I shoot mostly in RAW using a Canon SLR; my other cameras are a Canon IXUS and an iPhone — either one of the three with their unique benefits and drawbacks. The SLR is precise but clunky, the IXUS goes underwater with me but is not very light-sensitive, the phone puts GPS in the EXIF tag but the quality is only mediocre. Nothing’s ever perfect…
Either way, here’s my Aperture 3 workflow. After a trip or shooting, I …
- Copy photos & videos from cameras and phones into Aperture
Nowadays, I tend to simply connect the camera rather than take the SD/CF cards out. The import includes: adjusting time zone offset and adding standard IPTC data - Force TimeMachine to backup immediately
This sits on a FireWire-attached (always connected) hard drive and is reasonably fast - Update my “Aperture Vault”
This sits on an external 2.5″ USB hard drive which remains disconnected and stowed away otherwise - Wipe the cards and phones
I typically do this in the camera - Rate the photos
Reject everything that is truly f’d up (e.g. out of focus)
3 stars for everything that is cool but will need work
4 stars for photos that I might enjoy showing off to friends
5 stars for the “Call National Geographic” type pictures
I compare pictures side by side and stack them to make my pick - Crop, adjust levels, Exposure the 3 – 5 star pictures
This is the lengthy process of fine-tuning everything and creating the “keepers” - Add captions to the keepers
- Add geo-positions and tags to the keepers
- Upload the keepers to Flickr
- Blog or email about the new album
- Update the vault again
Current considerations include switching from a managed Aperture library to one with referenced files to enable a simple folder sync onto a NAS that would allow me to access the pictures via the internet. That would make things a little bit more secure (additional on-site backup) and the remote access might come in handy, too (although it is mostly a gimmick).
Alternatively, I could get a second external vault that I keep off-site. Howver, the trouble with that is “I know myself”. How often would I bring that drive home to update it?
Photography is a pretty serious hobby of mine and I wrote this down mostly to remember the process myself. However, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.