Before you import photos into Aperture, plan the organization of your photos. Eventually your photo library may contain thousands of photos that you’ll want organized in a flexible and easy-to-manage system.
You may already have a large digital portfolio that you eventually want to import into the Aperture library. As an import strategy, it’s best to try out importing photos in a series of steps:
If you have an iPhoto library, you can open your iPhoto library and work with its contents directly in Aperture. For more information about opening iPhoto libraries in Aperture, see View other libraries.
Make trial imports of a small group of photos directly from your digital camera or card reader. Learn about import features, such as automatic filenaming and the application of metadata presets. For information about importing from your digital camera or card reader, see Import from a camera, card reader, or device.
Plan how you want to import your legacy digital photos. Because you may have thousands of image files already stored on disk, you need to decide whether you’ll store newly imported photos in the Aperture library or store them as referenced images, leaving them in their current hard disk locations. You can also copy or move image files to a different hard disk location when importing them. Also, plan the project organization you’ll need to hold the photos. For general information about importing files, see Importing photos overview.
Try out the different methods for importing individual files into your system. You can import individual files, import files stored in folders, and drag files or folders from the Finder into Aperture.