Preparing Still Images In Aperture For Final Cut Express

Aperture

I create a library for each year of general photography but will dedicate a big trip to its own library. I create a Project for each day and combine photos from all cameras chronologically. Selects photos are rated as a 3 for ease of selection later. Edit and crop each as needed. For a quick fix, try Presets:Color Fixes:Auto Enhance (Pulldown menu or F13). If shooting RAW and JPEG, import as separate masters. That way, RAW can be deleted if not needed to save disk space. Export photos by day for print image use (web, printing). For video use, select all 3-star rated images in the Project and duplicate versions. While the new “ - Version 2” images are still selected, change their rating to 5. There are other ways to do this with keywords but this is easy. Select the new 5-star images and crop horizontal images for 16:9. Sometimes, a horizontal image will work better cropped vertically rather than force it into a 16:9 format. I leave vertical images as-is and try and use multiple images in the same frame to fill the 16:9 format, typically with a thin black bar between them. Export these images full sized into their own folder for later import into FCE.

If you ever have problems with a library, launch Aperture while holding CMD-Opt to check structure.