For many photojournalists out there, traveling the world and owning a desktop computer back home just isn't practical. When you combine the cost of the computer with the small amount of use it gets, it just doesn't add up. But you still have to maintain your photo workflow -- making sure images are safely backed up, archived, organized, delivered to clients, and easy to find later on. Plus, you have to do all of this while maintaining a laptop with plenty of free disk space. Fortunately, there's Aperture. And here's how I put it to use while on the go.

Workflow Before Aperture

Before Aperture (B.A.) my workflow usually consisted of a disjointed routine of using Photo Mechanic and Adobe Photoshop CS to get my images edited and out the FTP door as quickly as possible. I would use Photo Mechanic's powerful ingest feature to import, batch caption, and rename my images all at once. Usually I'd place the images in a folder on my desktop and open each as a contact sheet in Photo Mechanic.

For editing on a deadline, Photo Mechanic is an amazing application. It's extremely fast (especially now that it's a Universal Binary), and its renaming and captioning tools are some of the best I've seen.

I'd use Photo Mechanic to review my shoot by simply flipping through the pictures one by one and tagging each image that had potential for my assignment. I would then filter the contact sheet for tagged images and narrow my shoot by detagging the pictures that didn't make the cut. Once I had my selects, I'd open each image in Photoshop CS and begin to crop, adjust levels, apply unsharp masking and then resize the images. Next, I'd save the edited images as JPEG files in a new folder on my desktop.

I would then open the new folder in Photo Mechanic and finish up by writing more detailed caption information, adding keywords for certain clients, and making sure all the IPTC data was set and ready for transmission. The last step was usually to send the images to my client via email or FTP.

This workflow worked great for a long time. It was fast, efficient, and with the exception of the occasional human error, it got the job done.

Later, if I remembered, I would import the shoot into iView Media Pro and begin a process of rekeywording and moving the pictures around to different hard drives or CDs, all while trying to remember which frames I'd selected and transmitted under deadline, during my assignment.

The real trouble was that I would end up with small, JPEG-compressed final images. In order to go back to a full resolution uncompressed image, I'd have to re-edit the image from the original file in Photoshop. Another huge pitfall to this workflow was that the outtakes that never made the cut for my client were lost in the heap. I'd have to go back through the shoot and try to remember which pictures I'd cut, as they still had potential for use as stock.

Eventually, I would use Roxio's Toast Titanium to burn copies of the shoot to CDs. I'd then reconnect the images to iView so that if I wanted to find the original images at some point down the road, I'd know where to look.

Between the piles of CDs, a handful of different software packages, and my laptop's hard drive, my so-called "workflow" was a nightmare. Without a home desktop to store my archive, life on the road was a constant headache. I needed a system that would keep my images secure, and release me from my gigantic workload so that I could get back out in the field and spend more time shooting.

Aperture Saves the Day

Compared to a cobbled-together workflow, the real need for portability and security, and an ever-increasing pile of image data, Aperture really seemed revolutionary. As soon as I could afford it, I went out and bought a new MacBook Pro (a major upgrade from my Titanium Powerbook) and a copy of Aperture 1.0.

Months later, with Aperture 1.5 on board, and a few new tricks of the trade, my images are safe, and I can find them with ease. Here's a look at my new workflow.