Once your Aperture library crosses the 10,000 image mark, you will likely pause to wonder if you’re going to run out of space any time soon. You may have already looked at the size of the Aperture Library file in the Pictures folder, and thought “whoah… 150GB… so that’s why I’m outta space”. But wait, you’re working referenced; all those massive RAW files are on an external drive, how is this even possible?!

Previews. Aperture 1.5 introduced a series of amazing features that allowed you to carry around an enormous number of photos on a single computer, while at the same time leaving your RAW files on other drives, and still letting you share those photos throughout the OS. They way it handles this magic is through JPEG Previews and XML.

Understanding how this works will allow you to control the size of your library and relcaim 10’s – or even 100’s! – of GB’s back.

The newest eBook from ApertureExpert.com, titled “In-Depth Getting Started with Aperture 2” is complete! If you’re new to Aperture and serious about getting started, or even an experienced user who’s not sure if you got off on the best foot, this eBook is for you. 54 pages of detailed step-by-step guides on importing, rating, adding keywords, editing and sharing your photos is waiting for you here. The price is $19.97.

I’m very excited to announce that along with Frederick Van Johnson, host of TWiP (This Week in Photography podcast), we’ll be hosting the first TWiP Weekend Workshop to be held in Joshua Tree, CA!

Hi folks,

For those 1Password users out there, you may have noticed that my site doesn’t properly support automatically logging in with your account saved in 1Password. Twitter follower @robdeloach pointed this out in a tweet this morning, and I responded that it simply wasn’t properly supported.

Fortunately a little digging (ok, one quick google search) turned up a solution.

I’m about to start on the last chapter in my new eBook, entirely titled “The ApertureExpert’s In-Depth Getting Started with Aperture 2 – a beginner’s guide”. Here’s the introduction…

Over many years of working with Aperture, and helping other people with Aperture, I’ve noticed one very common trend—no matter how much they love Aperture now, most people had a hard time getting started. This guide is designed to get you on your way. It doesn’t really matter too much where you’re coming from to use this guide; be it any other photo management application or none at all. This guide aims to get you moving efficiently, and possibly more importantly, to set the stage for a lot more learning. There are loads of free videos on apple.com that show you the basic of basics—I’m more interested in getting you started with a very solid understanding of what your choices are. So while some of the basic instructions like “Importing Your First Photos” takes up a seemingly bizarre six pages, after reading it you’ll truly understand what’s happening to your photos and what options you have.

I wrote a section in the eBook “10 Tips on File Management in Aperture” about reconnecting missing files, and in there I discussed techniques to force stubborn reconnects. I just discovered something new… sometimes if the “reconnect” button isn’t available, and you know it’s the right file, all you need to do is wait.

Apple released a new iPhone/iPod Touch app this morning called “MobileMe Gallery” [iTunes link], which allows you to view not only your own MobileMe Gallery on your iPhone, but also those of friends and family by simply adding them as contacts. I’d say Apple’s a little late to the game with image sharing using iPhone app’s, but as is expected from Apple it’s a really nice implementation. It might even get me to start using my MobileMe account for photos again!

So why is this of interest to Aperture users? One of the great things about carrying an iPhone or iPod Touch as a photographer is it’s an easy way to show off your photos to others—friends and family, or more importantly, to potential clients. I’ve always advised keeping a reasonably sized collection of images in a “portfolio” album in Aperture, and syncing that to your iPhone so you can always have an up-to-date portfolio in your pocket. But the fact remains that to update your portfolio on your iPhone, you have to physically sync your iPhone to your computer to do it. Since the introduction of over-the-air syncing for contacts and calendars quite some time ago, I’d wager that most people don’t physically connect their iPhone to their computer all that often anymore—leaving that portfolio potentially woefully out of date. Further, for a lot of pro’s (myself included), the “iTunes computer” my not be the same system that Aperture is on. Which means not only do you have to physically connect your iPhone to your iTunes computer to sync, but you also have to manually copy files from your Aperture system to your iTunes system. Way too many steps, which leaves yourself open to having an out-of-date portfolio in your pocket.

Aperture provides a 5-star rating system, which is pretty much universally standard (I think every app does a 5-star system). Which is of course actually 7 “ratings”, including –1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Ratings in Aperture

So what qualifies as a 1-star, or 3-star, or 5-star picture? How do you decide if it’s worth, say, two or three? Is it because you really like it, or you really really like it, or really really really like it? Probably not the best criteria to go on, especially as you want to search your entire library years down the road, and you won’t want to search for 3-stars and be thinking “why on earth did I give that a 3-star rating”!

As with anything in this business, there are no right answers. But here are some guidelines to go by that I think work quite well.

Welcome to your resource for tips & tricks, eBooks and education on Apple’s Aperture! This site will fill up with free tips on using Aperture, as well as eBooks for sale to make your Aperture and photography experience the best it can be.