Use A Web Journal To Hold Project Notes
Missing from Aperture is the ability to attach notes and documents to images, albums, or projects. A partial way around this limitation is to create web journals in Aperture and associate them with the images they relate to.
To add notes to My Macworld 2008 project, I control-click the project and select New > Web Journal:
That creates an unnamed web journal inside the project which I then rename. A web journal consists of blocks of text and images arranged on individual pages, the idea being that each page is a single entry for a unit of time such as a day. In this case I'm just going to use one page.
I add text to the blank web journal by clicking the +T icon, or by dragging it to where I want a new entry. The green line shows where it will be placed:
Placeholder text appears and can be replaced with notes by overtyping:
There is a control at the top right that selects whether the text is used as a subtitle or as body text. I can also replace the site title and other placeholder text.
To add images to the web journal pages, I must first add them to the web journal image browser. I add images by option-clicking on a project or album so that two browsers are displayed together and then drag the images I want over to the web journal browser:
In this case I am taking images from the MacWorld 2008 project, but they could come from anywhere in my library.
To make things easier, I can lock the viewer to the web journal browser:
This keeps the web journal displayed all the time even if I select album or project browsers and click on the images they contain.
Once I have some images in the web journal browser, I add them to my notes as illustrations by just dragging them in:
As well as living inside projects, web journals can also be stored in blue folders or brown folders. Although I can't have web journals inside albums or smart albums, I can name my web journals in such a way that they are easily associated with them.
While this technique does not allow documents to be stored with projects, I can still associate them. Using a copy of TextWrangler, I open a new file browser with option command N. Then I navigate to the document I want, in this case a Garageband file, and control-click:
By selecting Copy URL I have a URL that starts with file://. I paste that into my web journal. Later when I want to access the document I can copy and paste the URL into Safari. Safari will open the document if it can (for a movie for instance), or if it cannot will reveal it in the Finder. This technique works with folders as well. There is, unfortunately, no way to make the link clickable.
To add notes to My Macworld 2008 project, I control-click the project and select New > Web Journal:
That creates an unnamed web journal inside the project which I then rename. A web journal consists of blocks of text and images arranged on individual pages, the idea being that each page is a single entry for a unit of time such as a day. In this case I'm just going to use one page.
I add text to the blank web journal by clicking the +T icon, or by dragging it to where I want a new entry. The green line shows where it will be placed:
Placeholder text appears and can be replaced with notes by overtyping:
There is a control at the top right that selects whether the text is used as a subtitle or as body text. I can also replace the site title and other placeholder text.
To add images to the web journal pages, I must first add them to the web journal image browser. I add images by option-clicking on a project or album so that two browsers are displayed together and then drag the images I want over to the web journal browser:
In this case I am taking images from the MacWorld 2008 project, but they could come from anywhere in my library.
To make things easier, I can lock the viewer to the web journal browser:
This keeps the web journal displayed all the time even if I select album or project browsers and click on the images they contain.
Once I have some images in the web journal browser, I add them to my notes as illustrations by just dragging them in:
As well as living inside projects, web journals can also be stored in blue folders or brown folders. Although I can't have web journals inside albums or smart albums, I can name my web journals in such a way that they are easily associated with them.
While this technique does not allow documents to be stored with projects, I can still associate them. Using a copy of TextWrangler, I open a new file browser with option command N. Then I navigate to the document I want, in this case a Garageband file, and control-click:
By selecting Copy URL I have a URL that starts with file://. I paste that into my web journal. Later when I want to access the document I can copy and paste the URL into Safari. Safari will open the document if it can (for a movie for instance), or if it cannot will reveal it in the Finder. This technique works with folders as well. There is, unfortunately, no way to make the link clickable.
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