Preparing the Project

Before we can begin working with our circus images, we need to import them. Aperture provides many options for importing images. You can import them directly from your camera or media card, from files that are already on your hard disk, or from Aperture project files. But Aperture not only lets you choose where you want to import images from, it also gives you options for where the imported images will be stored.

As discussed in Lesson 1, you can import images into Aperture's Library, which copies the files, called managed images, into the Library location you've specified in the Preferences dialog. You can also choose to import images as referenced images. Choosing whether to use referenced images is not a global choice. You can make the decision on an image-by-image basis.

What Happens When You Import an Image?

When you import an image into your Aperture Library, the image is copied from its original location to the Aperture Library package, which is a special kind of folder. By default, the Library package is kept in the Pictures folder inside your Home folder. (In Chapter 11, you'll learn how to move the Aperture Library.)

When you import an image as a reference, the original image file is left in its original location. Aperture builds a thumbnail-size image of the file and stores that in its Library, along with a large preview image, which is also stored in the Library. You can import a reference from an image stored on an external hard disk, CD or DVD, or network server. Even if you take the original volume offline, you'll still see the image in your Aperture Library, because Aperture has the preview image that it built, safely tucked away in the Library.

Importing an image as a reference is analogous to making an alias of a document in the Finder. The reference is simply a pointer to the original image data.

In Chapter 11, we'll explore some of the reasons you might choose to import files as references, rather than into your main Aperture Library. For now, we'll practice importing using both techniques.

Importing the First Batch

Three days of rehearsal shooting yielded around 1,200 images. These pictures were shot in RAW format using an 8-megapixel Canon EOS 20D. We've pared the shoot down to a selection of 53 images, which we'll import in two batches, one now and one later in this lesson. In Lesson 2, you learned how to turn on auto-stacking when importing bracketed, or burst, images. You could do that with these images, but instead we'll create the stacks manually in Aperture so that we can explore a few other organizational features first.

The first batch of images that we'll use in this lesson has been saved in the Lesson08 folder, in a subfolder called Chapter 8 Part 1.

1.	Insert the APTS_Aperture1.5 DVD. Open it and navigate to Lessons > Lesson08.
2.	Open the folder called Lesson08 First Import. Inside, you'll find 46 images, plus a folder containing an additional 7 shots of a juggler.

We're going to import these images directly from the DVD as referenced images to demonstrate the power of referenced import. In addition, we're going to use the "Import Folders as Projects" command to preserve the folder structure of the original folder.

1.	Open Aperture.
2.	Choose Window > Layouts > Maximize Browser, or press Command-Option-B to change to the Maximize Browser view. This provides a large Browser, which makes it easier to view lots of thumbnails at once.
3.	In the Projects panel, click the Library to select it. We're going to let Aperture create a new project name for us, so we want to select the Library to indicate that the new project should not be created inside another, existing project.
4.	Choose File > Import > Folders as Projects, or press Command-Shift-I.
5.	Navigate to the APTS_Aperture_book_files > Lessons > Lesson08 > Lesson08 First Import folder on the Aperture DVD.
6.	Change the Store Files pop-up menu to "In their current location." This tells Aperture to leave the files where they are, and to import a reference to them. Let's also tell Aperture to give the imported files names that are more meaningful than the camera-generated names.
7.	In the Version Name pop-up menu, choose "Custom Name with Index" and then enter Pickle Circus into the Name Text field. This will name each image Pickle Circus with a sequential number.
8.	Click Open. Aperture will begin importing the images into a new project called Lesson08 First Import. The project will automatically be selected, allowing you to see the thumbnails as they are imported.
9.	When the Import Complete dialog box appears, click OK.

Even though Aperture has successfully imported everything and is showing you thumbnails, it's most likely still doing some processing in the background. Let's take a look at what it's up to.

1.

From the Window menu, choose Show Control Bar, or press D. On the left end of the control bar, you should see a progress indicator spinning.

2.

Click the progress indicator to open the Task List window. You can also open it by selecting Window > Show Task List. This window shows any tasks that Aperture might be performing in the background. It should have at least one entry that says "Processing previews." This indicates that Aperture is building preview images for your imported files. Because these images are being imported as references, Aperture builds a preview image that it uses for display. This way, even if you take the original file offline (which you could do simply by ejecting the DVD), Aperture can still show you the image.

Preview images are full-resolutionthat is, they have the same resolution as your original file. They're stored inside your Aperture Library as a JPEG image. If the original image is available (in this case, it is, because the DVD is still mounted in your computer), then the original image is shown. If the file goes offline, then the preview image is shown.

If you're working with a large number of very high-resolution images, it may take a while for Aperture to build all the preview images. Fortunately, Apple has very intelligently given preview building a low priority, so you can continue to work with Aperture without experiencing a big slowdown. We'll discuss preview images more in Chapter 11.

Images that have been imported by as references show a small badge, very similar to the alias indicator in the Macintosh Finder.

Finally, note that Aperture has automatically created two albums within our project. The first album contains the 46 images that were in our selected folder, while the second album contains the 7 images that were in the subfolder.

The "Import Folders as Projects" command automatically turns subfolders into albums.

Configuring the Browser

By now, you're familiar with Aperture's Browser and Viewer, and the application's different layout configurations. As you know, thumbnails of your images are displayed in a grid or list view in the Browser. By default, however, Aperture spaces all thumbnails evenly whether they're in portrait or landscape orientation. This can result in gaps that reduce the total number of thumbnails you can see at once. With a large collectionsuch as our 53 Pickle Family Circus shotsit helps to turn on proportional spacing for the Browser display. This is an option in Aperture's Preferences.

1.	Choose Aperture > Preferences.
2.	Select the checkbox "Use proportional spacing for images in Grid View." Aperture packs the images more closely together, rather than aligning them all to a fixed grid. Now, you can see more thumbnail images onscreen in the Browser.

Arranging Images in the Browser

In addition to using stacks and ratings to organize images in Aperture, there are a few convenient ways to organize images directly in the Browser: You can use the Sort pop-up menu, and you can freely drag to reposition images in any order. The Sort pop-up menu, by default, organizes images in the Browser by Image Date, but you can change that.

1.	If it's not already selected, click the Lesson08 First Import project. This will display thumbnails of all of the images in the project.
2.	Click the Sort pop-up menu at the top of the Browser and choose Orientation. Aperture rearranges the images in the Browser so that all of the portrait images are together and all of the landscape images are together.
3.	Choose Image Date from the Sort pop-up menu. Dragging images in the Browser is a good way to group images by subject or content or string them together into a narrative.
4.	Select this group of images:
5.	Drag the selected images next to the other images of the ballet acrobats. Notice that after you drag the images in the Browser, the Sort pop-up menu at the top of the Browser changes to Custom.
6.	Choose Image Date from the Sort pop-up menu. Aperture rearranges the images by the date and time they were captured.
7.	Choose Custom from the Sort pop-up menu. Aperture remembers your custom arrangement, and you can switch back to it at any time by choosing Custom from this menu.
8.	Choose Image Date from the Sort pop-up menu. We want to view the images in the order they were shot. Note Custom arrangements are lost when projects are exported, but you can preserve a custom arrangement by placing the images in an album. Album order is remembered when a project is exported. Now that you've imported the project and have learned some tricks about arranging images in the Browser, let's get to work stacking our Pickle Family Circus images.