another aperture question

The other day I spoiled an image in my library and needed to get the backed up master. It was in a vault and I renamed my library and restored the whole thing just to get at one picture. This took ages.
If I kept the masters in a separate location, I would not have had this problem.
Importing straight into the library is more convenient than downloading from the card into a folder of my own. Is that the only advantage of keeping things in the library?
What do people do?
I have quite a lot of images (10,000+) so I guess the library would be quite a lot smaller if it didn't contain everything.

Shoot RAW. You never change the RAW image, so it can't be spoiled.

Alternatively, copy images to a new location before editing the copy.

G

I always do shoot raw, these days. It's just magic for getting the full contrast range in your final picture plus other things, half of which I haven't used yet!.
Dunno what happened but the image was just corrupted and I couldn't see a 'whole' version of it on the browser or when I tried to edit it in Photoshop.

So, what about my question about keeping all images in the library? It is very inconvenient to copy images elsewhere before working on them. It almost defeats the object of having a nice management system in the first place; aperture links so well to PS.

Using Photoshop Elements 6, I never change an original image. When finished editing I tick the box "Save in Version Set with Original". Then I have both the original and the edited image avaliable at a mouseclick.

So there is no need to shoot RAW to preserve the original images. Works a treat also for JPGs.

So - I store all my images in the same folder structure, all well maintained by the PSE Organizer. That makes it easy to do backups as well, and by backup I mead a straight copy of the whole image folder and its subfolders to another harddrive.

Ah, you meant another Aperture question.

You see the perils of not capitalising properly.

G

I thought in Aperture that pressing "M" would toggle between Master image and edits. You can also right click on the image and select "New Variant from Master".

I've only been using Aperture for a few hours... but maybe that's the way?

Perhaps some other Apple Aperture users can shed some insight on things?
Don....?

Matt

sorry george

But what is the answer to my OP?
The AAAAperture library is a great beast inside of which you cannot look, I think. What are the advantages of using it to store everything?