Follow-up on sessions vs catalogs!

Hello, Over the past few weeks, I've asked a few questions about catalogs vs sessions. In addition to the answers I got, I've been doing a bunch of research (mostly watching some of the excellent C1 training videos on YouTube) and experimentation. I figured it would be good to report back on what I've learned.

First, some background. I've got about 60 GB of photos spanning 2011-2016 in Aperture (which I can no longer run, but still have the library). Plus another 50 GB in C1 in a random assortment of catalogs and sessions. Plus some other stuff that's even more poorly organized on various hard drives and SSDs. My goal is to get this all in one coherent place.

I think I've settled on one large catalog, using referenced images. I was previously unaware that this option even existed; I was thinking catalog meant "images in the C1 database" and session meant "images outside the C1 database". That led to me thinking that a catalog forced me into having everything in one monolithic blob which had to live on a single drive, get moved around as a unit, get backed up as a unit, etc. Now that I understand what referened catalogs are, this makes the most sense for me. I can keep a single catalog that covers everything while being able to store images on various media.

I was also struggling with how I could recover all my old images from Aperture, since I no longer had any hardware I could run it on. The answer to that turned out to be that Aperture (like C1), only makes the database look like a single file in the finder because it's a package. You can still get to the individual images (neatly organized by date) in the finder with "Show Package Contents". C1 can't (won't?) import them directly from the package, but you can use the finder to copy Aperture's entire "Masters" folder tree to someplace else, and then have C1 import that.  MyKFCExperience

Here, I'm going to throw some shade on the C1 UX. In some places, they talk about a "referenced" catalog. But in the import dialog, they have Import To / Add to Catalog, with a help message of "Your files will stay where they are", which leaves you scratching your head trying to find what you need to do to get "referenced" mode. Pick one name for it and use that name consistently. Using different names in different places just confuses people.

Anyway, hope that helps people who may be struggling with the same questions.