Question about Picture storage in OS X

Re: Question about Picture storage in OS X

iPhoto and Aperture are two separate programs so they each have their own library. The feature you are looking for (sorta) is "import images by reference." This exists in both iPhoto and Aperture. This will let you import image files into your own folder hierarchy and then iP/Ap will link to those files instead of copying them into their own library. However, they will still have their own library structure that contains thumbnails and adjustment data.

Your best bet will be to choose one or the other...Aperture is the better program obviously but it is bigger and more complex and if you don't have fast enough hardware it will really bog down.

This is the way I have mine set up:
- I have a folder "Image Archive" on one of my disks.
- I set Aperture to import images by reference and set the "Image Archive" directory as where it should store them. I set the subfolder to "Project Name."
- When downloading images from my flash cards, I first create a new Project and name it something like: "20080411 Disneyland Pictures". I also also created a new file renaming preset that renames the files like this: "20080411-IMG_5823-Disneyland.JPG". The Disneyland is entered as the custom text field below the file rename preset setting.

This way, when I download images into Aperture, it creates a sub-directory within "Image Archive" and then copies the images into that subdirectory. The sub-directory is named the same as the Aperture project that the images are imported into. Since I name the project with YEARMMDD in reverse, both the projects in Aperture and the sub-directories will alphabetize in proper chronological order. As it copies images, Aperture will rename them to contain the date, the image number (useful to reference the exact image later), and a short keyword so I can know what the heck kind of image it is.

Back to your original question, once the images are on disk, you'd have to reimport them into iPhoto if you wanted to use both. If you delete an image in either iPhoto or Aperture, it would still be in the library of the other program, unless you choose to also delete the original file, but that would only confuse the other program since it would still be trying to link to a file that doesn't exist any longer. So the bottom line is to choose one program and stick with it. Once you get the hang of Aperture, you won't want to touch iPhoto at all.