Fraser Speirs has blogged his experience keywording his photos:

So, finally, I’ve drawn together my thoughts about keywording in Aperture. My problem with keywording has always been more about “how can I make it easy enough that I will actually do it?”, rather than “what should the keywords be?”. I’ll explain my personal taste for both, though.

In particular he talks at length about the keyword bar at the bottom of the window:

The magic — if that’s what it is — is that these button sets give keyboard shortcuts to your keywords. The first nine keywords in any set get the shortcuts Option-1 through Option-9, although the set of keywords can be arbitrarily large (I think). The second insight, that I think few people have noticed, is that you can cycle through these button groups using the shortcuts Comma and Period. This makes for really fast navigation through keyword groups.

Tags: Aperture, Keywords, Workflow

Do you know how to reset all the metadata views back to their default designs?


The metadata view settings are kept in the user's Application Support folder. If you delete the file MetadataSets.plist, Aperture will create a new one with the default settings.

The Application Support folder in the Library which is inside the user's home folder. Aperture has its own folder. Mine looks like this:


This is also the home of many other settings for Aperture, including the keyword list, watermark images, and plug-ins. Sometimes these files are the cause of mysterious crashes on launch, so it can be a good test to rename the folder and relaunch Aperture to see if the problem goes away.

All these settings only apply to this user, note. There is another Application Support folder with an Aperture folder inside the Library on the boot disk. Here is mine:

BorderFX is here because it has an installer that put the plug-in in this central location. This gives access to the plug-in to all users of the machine. On my machine the Sample Projects folder is empty. That's because I trashed its contents after I had played with the images provided. It's worth checking to see if yours is wasting space and trashing the contents if it is.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Metadata, Metadata Views, Defaults, Plug-ins, Keywords

Jürgen Banda-Hansmann has written a short series of articles about Aperture that cover:

• Optimize Libraries
• Optimize your folder structure
• Personalize and structure your Keyword List
• Create your own Metadata Presets
• Autostacking

Tags: Aperture, Blogging, Metadata, Keywords, Folders, Stacks, Library, Speed, Presets

If your workflow involves stacking before keywording then you have probably found that the keywording part is either inefficient or incomplete. Adding keywords to a closed stack only adds to the pick, so those non-picks remain without metadata.

There are consequences to this. For example, if I change the pick after keywording, the new pick (and hence the stack) no longer has the keywords:

The water keyword will not find the pick and so will not find the stack. And unless I specifically select to ignore stacks, any smart album that filters on the water keyword will fail to find this image.

The choice I have is either to live with this behavior, or keyword every image in the stack when I do the keywording. But how to keyword every image in a stack without going crazy?

The obvious way is to select the pick, click the number to open the stack, then click drag, click drag each keyword to each image:

This is very slow and error-prone. A faster way, but still with too many keypresses, is to open the stack and select all the images in the stack at once with command E. Then each keyword can be dragged over from the HUD just once to apply it to all the images:

I can apply multiple keywords at the same time by command-clicking on them and then dragging, saving even more time. And if the keyword buttons are set up on the keyword bar at the bottom of the window, I can press them or their keyboard equivalents to quickly apply commonly-used metadata.

I actually use an even faster way that goes straight to the next stack and opens it all in one step. First I select the top image in the project or album, then press option page down. That single key-press seeks forward to the next stack, opens it, and selects all the images it contains. Now I simply add keywords to all the images in the stack, as before. I press option page down again to go to the next stack and repeat. Once done, I close all the stacks with option semicolon.

Option page down also works in list view, but in list view the images are to small to be recognizable.

The option page-down method for dealing with stacks skips all the intervening unstacked images and that can be inconvenient. I have to go back over my images picking out the ones that are not in stacks among those that are in order to keyword them. I can make this a little easier by sorting the display by Keywords:

Once I do that, all the non-keyworded images are together at the bottom of the browser ready for keywording.

Tags: Keywords, Aperture, Stacks, Workflow

Fraser Speirs, author of FlickrExport plug-in for iPhoto and Aperture, is intimidated by keywording:

I’ve never really known why I couldn’t get into it, but last night I realised: Aperture’s beautiful hierarchical keywording system paralyses some part of my brain.

I made a reply in the comments that I reproduce here:

Better than keywording is captioning. The problem with keywording is that there is a temptation to worry about creating consistency, planning for the future, not duplicating things etc. It’s like trying to organize a chest of drawers when you have more kinds of things than you have drawers and you know that you will have to accomodate more things in the future that you’ve never even heard of. Keywording really exists to help other people.

So caption instead. Aperture allows you to layer captions. Caption everything with “Beach trip with Brian and Jan”, then add “In the car”, “On the beach”, “In the sea”, and “Evening bonfire” as appropriate. Then caption some of those with “Down the winding path” and others with “Falling into the water”, adding “Silly face”, “Too much beer”, and “Not enough beer” to others.

Captions are far richer and will capture much more of what is going on. Do you really have keywords for Silly, Face, Beer, Beach, Too much, Not enough, Winding, Path, etc.? They’re not noun-bound as keywords tend to be. And there is no structure. Why should there be? No use for it. Captions are there to help you. Think of them as evidence, not proof.

Really. Don't go overboard with rigidity. The takeaway is simple: keywords are for other people; captions are for you. Ask yourself why you are applying metadata.

Tags: Captions, Keywords, Intimidation, Aperture, Plug-ins, iPhoto

Sorry to bother you again with a quick question. I've imported all my old images, and groped the similar shots into stacks, and closed the stacks to reduce the number of images shown. Now I'm going through and applying keywords, but the keywords I select are only being applied to the pick of the stack, not the whole stack. Any idea how to apply the keyword to the whole stack? I've tried the "primary only" toggle and that doesn't seem to be it.

Yes, metadata should really be a stack attribute, not an image attribute, but there is nothing we can do about that. The real answer is to set up your workflow so that you stack last. Apple seems to think that doing it first is the way to go but my experience is the opposite -- there are just too many gotchas. Do absolutely everything you normally do to your photos and then stack them. Or better still, stack only the good ones. There is usually no point wasting time on the one and two star images taken at the same time: they are still accessible simply by displaying thumbnails in time order.

To quickly access stacks (and only stacks) to apply metadata, do this:

1. Open all the stacks with option ' (apostrophe)
2. Go to the top with Home
3. Select one image in the first stack and press command E. That extends the selection, selecting all of the images in the stack
4. Drag keywords from the keyword HUD and they will apply to all of the images in that stack
5. Hit option Page Down. That takes you to the next stack and selects all of its contents.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 as many times as you need
7. Close all the stacks with option ; (semi colon)

Tags: Aperture, Stacks, Keywords, Q&A

Now that all of my old images and their metadata have been prepared and transferred from iView to Aperture, one step remains: clean up. Cleaning up comprises applying ratings, merging keywords, and converting data in other fields to keywords.

Before describing this process, some advice on performance. I discovered that by doing the right thing I could speed up some operations with Aperture up by a factor of more than a thousand. Yes really. The key advice is this:

If at all possible, don't have any images or thumbnails visible when you change metadata!

I found that doing some things like changing and editing keywords in the keyword HUD with a filter active that used that metadata took an hour rather than a second (I have 20,000 images in my library). Aperture was going through serious contortions with SQL and string handling during this time and eating real memory at a rate of about 50k a second (a memory leak?). Once I figured what was going on, I created an empty project and selected that each time I wanted to make changes to the keyword hierarchy.

Of course it is not always possible to have images not showing or filtered, but whenever messing with keywords, it is worth remembering.

Apply Ratings
To apply ratings (these were brought over as keywords from iView) I filter on the blue folder called iView that contains all of my projects with the imported images. Since all of my one star images have the keyword onestar, I filter on onestar, select all the images in the browser with command A and press the + key to give them a rating of one star. This takes a while because there are many one star images. Then (bearing in mind the performance tip above) I delete the onestar keyword from the Imported Keyword section of the keyword HUD.

I repeat this for the twostar and threestar keywords and the ratings are now done.

Convert People Keywords
Next I convert my people keywords. I have imported name keywords from iView that all start with a lower-case letter so I can distinguish them from the existing ones. To convert these is easy. After selecting my empty project and unlocking the keyword HUD I double-click on "steve" in the keyword list and change it to "Steve". That elicits this warning:

Once done, I drag the Steve keyword onto its containing keyword in my "master" hierarchy. In this case that keyword is Family under People:

I get another warning and then this warning:

Accepting the offer to merge the keywords leaves my imported images with the same keyword as those already in my library and ensures that they have the same hierarchy too.

I repeat this for each person until I am done.

Convert All Other Metadata
There is still more metadata to convert. Annoture maps iView metadata fields to IPTC fields. For instance Location in iView becomes Sub-location in Aperture. So I have to work through each IPTC field, identify all the possible values, filter by each of those values, select the images, and add or apply keywords appropriately.

This is not as hard as it seems. By adding the appropriate fields to the List - Expanded metadata view and browsing my images in list view I can sort them by these fields:


For Albuquerque I create a new keyword United States > New Mexico > Albuquerque, select all of the images with Albuquerque in the Sub-location field (in the list view with click at the top and shift click at the bottom of the range), and then apply the new Albuquerque keyword. See Metadata Views for more information on setting this display up.

Once I have worked all the way down the Sub-location column and repeated this for each different word used in that field I can clear the field. The easiest way to do this is to select all of the images I have imported (and processed), press shift command B to bring up the batch change dialog and set it up like this:

By selecting Replace and checking the box next to Sub-location I choose to clear that field on all selected images. I press OK and then move to the next field.

Delete The Old Folder Hierarchy
Finally I am done, and all that remains is to delete my old folder hierarchy. It is now empty of course. I left it in place because in the second step (importing) iView still needs the hierarchy in place to allow filtering by folder. Now it is no longer needed.

That's It
I am sure that others will have a different story to tell about moving from iView to Aperture. Please let me know your own experience so I can improve this article.

Tags: Aperture, iView, Workflow, Keywords

Annoture, the application I have been using to transfer keywords and other metadata from iView to Aperture, has been updated to 1.0.2. The new version improves name matching and adds date matching. Annoture is $15 shareware. Although I don't use the feature, Annoture provides two-way syncing of metadata between the two applications.

Tags: Aperture, Annoture, Keywords

Following preparation, the next step in moving my old photos from iView to Aperture is importing. There are two things to import: the images and the metadata.

Import Images
At the end of this process my Aperture library will contain managed images. But initially I import all of them by reference into the projects I prepared. The reason for this will become clear. I import entire folder hierarchies at once by using File > Import > Folders Into A Project. This puts all of the images from the folder hierarchy into a project and creates a hierarchy of brown folders and albums that matches the folder organization. In this way I still have my old hierarchy represented but can archive it without manual blue folder work and lots of separate imports. Of course I can throw away the albums if I wish: I may not want to have any remnants of my old folder structure remain in Aperture.

When importing I use a rename setting called Version Dash Date. That takes the version name and adds the image date. I leave the images in their current location. So on the import dialog, the settings look like this:

I don't have to wait for the imports to complete. Aperture will queue imports and automatically go through all of the ones I have set up:

Then when my imports are all complete, I wait for all the thumbnails to build -- just to be sure nothing odd happens -- and check the projects over to make sure they look right.

All of the images so for imported have been referenced, but the next step changes that. For each project in the blue folder I created (called iView) I consolidate the masters with the Move option selected. File > Consolidate Masters for Project brings up this dialog that confirms my selection:

This step moves the referenced masters into my Aperture library, so leaving the original folders empty. But are they empty? If they are not then there has been a problem and I need to go sort it out. Possible reasons for the folders not being empty include bad image files, images files in formats that Aperture will not import, text and other foreign files, and permissions problems.

Any easy way to do this check is to display the top-level folder in list view in the Finder, select everything with command A, and then press option command right-arrow. That opens all the folders recursively and shows their contents. Close them all up again with option command left-arrow.

I deal with anything that has not been consolidated, and get all the remaining images into the library or trash them if they are corrupt.

Once consolidated, I mark all the images with a new keyword notreviewed using the keyword HUD. I'm not sure I will need it, but this is the last opportunity to have a way of automatically tying together all of the images I have removed from my old folder structure.

Import Metadata
Now I break out Annoture. The version I am using is 1.0.2. Annoture processes all of the metadata for the images in a project by scanning the iView catalog for the file names of those images, retrieving the metadata, and adding it to the Aperture database.

Here are the preferences I use for Annoture:

By ignoring file extensions I can have Annoture copy metadata from old files that had no extension but were corrected to have an extension before they were added to Aperture. Comparing capture dates allows images in the iView catalog that have the same name to be distinguished. Without that metadata from the first image found rather than the correct image will be transferred.

I set up the main window like this:

Each time I run Annoture I select the appropriate project in the pop-up. I have to make sure that all of my projects have different names, because it is not possible to distinguish identically-named projects here.

Important: Annoture transfers metadata for each image in the selected Aperture project by examining the current selection displayed by iView. It is important to know this, because if I have a subset of my thumbnails displayed in iView when I run Annoture two things will happen: 1) it will run faster because it has fewer images to scan, and 2) there will be some images that do not have their metadata transferred.

I can use this behavior to my advantage. Since my old images are organized into folders by year or month, I set up the Aperture projects that way. By filtering the iView display by using the Catalog Folder pane:

I can limit the number of images that Annoture has to search and speed it up dramatically. Instead of searching 10,000 images, iView will only search a few hundred. That drops the processing time from 15 seconds per image down to less than one.

Since I tagged all of the images in my iView catalog with iviewimport, any of the imported images in my Aperture that were not successfully processed by Annoture lack the iviewimport keyword. So after copying the metadata for each project I run a filter that looks for all images without iviewimport in the IPTC keyword field:

Now I can examine those images and figure out why they could not be found in the iView catalog. The usual reason is that the image was never put into the iView catalog and hence has no metadata. In other cases the iView thumbnail was incorrect and somehow had become attached to a different image.

Import is now done. Next is the final step: reorganization.

Tags: Aperture, iView, Importing, Keywords, Library

Hi! Thanks for a great site! I'm thinking about switching from iView Media Pro to Aperture. What I'm curios about is if Aperture has the same abilities to tag photos with all the IPTC data that iView has? And also, is there any good ways to sort photos by people or location. Do I have to use keywords to do that, or is there any dedicated fields for this? I'd like to see a full walk through of all the searching/filtering/tagging capabilities Aperture have, could you point me in the right direction for a great source on that?

Three questions in all. Quick answers: Yes, Aperture can tag with all the IPTC data that iView has. No, it is not possible to sort by person or location like iView, but some sorting is possible. Yes, I can point you in the right direction. See the articles on this site that cover metadata and filtering workflow.

IPTC Tagging

The IPTC tags can most easily be seen in the filter dialog. Select IPTC from the plus pop-up on the filter dialog:

and then click on the IPTC pop-up that appears:

You can also control which IPTC fields appear in the various metadata sets by editing the metadata sets in the Inspector panel. Open the metadata panel with I and pick one of the metadata sets. Then select IPTC at the bottom to get an opportunity to add or remove them from the set:

The batch change dialog (command shift B) also allows the selection of All IPTC in order to make bulk changes to image metadata:

Sorting Features

The sorting features of Aperture are not as comprehensive as iView, and that is a problem. Sometimes it is very convenient to sort all images by person, or city, or some other random metadata.

In the grid view, Aperture allows sorting on only eight pieces of data:

This is a very restricting set. The keywords sort order is not useful because it sorts on the entire comma-separated string of all the keywords applied to an image. So two images each tagged with Bob and Annie will sort differently if they are tagged with other keywords as well. There is no way to tell Aperture to sort on People and have People > Bob and People > Annie be compared to create the sort order.

In the list view, selected by clicking the icon to the left of the sort pop-up:

there are many more options. Any column can be used to sort by clicking on the header (except the tags -- that does not work). Here I sort on aperture:

But I can only sort on one column. So I cannot keep the sort by aperture and also sort by shutter speed.

The list view can be modified too. From the inspector, select the List - Expanded metadata set:

and then add or remove entries. Ensure that the expanded list is used by pressing Command J and checking the view options:

There is set 2 for the list view columns selected as List - Expanded. By adding fields to the list view it is possible to sort on any of the IPTC or EXIF field. If you have only one person in the frame and have used an IPTC field to identify that person, then yes, you can sort by person.

Also note that if you select one of the columns in list view and then change back to grid view, that selection stays:

At least for a little while. If you select away from it, it disappears from the pop-up.

Tags: Q&A, Aperture, IPTC, iView, Keywords

[This is an updated version of an article written originally for Aperture 1.1]

I use the smart album feature of Aperture to create the galleries on this site. Here is the top of my projects list:

The Library item includes predefined (and fixed) smart albums. It has star ratings that only includes one and five stars, so I added three more covering two, three, and four stars or better. Clicking on the little magnifying glass next to 3 stars or better brings up this settings window:

Note the heading. It says (Library). That means that its scope is the entire library. It will find all images with a rating greater or equal than three stars whether or not they are in a stack across all projects in the library. Although I have it at the top level of the library, I could drag that smart album anywhere and it would work the same way. A duplicate would do the same.

I have my gallery smart albums organized into a blue folder. They can live anywhere, but this was a nice central place to put them. I have put spaces before some of the names I have used, because Aperture arranges things strictly alphabetically. One space will sit at the top of a list. Two spaces will sit above that, etc.

Everything I want to show in the gallery I keyword with Bagelturf Gallery. I have a keyword set called Actions that I use to select which images I want to appear in which gallery and which I want as (metaphorically mixed) wallpaper on my desktop. The Macros smart album picks out images I have tagged as Macro for their type. Rejects just looks for ratings of X.

To export to a gallery I select the gallery smart album, sort by image date, select the images I have recently added, and export either the masters or the versions to a local folder. Then I fire up Photosite Timesaviour and regenerate the gallery folder locally. That done and checked, I start Transmit and use its synchronizing feature to make the .Mac version of the gallery look like the local one. By exporting only the new images and syncing I save a great deal of uploading.

Why not use the Aperture gallery feature? It is just not flexible enough. In particular I cannot have a three-level gallery where the third level is the original. Also there is no Home button to let me go back to the main gallery index page I have set up.

When I export images destined for the Canon S3 gallery, I export masters and use a preset export called Gallery:

This helps me remember how I did the export last time. Clicking on the Export Preset pop up list and selecting Edit... allows me to choose the export file format:

In this case I have a custom export that just uses the version name. In that way, any image that goes to the gallery can have a meaningful name and I can use that name in the thumbnail page. The Subfolder Format pop-up works the same way, allowing me to structure the exported files if I wish.

The other use for smart albums is in collecting images automatically with a scope that is smaller than the entire library. The smart albums I have shown so far were created with the Library selected, and they reference the whole library. Nice, but slow, and often not what is wanted.

I have a blue folder that contains all my projects for 2006 called, unsurprisingly, 2006. If I select that it shows me the contents of all the projects inside it. If I create a new Smart Album with that Blue Folder selected then I get this:

Its scope is all the projects inside the 2006 blue folder. I can now set up all the options I need and close it and it will always reference just those projects that are in the 2006 blue folder. If I add more projects it will find those too. And it will be faster than a library-wide smart album. And this works at any level in the blue folders and at the project level.

Here is one for my June 2006 project that lives inside the 2006 blue folder:

The joy does not extend to brown folders, however. If you select anything inside a project and create a new smart album, then the smart album is created where you selected, but its scope is always the enclosing project. Still, this is not too shabby.

The moral therefore is to use small projects for speed, and large blue folder hierarchies to support browsing and smart albums.

Tags: Aperture, Smart Albums, Keywords, Folders

Maybe a stupid/simple question: So I am viewing a project in fullscreen, and I want to flag certain interesting photos so I can look at them later for editing or export. How do I do this?

If keywords are sufficient for your need to mark images, then they can be added easily in full screen mode. The method I am about to describe works outside of full screen mode too. It is just not obvious that it does work in full screen mode because the controls are hidden.

Let's assume you want to mark the images for adjustment and so will use a keyword Action > Adjust to mark them. Make sure the viewer is visible (press V if it is not), bring up the Keyword Controls with shift D:

and select Edit Buttons...

Add the keyword Adjust in a convenient place

And add that keyword to one of the button sets. I am adding it to my Action button set:

Now click OK to close the dialog (maybe locking the keywords) and look at the Keyword Controls bottom right. Scroll through the sets with the period and comma keys until you get to the set with the Adjust keyword:

In this example it is attached to the 6 key. Option 6 adds it and shift option 6 removes it.

When you view your images full screen, make sure you have the correct button set displayed, and then as you navigate through the images press option 6 to mark for adjusting. If you have metadata display turned off you will see no change to the image. All selected images displayed in full screen will have the keyword added unless Primary Only (S key) is turned on. You can of course use multiple keywords set up for different keys and tag with any number of them.

It is possible to combine this technique with a smart album and negative filtering to make all marked images vanish from the current album as they are marked. This is handy when you are trying to reduce a set of images down to a predefined number.

Tags: Q&A, Aperture, Full Screen, Keywords

By using a simple trick, revealed in a conversation with Anthony Caltabiano, I have found that I can make all keywords appear in the filter dialog and so make it possible to filter quickly and accurately on any keyword at any level, something thought impossible.

In a previous article, I described how Aperture's keyword system only directly allows filtering by the lowest level keywords. By lowest level I mean the ones at the bottom of the keyword hierarchy. For example:

Content > Water > Ocean > Surf

Surf is the lowest level. Any time I add Surf to an image, the higher-level keywords Ocean, Water, and Content are sort of added to the image -- they are visible in the metadata pane -- but not usefully added to the image because they don't appear in the keyword checkbox list on a filter dialog. While it is possible to work around this using the IPTC keyword field, it is clumsy and error-prone.

Maybe Apple will deal with this in future (Aperture is at 1.5.1 as I write), but until then, we need help. I have a small example project with images, all tagged according to content:

To do this tagging I used the following hierarchy (yes I know a turtle is not a mammal, but there it is):

I tagged by dragging the lowest level keywords to the images. If I want to filter by Water I cannot do it directly because Water does not appear in the keyword list on the filter dialog:

As expected, clicking on Stone gives me this selection:

Now for the magic. I take the image below (click for full-size version) and add it to the project.

This is my keyword keeper. Any image will do, but this one is useful because it identifies itself. Now I bring up the keyword HUD (shift H) and select and drag every high-level keyword I want to filter on to that image:

You can save a lot of clicking by knowing that the left and right arrows open and close the keyword levels in the HUD, and the up and down arrows move the selection up and down. Command-clicking on keywords selects more than one. There probably are not all that many higher-level keywords in any library, because most of the keyword population is at the lowest level.

Now that the Keyword Keeper image has those keywords, let's look at the keyword HUD again:

All those high level words are there! And if I click on Animal I get the following as expected:

To integrate this method into your library you will need a few extra steps:

1. Create a new project call Keyword Keeper and put the Keyword Keeper image into it. Add all the high level keywords as above.

2. Create a new keyword at the top level called Keyword Keeper and add it to the Keyword Keeper image. This is an important step, as it will save much effort later.

3. Now duplicate the image into all of the projects you want to by clicking on it and option-dragging. The copies will retain all the keywords.

At a future date, when you expand your keyword hierarchy, you will need to update your Keyword Keeper images. To do this, select the Library and filter on the keyword Keyword Keeper. Select all of them and drag the new higher-level keyword onto one of them. Now the new keyword will work in all of the projects that contain the Keyword Keeper image.

Tags: Aperture, Filtering, Keywords, Hierarchy

Importing images in Aperture 1.5 is much more interesting than in 1.1. As well as dragging images and folders into the library to create managed masters, you can now rename masters on import and decide whether you want your master images to be managed or referenced. The addition of metadata presets provides the option of adding personal standard metadata to all imported images.

Importing Images From A Single Folder

To import images from a single folder (such as a camera card) I press command I to bring up the import images dialog. I navigate to my images using the browser at the top and then check all the options. Here is the interesting part of the dialog:

In this case I have elected to copy the master files into a folder called Dogs. The default is the Pictures folder in my Home folder, but I added this new folder on my disk and selected it with the Store Files pop-up. This will import the files as referenced masters and copy them to this folder, effectively doing a Relocate with copy for me after the import. The other options for the Store Files pop-up are In The Aperture Library which makes them managed and In Their Current Location which makes them referenced but does not move them.

By selecting a naming scheme for the Version name, I can change how the versions are named as they are imported. Checking the Apply to Master Filename makes this scheme do just that. My standard renaming system is shown above. I call it Version dash date because it adds the current date to the version name. This guarantees that I will get unique names when my camera counter rolls over (as it has already done).

Adding metadata can be done here as well, but I rarely do this. I prefer to import into a new project and then manipulate the metadata. On a small screen it can be hard to get to the fields, but tabbing between them works even if the scroll bar is hidden. The example above has a custom metadata field Retouch that I added in the metadata inspector panel.

On the top right of the dialog a panel shows how things will change for the selected image:

I normally elect to show an alert because I want to unmount the card. If I don't select this, then the card remains mounted and it is too easy to forget, yank it out of the reader, and then have to deal with a confused USB tree.

A nice touch is that I can also show the images in the list view:


This can be useful for sorting on camera model or other metadata that is not available from the grid view.

Adding Standard Metadata On Import

Now that Aperture supports metadata presets it is possible to use one to add standard metadata as part of the import process. But to do that you must have set one up beforehand. You cannot set up a metadata preset by going to Aperture > Presets as you would for all the other presets, but instead have to go through several steps, starting with the metadata pane (control D) in the main Aperture window.

I will set up a special metadata view that includes just the fields I want to have applied during import. I do this by clicking on the cog top right of the metadata pane and selecting New View:

and name it something memorable:

All this does is set up a name for a collection of fields. Next I have to select the fields I want, and then I can fill those fields with the information I want to stamp on each image as it is imported.

Now the metadata pane shows my new view, empty of fields:

I select the fields I want by clicking on the buttons at the bottom and then clicking the checkboxes:

To get the Keywords field added I had to select Keywords at the bottom and the check the Include In Summary box. Not obvious at all. The fields can be dragged to rearrange them. Now I have defined the fields I want to add during import, the next step is to define the values I want to put in those and save them as presets.

I click on an image (any image) and duplicate the version. This gives me a scratch image I can mess with and then throw away. I fill in the preset values I want for my imports:

And save this as a named metadata preset:

Giving it a descriptive name:

I can repeat this to set up several other presets with different preset values. When done I delete the temporary version. Presets can also be managed from the metadata pane via the metadata pane. Click on the cog top right to manage presets:

The import and export buttons use XML plists which look like this in an XML editor:

Now my presets are ready to be used. To add this preset metadata to my imported images I select the preset in the import dialog:

Now what is odd here is that I can only choose to add or not add from the preset values. There is no way to have a field that is manually filled in and no way to override what is preset. The City field I included in the Import metadata view will have to be filled in by hand later. There really should be two pop-ups here: one for metadata views that can be filled in by hand and one for preset values that are automatically populated. As it is I have to chose one or the other and cannot have both.

Handling Keywords Added During Import

Adding metadata on import can be a time-saver, both in terms of saving time not having to do it later and in not having to deal with the consequences of forgetting to doing it later. But for keywords, it can be less advantageous because there is no way to add keyword hierarchies during import, only individual keywords. So it is necessary to go through some extra steps later.

Here I am adding some keywords to my imported photos:

After the import is complete, since my Keyword HUD is locked (it is good to keep it that way) the keywords don't get thrown in with my existing ones. Instead I get this section at the bottom:

This is not what I really want. I have an existing keyword hierarchy that includes Events > Halloween that these images should belong to.

First I correct the capitalization (halloween to Halloween) and accept the dialog that tells me I am changing this name on a bunch of images. This makes the keyword in the Imported Keyword list identical to the one in the Events list and updates all the images that have the keyword. Then I drag the Halloween keyword in Imported Keywords to my Events keyword, the parent of my real Halloween keyword. This dialog asks if I want to merge:

Yes I do. Now all of my imported images are keyworded as Events > Halloween. Repeat for all the other keywords. Really it would have been easier to just filter by import session, hit command A, command click on the keywords I want to select them, and then drag them to the images.

Importing A Folder Hierarchy

Another way of importing is to grab a whole hierarchy of folders and image files at once. Here are the images I want to import, all arranged in a hierarchy that I want to maintain in the library:

To do this, I select the library or an existing project and use File > Import > Folders Into A Project. A file selection dialog opens with some familiar options:

Here I have selected a folder called New Files as a destination for the masters and elected to copy the files in. The masters will be referenced by Aperture. I also chose a particular naming system called Custom Name with Count and decided not to rename my masters. After the import is complete, this is what is in the library:

The original folder hierarchy has been maintained by the project, the brown folder, and the albums. All the images are in the project and they reference the master files. Because I selected Halloween as the custom name and numbered subfolders for each image and told Aperture to copy my masters to a folder called New Files, Aperture has done all of that for me as part of the import:

Notice that the master file organization on disk is nothing like the organization inside Aperture. The two are disconnected. If I decide I don't like this particular way of storing my masters I can change it at any time by simply relocating them with Aperture's Relocate Master function.

Tags: Aperture, Importing, Keywords, Folders, Hierarchy, Presets

Since a number of people have asked, I am going to describe my keyword system. It is not really designed in any way, but does have some thought behind it as to how it should work. Like most people I really just use what works for me.

But before I describe my system, I would like to collect some keyword lists from other people. If you want to play this game, open the keyword HUD, click on Export, save the file, and email it to me at bagelturf@mac.com. That list will show all your keywords and their hierarchy. I think it may be very interesting to share some examples and techniques.

Here are the rules of the game. Unless you explicitly tell me otherwise I won't publish your name or email address and I will strip or modify any personally-identifying information from any keyword lists you send and I post. If you want to describe your system or give me any other details, then that is good too.

Tags: Aperture, Keywords

I missed a trick in my article on negative filtering, and it was the originator of the question that pointed it out to me. You can directly do negative filtering on keywords via the IPTC metadata. This works because the IPTC field is kept up to date with the keywords that are added to the image.

I have updated the article to reflect this newfound knowledge.

Tags: Aperture, Filtering, Negative, Keywords

First of all, you have a great website! It really has helped me get more out of Aperture! Question for you – is there a way to create a filter that EXCLUDES images with a certain keyword. Example, on import, I marked everything with “Wedding,” but I tag the ones that need some PS work also with “Retouch.” I would like to have a way to do a filter (or smart album/web gallery) that excludes that keyword.

This can be done with keywords, but with some caveats. And there are other ways to work that will let do what you are trying to achieve -- perform negative filtering.

In short the answer is to use IPTC metadata fields, or use custom fields and exploit the features of those. The full solution, together with a technique for using this metadata in your workflow requires a whole article on negative filtering (posted just below this Q&A on the blog and archived in the Metadata section of the Aperture Articles).

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Filtering, Negative, Keywords

A question that frequently arises is how to do negative filtering in Aperture. Negative filtering includes an image if it does not match some criterion, usually in combination with other logic. For instance "photos taken in March that have not been retouched". Since keywords are the most familiar form of metadata in Aperture, users apply them to images and then look around for the Keyword Is Not check box, cannot find it, and wonder what to do next.

First, here are several ways of doing negative filtering that either don't work or are clumsy:

1. Albums and project membership
Although you can "mark" images that have been processed in some way as part of your workflow by their location or by album or project membership, this is a clumsy way to work. It involves a lot of moving things around and you cannot filter on membership.

2. Version names
Not recommended. Again, clumsy. But you can filter on version names, so it's not all bad. Naming systems break easily though.

3. Rating bands
By dividing ratings into two sets, say greater than three and three and under it is possible to use the Rating is less than or equal to and Rating is greater than or equal to selections to create negative filtering. But that only gives you one thing you can filter on, chops up your ratings, and is prone to error.

So here is the meat: three ways that do work. The first uses IPTC keywords, the second an existing metadata field and the third a custom metadata field. You didn't know you could have those did you?

Negative Filtering With IPTC Keywords

The IPTC Keywords field is kept up to date with the keywords that are added to the image, so you can use all the features of the IPTC string matching. Select IPTC from the + menu top right and select IPTC. Select Keywords from the pop-up and you can do this:



For simple negative filtering this works, but it has some disadvantages too. This stems from the fact that the IPTC keyword field is simply a list of keywords strung together with commas. Let's say your images contain two people called Bob and Bobby. If you try to filter on IPTC Keywords contains Bobby and IPCT Keywords does not contain Bob (because nobody likes Bob any more), you will find that he stubbornly sticks around. That's because simple lexical matching is used and so Bob matches Bob and Bobby. Worse, you find that is and is not are case-sensitive while contains and does not contain are not. And worse still is the odd fact that while Cow will match Cow if is is used, it will not if another keyword is added. Give me a list of checkboxes, please!

The keyword list does not exhibit this behavior. Nor does using separate IPTC fields to achieve the negative filtering.

An inconvenience is that there is a lot of clicking and typing involved: click on the +, select IPTC, click on the pop-up, scroll down to Keywords, select the logic, and finally type in the keyword. If you typo it, then you won't get what you expect.

A possibly more serious problem is that searching IPTC fields is very slow for many images because Aperture does not index that in its database. Try selecting your whole library and setting up a search for contains "e" and does not contain "zzzzzzzzzzz". It will take a while. Try the opposite too.

A future problem is that when Apple implements proper hierarchy filtering (filtering on keyword Animal where Animal is above Cow without resorting to a plain text search), this trick with IPTC metadata will not work with Animal just as it does not now. That's because the higher-level keywords are not in the IPTC metadata field unless you specifically put them there and if they are not there, you can't filter on them at all.

Negative Filtering With IPTC Metadata

Let's say you want to be able to filter on one attribute, Retouch, or Not Retouch. To do this select all the images you want to be able to distinguish (either positively or negatively), and then open the metadata inspector (control D). Select IPTC at the bottom, and then All IPTC from the pop-up title bar. Now pick one of the fields to commandeer. In the example below I have chosen Action Advised, because I will never use it for its intended purpose.

Now bring up the Batch Change window with command shift B and type retouch into the Action Advised field:


Press Enter on the numeric keypad or click OK and that metadata will be added to all the selected images. The metadata pane that you previously opened will show that the images now have that metadata added:



So now all the images you want to retouch are tagged and all the ones you don't want to retouch are untagged.

Let's filter on that. Bring up a filter and select IPTC from the + menu top right:



From the IPCT pop-up, select Action Advised, and then one of the matching verbs:



Use contains or is for positive filtering and is empty for negative filtering. You would think that is not would match on an empty field, but it does not.

Voila! Negative filtering.

This method has the advantage that it can also be used to add metadata on import. You can tag everything with a certain value (like retouch) and then adjust the metadata when workflow actions have been performed or a decision is made that they do not need to be performed.

Negative Filtering With Custom Metadata

Another way to achieve the same goal without abusing the IPTC fields is to add custom metadata. This takes a few more steps because the Batch Change window cannot be used to do this. But custom metadata can be added on import if it is included in one of the metadata sets.

Select just one image you want to tag (either positively or negatively). Go back to the metadata pane bottom right of the Aperture window and select the General view. Click on Other at the bottom, and where it says New Custom Metadata in gray add the word Retouch. On the right where it says Metadata Value in gray, add the word Yes:



Now click on the circle + on the right and it will be added as a metadata value to the single image you selected. There it is:



Click on the checkbox on the left if you want to add this field to the General metadata set. You probably want to add it to some set just so it is visible (the Tooltip set would be a good choice to).

So far so good, but that is only one image, and there could be hundreds.

Press the O button on the keyboard (letter Oh) to bring up the Lift and Stamp window and click on the image you just added the metadata to. That will show the copied data. Open the Custom line by clicking the disclosure triangle:


Now edit this by deleting the unwanted lines by selecting and hitting the delete key to get this:


The remaining task is to stamp this onto all the images that need it. Clicking on the thumbnails will do it since the cursor is now the down-arrow Stamp tool. Press A when you are done.

To filter images that have been tagged in this way, you will need a slightly different filter than used before with IPTC. Bring up a filter and select Other from the + pop-up top right. Select Retouch from the pop-up:



And use contains, is, is empty, etc. to perform positive and negative filtering as needed. There is also no reason not to use several different values for the Retouch field if that does what you want.

Voila again! Negative filtering.

An advantage of this method over the IPTC trick is that there is no limit to the number of custom metadata fields you can add to an image.

Workflow Enhancement

But neither of these solutions are really any good since you are looking at thumbnails while you do it. How do you know which ones to retouch? More than likely you are in full-screen mode and you want to decide whether to retouch or not as you go along, as part of an overall workflow. That can be achieved too.

With the Lift and Stamp window the way you want it (like above), work as follows. Close the Lift and Stamp window with the X top left. Click on the first image in your set and hit F to go to full-screen. Scroll through the images working on them as usual (but not lifting and stamping anything) until you find one you want to retouch. Press O to bring up the Lift tool (up arrow) and the Lift and Stamp window. But don't click on anything!

Hold down the option key and the cursor changes into the Stamp tool. Click on the full screen image to add the custom metadata to it. There is no feedback to tell you that this has worked, but it has. Close the Lift and Stamp window and continue working on images. Repeat as needed and close the Lift and Stamp window at the end.

I will stop writing French now.

Tags: Aperture, Negative, Keywords, Filtering

OK, I seem to remember from documentation and also from some of the "preview" movies of aperture 1.0, that if you had keywords arranged hierarchically, that if you applied "surf," which is located as "Nature>Water>Ocean>Surf," that basically, each of the parent words would also be associated with that picture, meaning you would not have to manually add EACH parent item to the picture....

but I can't seem to get this to behave that way in Aperture 1.5. Has something changed? am I slightly retarded? Is it possible to bring up this picture with "surf" by searching for all pictures that contain "Water?"

You are right, you did see it done, and the keyword is associated with the image. But you are also right that you can't get it to behave that way because you are making a very common assumption, one that I made too, that Apple has fully implemented a keyword hierarchy. There is a partial workaround.

To illustrate what works and what doesn't, here is a simple keyword hierarchy:

I have a project called Vacation with some images I want to keyword, so I drag the Chicken keyword to the image of the chicken, the Ostrich keyword to the image of the ostrich, and the Cow keyword to the image of the cow. The other words you see below the thumbnails are the captions I added previously:

To see the full keyword information applied to each image I go to the metadata pane (Control D) and click on the Keywords button at the bottom and then selct an image:

This shows me that the Cow keyword is applied and gives its lineage.

So far so good. Now if I want to filter my Vacation project based on keywords I click on the search icon on the thumbnail window and select the Keywords checkbox:

But where are my keywords? Only the lowest level keywords are there: Chicken, Cow, and Ostrich. I can't filter by Bird or Mammal!

Until Apple fixes this, there is a partial workaround. Use the + menu top right to make the Text box visible and type the higher level keyword in there:

You can also do this by typing the keyword into the text box top right. But in either case, make sure that Limited Text Search is selected:

That restricts the search to just keywords, omitting EXIF, captions, etc. In Full Text Search mode, the filter below finds the cow, for instance, because the caption includes "Levi", the cow's name.

There is also a setting in the application preferences that selects what the initial search scope is for each project or smart album:

This workaround is not perfect. If I have another keyword section called Animal Crackers, then a text search I do on "Animal" will find all the images with keywords under Animal and all the images with keywords that are or are under Animal Crackers. So unless all the keywords are very carefully designed this rather limits the use of the hierarchy.

Tags: Aperture, Filtering, Keywords, Hierarchy, Q&A

If you import keywords from a text file be aware of a couple of things.

1. The file must have a .txt extension, or Aperture will not let you open it. Easy to fix.

2. Make sure that the text file has Unix line endings (line feeds -- hex 0A). Not quite so easy to fix.

DOS line endings (line feed, carriage return -- hex 0D 0A) will seem to work, but will actually create keywords with carriage returns on the end and confuse you like crazy later on.

MacOS 9 line endings (carriage return -- hex 0D) will import only the first word in the file. But repeated imports of the same list will keep adding more and more copies of the same first keyword to the HUD.

You can easily check and clean your file if you suspect a problem. Get a copy of TextWrangler and open the file containing the keywords. Click on the document icon at the top of the window:

And if Unix is not selected, select it and save the file. That's it. You can also use TextWrangler to view invisible characters, indent whole blocks of text, clean up bad characters, and dump the file in hex.

Tags: Aperture, Keywords, Importing, TextWrangler, Tips And Tricks

I have formulated a strategy for keeping my keywords healthy in Aperture 1.5. I have far fewer images than many people (about 19,000, all JPEGs), and only a couple of libraries to deal with, but my plan should work well for really big collections.

The challenge is this: since Aperture collects keywords whenever it can from where ever it can, any system I set up will become poisoned by imports (images, projects, libraries) that bring in keywords that don't match anything. So I have two things to deal with: recognizing that it has happened, and fixing it when it does. So here is the six K plan:

Klothe, Kapitalize, Kreate, Kollect, Klean, Korrect.

So it's also Korny. But I wanted to used K's if I could.

Klothe
This means that I have no naked keywords at the top level. I other words I use a hierarchy for everything that can be applied, never applying Germany to an image, always applying Geography > Europe > Germany instead. This makes it easy to see if any new keywords appear at the top level. There should be only ten or so top level categories.

Kapitalize
All my keywords will be capitalized. I could prefix them to make extra sure that nothing unusual has snuck in: instead of Groom, use bgtGroom for instance. But that looks like a lot of trouble for little gain. Besides, capitalization looks right and is easy to do.

Kreate
Create the keyword system I want and implement it. Do this first. This gives me the ability to rekeyword whatever I find amiss. For example I can change anything with the naked keyword New York to Geography > United States > New York > New York City. At the top level I will have a category: Geography, Content, Actions, Event, Location, etc. and beneath that have a hierarchy of keywords I can use, applying only the lowest level keywords to images. The reason for the categories at the top is that I can have a keyword like Vermont and store its meaning too: Content > Food > Cheese > Vermont is not the same as Geography > United States > Vermont, for instance. I could have a photo of Vermont cheese taken in Hawaii. The benefit of this organization will be greater once Apple fixes Aperture so that the hierarchies are better displayed and made more usable for filtering.

Kollect
Collect all the keywords everywhere in all my images and libraries. Do this second. This is an important step. By opening all my libraries one at a time, Aperture will collect all the keywords from each of them (and update them to 1.5 format if needed). So when I am done I will have a list of all the keywords there are. From here on out there will be no surprises.

Klean
Clean up all libraries. Do this third. Go through each library one at a time and delete any unused keywords and rekeyword anything that does not fit my planned scheme. There will be no keywords left at the top level once this is complete. As each library is opened, old keywords will (re)appear, but once the last one has been processed, everything will be under control.

Korrect
Every so often, new keywords will appear. They should be easy to spot and easy to deal with. If want to be really careful I can export the keyword list every so often and compare it to a master copy that I keep outside Aperture.

Keeping the Keyword HUD locked is a big help. Not only does it stop keywords from being moved or modified accidently, it also keeps any keywords that come in with new images (imports) separated. They all go into an <Imported Keyword> section at the end of the top level list. Ideally, I think the Keyword HUD should be locked automatically each time Aperture is launched.

Tags: Aperture, Keywords, Health

If I put a keyword in the wrong place in the keyword hierarchy, then I can just drag it to where it should be. If I want the keyword to be at the top level, then I just drag it past the end of the list and drop it there. So far so good.

Here I have a keyword Oops that should not be under Animals. I want it at the top level, so I just drag it.


But I can't do that if I want it at the top level and the HUD is full of keywords because there is no end of list to drag it past.

To solve this problem, I type the keyword (or a part of it) into the search box to shorten the list. Now I can drag the keyword past the end of the list and get it to the top level again. Here is the same list in a much smaller HUD, but it is filtered by the search word and the move works:


Clicking the little X on the right of the search box gets the complete list back.

Tags: Keywords, Aperture, Moving

With Halloween almost here, it should not be all that surprising to know that keywords in Aperture 1.5 are haunted. Really they are. In 1.1 keyword management was somewhat confusing and a little dusty, but at least it was under control: you applied keywords to images and there they sat. Suddenly in 1.5 they jump out at you in the dark.

I have turned my attention to keywords. Before I tackled my own scramble of keywords, I wanted to understand what makes the new system tick so I could use if effectively and not fall afoul of anything sinister. I had read a number of reports of some very odd behavior; some of it I had seen myself. One of the first things I did after upgrading to 1.5 was open up the keyword HUD. Where did all that come from? I had many more keywords than before, all sorts of old stuff, and things I didn't think I had ever entered.

So I looked at Apple's documentation for guidance on keywords in Aperture 1.5 and saw what it has to say:

Automatic Updating of the Keywords HUD
The Keywords HUD provides a versatile way to apply keywords to images. The Keywords
HUD is now updated automatically with any keywords you add. For example, when you
enter a new keyword in the Metadata Inspector, that keyword also appears in the
Keywords HUD. When you change a keyword, for example, by changing its spelling or
capitalization, the keyword is updated on all images that have that keyword assigned. In
addition, the Keywords HUD can be locked to prevent unintended changes.

That is all I could find. Two new features; no mention of the spirit world's involvement.

Investigation has shown that there are a lot of changes under the hood, and they are for the better. The behavior of keywords has quite substantially changed in Aperture 1.5 and with a little work I hope to help you understand them. But first, I need to explain keywords in Aperture 1.1.

Keywords in Aperture 1.1

The diagram below shows how I understand keywords worked in Aperture 1.1 (you may want to drag a copy of this to the desktop and open it so you can view it alongside the text):

The dotted lines are manual operations and the solid lines are automatic operations. When Aperture 1.1 was launched, the Keyword HUD got its list of keywords from a global list of keywords stored in the user's Application Support folder. When the application quit, that list was written back to the Keywords.plist file. If you imported a list of keywords, that list just overwrote what was in the plist and the Keyword HUD was updated automatically.

The images themselves were stored as files in the library (managed images only on 1.1) with sidecar files that contained the metadata. When a keyword was manually applied to an image, those sidecar files were updated to reflect the new keywords. If an image was imported and it had keywords, those were put in the sidecar file too. I have also shown another library, Library B. When Library B was opened with Aperture 1.1 it was handled the same way as Library A, reading from the global list of keywords. In that way adding keywords only had to be done once, and they were available in every library.

If new keywords were added to the HUD or current keywords were edited, nothing happened to the keywords in the image sidecar files unless the new keywords were manually applied. So tagging 55 images with Ferd meant that those keywords had to be removed in one operation, then the HUD edited, and then Fred added to the images to correct the error.

Keywords in Aperture 1.5

Now look at this diagram that attempts to illustrate how keywords are managed in Aperture 1.5. Note that although all of the images are not present (they are referenced), their sidecar files are still in the library:


The big difference is that there is a thing called SQLite database inside the libraries. In the 1.1 diagram I did not show the library database because although it is there, it does not participate in keyword management. The other thing to notice is that the database is central to everything connected to keywords. And Aperture's database is very hungry for keywords. Every keyword Aperture 1.5 ever comes across is put into the currently open library's database.

The keywords in the database are synchronized to the Keyword HUD and to the sidecar files. So if you edit a keyword, Aperture 1.5 knows exactly where it is used and can update it immediately. This centralization also explains why Aperture 1.5 is so much faster than 1.1 on filtering with keywords: it's just a database query and it is easily combined with other queries that are used to make the complex filtering that is possible. Aperture 1.5 also allows you to move keywords between hierarchies and move hierarchies of keywords around. All the affected images have their keywords updated to match the new organization.

Because of the close association between the database and the sidecar files, 1.5 can enforce the requirement that the database contain all the keywords of all the images it is managing at all times. This is why in 1.5 when you go to delete a keyword you are forced to remove it from all the images that have it if you proceed: if this were not done, then the keyword database would no longer be complete. The database also contains keywords that are not used in any image.

Another difference is that imported keywords now add to the list of keywords in the HUD (via the database) rather than replacing the list, as was the behavior in 1.1. And images with keywords that are imported, alone or as part of an imported project, (or have keywords added during import) also have those keywords added to the hungry database.

This explains the first spooky behavior of Aperture 1.5: where did all those old keywords come from? They came from Aperture 1.5 rescanning all of my images and sidecar files during the upgrade and storing everything it could find in its database. So all those old images with old keywords have come back from the dead to haunt me. I also think that 1.1 was incorrectly recording the keyword hierarchy in the sidecar files in some cases, so I actually had Activity > Running as well as Running on my images. On 1.1 it made no difference, they behaved the same. But on 1.5 the two show up in two places on the Keyword HUD.

The reason for my including Library B is more obvious now. When Aperture quits and the database is written out to the Keywords.plist file, it will include every keyword that is in any image of library A. If library B is opened, all the keywords used in images in library A will be added to the database in library B because that global list of keywords will be read in. So even if I delete keywords in one library, those same keywords can come back to haunt me via another library that still has them in its database. This is the second type of spooky behavior: Zombie Keywords. To kill them once and for all (after you have added the appropriate correct keywords), select all the zombies with command-clicks, and delete them from all versions. Then close Aperture and open another library. Repeat the delete with all the libraries in turn and they will finally be dead.

There is a third spooky behavior that I think is simply a bug. Sometimes if I delete a keyword and accept that it is going to be removed from all the versions it disappears. But then a short while later it reappears in the Keyword HUD, right in front of my eyes! However if after deleting the keyword I immediately quit Aperture, all is well and it does not come back.

The Way Ahead

So how will I work with the new keyword system of 1.5? I haven't tried yet, so I don't know (another article). But I already know that I prefer the new way: it is faster, more consistent, more comprehensive, and importantly more comprehensible. It gives me the complete picture, warts and all, and allows me to do something about what I see.

I did find a couple of keyword bugs. Show keyword Controls (shift D) is grayed out unless the viewer is visible. And using the period and comma shortcuts for moving up and down the list of keyword sets results in some very odd widths for the keyword buttons. What is with the central justification of the buttons and pop-up anyway? Just right-justify the whole thing and it will stay in exactly the same place as I navigate.

The filter dialog really needs to show keywords as a hierarchy. The biggest improvement to the keyword system I can think of centers around the HUD. Each line should show how many images in the library use that keyword. And all keywords used in the current selection should be bolded. iView works like this and it is very, very useful.

Tags: Aperture, Keywords, Haunting, Library, HUD

Metadata can be added to books. Here I've created a page in the small soft cover book I already had started and dragged a photo on to it:

I need a border to leave room for the metadata. To do that I drag the corners in and then change the way that Aperture fills the box by right-clicking and changing from Scale To Fit Centered to Scale to Fill:

Now adding metadata should be easy. I make sure I am in Edit Layout mode, select an image, click on the Add Metadata button::

And there it is. Or is it? It turns out that this does not work. At all. It turns out that you can't add metadata boxes to small soft cover books -- or at least I can't make it work. So lets start again. I'll pick a new theme, say Special Occasion, and edit it a little. Now let's add metadata to this image:

After moving the new metadata box I get this:

And now I can go to the metadata format drop-down and select something else:

Such as aperture:

But that is not very friendly. It looks like I have to create a separate box for each item I want to add. No metadata sets here? Apparently not. I hope that is coming in a later version. Anyway here is the result:

Another neat thing you can do with books is to automatically flow all the photos into the template and then rearrange:

Some of its choices are inspired, like this one:

And this one:

Unfortunately there is no way to randomize the images into a book. That would be a real boon.

A neat feature of the books is that as long as you are in Edit Mode, if you drag photos about on a page they will swap, not replace. In other words, there is no need to cut and paste and reposition. Drag to rearrange, simple as that.

Tags: Aperture, Books, Keywords

Aperture keywords can be imported and exported, but it is not obvious how to do this. There are no menu items anywhere to be found, and there is nothing on the inspector panel of the Aperture main window. Instead, bring up the keyword HUD (shift H) and all is revealed:

There, at the bottom of the window are the Import... and Export... buttons. When you export, you'll get a plain text file containing the keywords and tab characters, so make sure whatever editor you use can display tabs correctly. Don't convert tabs to spaces or allow tabs added to the file to be expressed as spaces. The best kind of editor for this is something like SubEthaEdit, or TextWrangler.

Here is TextWrangler's display of part of the file with invisibles turned on so you can see the tabs and newlines:

The tabs are used to indent the text to match the indenting of the keyword hierarchy. TextWrangler will let you move whole blocks of text left and right, subtracting or adding tabs as needed, so this is a very fast way to make large changes to your keyword list. When you are done editing, import the keyword list back into Aperture. The list you import will replace the current list, but none of the keywords already attached to images will be modified.

The other list that can be exported and imported is the metadata button list that appears at the bottom of the Aperture window:

Again, there is no way to do anything with this information through the menus. Instead you access it through the pop-up:

And the following window gives you the import and export buttons:

What you are importing and exporting here is more complex than just a list of keywords. Each button set shown on the left pan consists of a list of keywords shown in the middle pane. Each of those has a hierarchy associated with it from the keyword library shown on the right pane.

When you export the button sets you get a plist file instead of a plain text file. TextWrangler shows it like this:

Again there are a lot of tabs in the file, but this time they are cosmetic. The structure is encoded in the bracketed items: this is an XML file. It's tough to edit this by hand without making mistakes, so you really need an XML editor to do the job. Apple supplies a plist editor (called Property List Editor) with their developer tools that shows a display like this:

Here you can see the nine button sets I have defined and a list of preset keywords that the Actions set defines. On the highlighted line you can see the hierarchy of the keyword I have used (Bombers gallery): it is in Actions > Publish.

Having edited the button sets you can import the new sets into Aperture with the Import button. I have not actually tried this yet. I'm waiting for Aperture to have better and more consistent keyword support, especially for hierarchies before I do anything too complex.

Tags: Aperture, Importing, Exporting, Keywords