Do either iPhoto or Aperture allow me to keep my photo files in a quite "normal" directory structure?
This exact thing stopped me from using Aperture and Lightroom for some time as that's all I could see it doing, but a bit of research showed that thankfully this was not the only way!



Above, you can see the options for where to store the photos you're importing. You can put them into the library (default), leave them alone, move them to the Pictures folder or one if it's sub folders. The final option lets you choose where they go. I actually put them into a Google Drive folder which syncs automatically.



Now under that, there's the option to Move Files or Copy Files. Quite self explanatory, but it will either move the files to the location you've specified (so there's only one copy of the file) or copy them (there will be two copies of the file, one in the old location and one in the new).



Finally, the last drop down allows you to choose how the files are then organised. Plenty of options as you can see.