Until recently, I always used Adobe Bridge + Adobe Photoshop for file management and photo editing. This meant that I relied on a good folder structure and strict naming conventions for both folders and files. I tried several different folder structures, and all of them felt clumsy and took far longer that I was ever satisfied with. The problem lay in simply relying on a physical folder structure, especially when I needed to store several different versions of the same image.

Inside the folder for each photo category (Landscapes, Portraits, etc), I would have a parent folder which contained a few other folders named ‘Original’, ‘Master’, and ‘Web’. The ‘Original’ folder would contain the original images, obviously, the ‘Master’ folder would contain multi-layered .psd or .tiff files that I have edited into the final copy, and the ‘Web’ folder would contain any exports I needed for uploading onto the web, eg: sending to Flickr.

Using this method, every photo had a place and I would know exactly where they were, but it would take far too long to file the images in the correct place and navigate to each folder. I knew there had to be a better way. I was after a simpler way as well, but not so simple that the structure wasn’t powerful enough. It had to be usable.

Then I found Aperture.

This is, hands down, the best application I have ever used for digital image work. It takes on multiple roles including a digital photo management system, and an image processor that works in a non-destructive manner. I can easily find all of my images and view them however I want to.

Each Aperture project can contain 10,000 images. With this in mind, it took me a couple of tries to finally figure out the best way to approach the folder structure in Aperture. But I’ve finally settled on this approach:

Each year has its own folder, and within each folder is a project for each month. If a project has a lot of images for that month, I will organise them into albums.

Obviously, this folder structure won’t work well for everyone. Especially if you take more than 10,000 images in a single month (yikes!). For me, it’s ideal.

I’ve been researching other people’s workflows to gain some insight into what would work best for me. Mine is still in progress, but I’ve figured it out for the most part. Here’s a quick overview:

1. Import photos from my card into Aperture. I haven’t automated this yet, but I soon will.
2. Add metadata and rate/reject photos. I use a three star rating system, five is unnecessary and generally just takes too much time and gets in the way. Zero stars I leave as unrated, so I know I need to rate them. One star is good enough to archive but not really show. Two stars are good enough to show people. Three stars are photos I’m really proud of. I’ll then delete all the rejects.
3. I go through the photos with two stars or more and make edits. Generally I don’t edit the one stars, but it depends (mostly on the quantity).
4. If needed, I’ll do further editing in Photoshop, which I can open straight from Aperture with no fear of destructive edits. Saving will create a new version in Aperture, from which to work with.
5. I’ll then export to a different format (jpeg usually) on an as-needed basis. I have a folder for all exported images that emulates my Aperture folder structure by going Year > Month > “photo” (or “project” and then “photo” if the photo was part of a series of shots)

I also need to work out the best system for high dynamic range (HDR) photos using Photomatix Pro, since you can assign only one external editor that is linked from Aperture as far as I know. This will probably just mean it will take more steps for an HDR image, but since it does anyway it’s not a big deal.