Photographers often have two computers, usually a laptop and a desktop. A common question is how do you use Aperture on both, especially if you're using other applications, like Adobe Bridge. Here's my workflow:

1. Importing Photos: Inside Aperture, I make a new project for each shoot. On my MacBook Pro, I usually just import my images into the library so that they're always in one place. Sometimes, if I think that I might be using my images in another app, too, I'll import my images into their own folder elsewhere on my hard drive and have Aperture reference them. So far so good, and nothing unusual.


2. Connecting: When I get home, I want to transfer the images to an external hard drive (in this case a firewire RAID array) that I can plug directly into my laptop. If you want to transfer the images to another Mac's internal hard drive, connect the two machines with a firewire cable and boot the destination computer in target disk mode (hold down "t" while booting or choose Target disk mode from the Statup Disk System Preferences pane on the destination computer).


3. Exporting: Once I can see the hard drive I want to export to from my laptop, I go into Aperture, select the project, and select File > Export > Export Project. make sure that the "Consolidate images into exported project" button is checked (Figure 1). This button will copy any referenced images into the exported project. If you don't check that button and have referenced images, when you try to load the project into Aperture on your desktop, Aperture won't be able to find the images.


4. Importing: Disconnect the hard drive from your laptop, and go to your desktop (reboot it normally if it was in target disk mode). Make sure that Aperture is closed, and find the Aperture library that you want to import the images to (I keep 1 library on the top-level of my RAID array for all images). Within Aperture, there's an Import Project command, but it makes a copy of the project it's importing, which is cumbersome. Instead we will move the project into the library and let Aperture recover it.


5. Moving the Project: Control-click on the Aperture library in the Finder and select Show Package Contents. Move the Aperture project you exported into the package contents window (note for advanced users: you can also create a symbolic link to the project if you want to keep the actual project bundle outside the library).


6. Start Aperture: Aperture will prompt you about a new project and ask if you want to recover it. Choose yes, wait a minute, and your project will appear within Aperture.


7. Cleanup: If, on your desktop, you don't want the images to live within the Aperture library, go to the project, select all of the images, and pick File > Relocate Masters. A window will popup, allowing you to configure where Aperture will move the master files.