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I've finally figured out a half-decent workflow for my stuff (which you can possibly even help me with). I figured i'd post it here, it may be of use to others.
I was facing the problem of Aperture vs iPhoto 6. Both are now unibin. Both run k-sweet on my hackintosh. But each has advantages and disadvantages:
iPhoto:
+ Imports movies
+ Nice, easy interface
+ Works with Front Row and other iLife apps
- Basic keywording only
- Destructive edits
Aperture:
+ Improved workflow
+ Non-destructive editing
+ Improved rating and keywording
- Doesnt import movies
- No Front Row / iLife goodness
What I realised is that I dont have to choose between them, I can use them both, and exploit their strengths.
So I use Aperture as my 'digital darkroom' - the first port of call for importing pictures (though not movies - more on that later). I have all of my photos (5000+ since 2002) imported in Aperture, and organised to meaningful projects, all organised in a heirarchical folder structure. Eg:
Family -> Trips and Holidays -> Holidays -> 2005 - Italy and Switzerland
We were in Italy and Switzerland for two weeks, and I shot about 400-450 photos. Now, despite my best intentions, many of them are basically crap (out of focus, hand shake issues, just not terribly interesting shots etc etc), and some of them are good but need work (cropping, straightening, colour adjustments etc). Aperture's workflow lets me burn through a large project in no time, stacking similar images and making a select; fixing, straightening, cropping and adjusting - allowing me to round-trip to Photoshop for any advanced adjustments -; and then applying ratings, marking the unusable ones are rejects (-1 stars), and marking any I actually want to see in my finished shoot album with 1 star or above, according to how good I think the photo is (currently I use 0 stars to denote a photo which is technically ok (in focus etc) but isnt all that interesting).
I then create a smart album of photos from that project with 1 star or above. This gives me my selections, and weeds out all the chaff. I then go through them one more time, making sure i'm happy with the adjustments and ratings, and I give each one a proper name. Finally, I do an export of the images in the smart album to a appropriately-named folder on the desktop, selecting 'JPEG - Fit within 1024 x 1024' for the export. This gives me web-friendly images, with proper names etc, all in a nicely named folder. I then import this into iPhoto, which creates a Film Roll with the name of the folder (eg 'Italy and Switzerland 2005'). I'm then free to use these images in iDVD, iMovie etc, and also to show them off to visiting friends and family via Front Row (controlled via Salling Clicker and my phone). I can also export directly from iPhoto to my website via iPhotoToGallery.
I think this approach gives me the best of both worlds, and allows me to exploit the individual strengths of Aperture, Photoshop, iPhoto and Gallery.
Things I still have issues with:
- Movie Clips: Aperture won't import them, but can unceremoniously dump them to a directory. I current dont do anything with them, but my feeling is that I should probably put them into iPhoto. Perhaps Image Capture and some Applescript magic could help?
- Duplication of disk space. On my current hackintosh this is not an issue, but I plan to move to a MacBook soon, where disk space is going to be more scarce. One option is to archive off the old Aperture projects to an offline store. Meh, who knows?
- Unnecessary effort. Perhaps Automator can help me here. I have seen one Automator action for Aperture to iPhoto, but it didnt do the nicely-named folder -> film roll name thing.
So... opinions anyone? Does anyone else use anything similar? Or completely different?
Anyone have any tips to share?
