Duplicate Project Structure – One of the Most Important Aperture 3 Features
One of the most impressive and helpful features in Aperture 3 so subtly integrated that the power of this tool takes some contemplation. But it solves a major hurdle I’ve encountered in my years of teaching workflow—helping people set up repeatable organizational structures for their Projects that they can just utilize in a breeze.
The Duplicate Project Structure solves so many problems, all with a quick trip to the File>Duplicate Project Structure menu, or a simple Right-Click on a Project. Part of the power of this tool isn’t even in the command itself—although its ability to instantly create the framework of a workflow is powerful enough—but in the way that Aperture now can export and import Projects.
Photographers can quickly and easily create a Project and fill it up with images, and then simply duplicate the structure of that Project without any images in it. Let’s take a look at one of these workflows to see how incredible this is with a Project structure sent to us by photographer and Aperture expert Thomas Boyd combined with a shoot I did recently.
A Glimpse At Our Shoot
Here’s just part of our shoot, original files from a wedding. As usual we’d flag and rate these images.
A Simple Plan
This Project has everything that Boyd needs to do a day’s shoot, showing him at a glance all the images he’s flagged and he’s rated, along with the video he’s shot.
This workflow from Boyd happens to fit what I need. Each Smart Album displays only images that match its criteria. This is a great way to help me pick selects.
Flags of Our Friends
Here’s the results when I click on the Flagged Smart Album.
Now let’s think about workflow for a moment. Let’s say that the next day I’d want to go out and do a shoot with the same organization. I want folders for images I’ve flagged, folders for my ratings and one for video. Before Aperture 3 I’d have to manually recreate this workflow.
Bigger Projects
This gets even more difficult if you have Folders, Albums, Books and other elements setup or if I wanted to create a multi-day or multifaceted Project. Take this example of a typical day-by day of the Tour de France, which is around 21 days long. If I had to manually create each of these Smart Albums…. well let’s just say I wouldn’t do it. And now I don’t have to.
Save Oodles of Time
Because of the Duplicate Project Structure command I simply click on a Project and duplicate it. In this case over and over again. And then when I get ready to go to another bike race, I simply duplicate it again. It doesn’t duplicate the images just the organization. That’s brilliant.
But you’ll remember I said that my original Project organization came from Thomas Boyd. How did I get it? By simply exporting it.
Export Project
By simply going to File>Export>Project as New Library… Boyd was able to save his Project, resulting in a file that is just a about 200k in size in this case. He simply emailed that file to me.
Bring it On In
And then I dragged that into my Library.
And here’s a bonus tip: Let’s say you’ve got an existing Project with thousands of images but you want to take advantage of another Project’s structure. Simply use the Duplicate Project Structure command to dupe the structure you like, then drag your image from its original Project into the new one. Instant organization.
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Author: David Schloss
David Schloss is the director of the Mac Create Network and the Aperture Users Network, a professional photographer, writer, editor and photographic educator who specializes adventure sports, travel and lifestyle photography. Schloss is the author of the books Blue Pixel Personal Photo Coach: Digital Photography Tips from the Trenches and Blue Pixel Guide to Travel Photography: Perfect Photos Every Time. Schloss is the former Technical Editor for Photo District News, a position he held for six years.
