Subtitles of the Movie

In this movie, we're going to talk about the language of Aperture. Whenever you start to use any new software, there is a learning curve. One of the keys to learning Aperture is to understand the language that it uses. Without that, you'll flounder with your organization and you won't take full advantage of all of Aperture's features. The first concept that you must grasp is that of Project. Your images live within Projects. In many ways, Projects are similar to the way people typically use folders. You create a Project for each organizational unit of images. For example, I went on a trip to the Arctic and so I have a Project for the Arctic. Similarly I have one for Bora Bora and I have one for Provence. I might also have other Projects from other locations or other subject matter that I consider organization, such as flowers. If you're a wedding photographer, then each client would likely be a Project. So you'd have the Smith wedding as one Project and the Jones wedding as another. Think of a Project as referring to the entire shoot. Within a Project you can have as many Albums as you want. An Album is a subunit. They're the ones with these little, blue icons. Even though it may look like images are in the Albums, the images are actually just in the Project. Albums help you see a group of the images. For example, in Provence, I can just look at those that I considered the best, which are 77 images, rather than 1,517 images. The wedding photographer might have specific Albums for the ceremony, family portraits, cake shots, etcetera. The neat thing is that your images can appear in as many Albums as you want without having to duplicate the master file. The Albums simply reference the image in the Project without recreating a whole new file. The next unit that we need to talk about are Folders. Folders in Aperture exist only as organizers. Images don't actually exist specifically within a Folder. Projects can dwell in a Folder or a Folder can exist within a Project. So let me show you exactly what I mean. If I click on the Library, which is the largest unit, and then choose New Folder, a New Folder will be added in the Panel. Let me give this a title of Foreign. Maybe I want to group all my Foreign Projects together. Now I can drag my Bora Bora Project up here into the Foreign Folder and you can see that it's just like an outline. The Bora Bora Project is now a subunit of this Folder. If I collapse the Folder, then I no longer see Bora Bora, but if I expand it, then I see my Bora Bora Project. I can move multiple Projects in there; however I can also create a Folder within a specific Project by clicking on the Project itself and then clicking to add a New Folder. At this point perhaps I want to call this Folder Output. Now I can put my Smart Album in the Output Folder and my Album that has the images for the iPhone in the Output Folder. The Folders are used only for organizational purposes. Many people never use Folders at all when they deal with Aperture. Another term that you must know are Previews. The Previews are JPG versions of your image that can be directly used in other applications such as Mail, Keynote, iWeb, etcetera. When we talk about the Library up here, the Library refers to the whole shebang. It's a special Folder that contains all your Projects, images, image Previews, the way you set up the organization schema, all of the edits and adjustments you've applied to your images. It's everything that you access from this Inspector Panel. The Vault down here at the bottom of the Projects Panel is a clone of your Library that can exist on any drive that has enough free space. You can have multiple Vaults if you choose. This provides a backup of not only all the managed images that are in the Library, but also all of your edits. Another term you need to know is the Viewer and the Browser. The Viewer is the one that holds the main Preview of your image and the Browser is what contains the thumbnails. When we talk about Primary Image, if you have more than one image appearing there, the Primary Image is the one that you're working on. It's denoted by the heavy white outline. Sometimes you'll see a thin white outline around the other image to indicate that it's selected, but the heavy image indicates that it's a Primary Image. The last term you need to be aware of is Metadata. Metadata is information about the image ranging from exposure in camera information to copyright information and keywords. Knowing the vocabulary will help you to use Aperture more effectively and more easily.