decide it doesn't meet your needs any longer" category. Seriously; if you left your computer alone, it would keep doing what it's always done until something mechanical or electrical failed. Software doesn't wear out. You can install an old Mac with OS 8 and play OS 8 era games if you want to. Just because OS 8 and the games were discontinued long ago doesn't mean their bits & bytes suddenly stop working.

I haven't purchased Lion because it doesn't work with some of the software I own. Do you know what I discovered the day after I decided to not buy Lion? I pushed the power button on my Mac, it started up, and all my apps worked exactly the way they did the following day!

Eventually there will be so many great new things in the Mac OS that I will want to upgrade. Maybe there won't be an Aperture 4 and one day I'll buy Lightroom 5. But I wouldn't spend hundreds more dollars today to buy one software product over another simply because of a rumour that there won't be a next version of one of them.


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## Guest (Sep 27, 2011)

Computers break too. Forever is a long time.


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## Max (Sep 26, 2002)

Todd said:


> Eventually there will be so many great new things in the Mac OS that I will want to upgrade. Maybe there won't be an Aperture 4 and one day I'll buy Lightroom 5. But I wouldn't spend hundreds more dollars today to buy one software product over another simply because of a rumour that there won't be a next version of one of them.


In the case of the OP, much depends on how long the proposed project will take. Lots of people start out with the best of intentions to scan in all of the combined family photos from multiple generations - then suddenly give up in the face of the mountain of workload and sheer tedium it can entail. That happened to one of my brothers and I can't say I blame him. It was several hundred photographs, and just a few weeks in he lost steam and finally stopped altogether. He had all the tools and time to do the job, too. It's just one of those things. Point being, if your project which should take two months turns into a multi-year thing, ensuing software and hardware incompatibles can indeed mess things up royally.

Certainly there is no right or wrong way to go about such a project.


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## keebler27 (Jan 5, 2007)

btw, i forgot to include that i use CCC (Carbon copy cloner) for all the backup procedures.
great app!


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