By selecting which metadata is displayed with thumbnails I have two useful sets of information at my fingertips. One set consists of information I have added to the image: star rating, adjustments, keywords, captions, so it is blank if I have done nothing. The other set is full of numeric data that came with the image: its size, name, shutter speed, aperture, etc. I switch between the two of them with shift U.

But Aperture limits the display to a single line, so unless the thumbnails are displayed at an enormous size I can only see the first part of the metadata:

And that is a problem. Are those words captions, keywords, or what? And how can I see what else there is?

There are a couple of ways to get information on individual images. The metadata pane (capital I) will show everything I have set up in the metadata view selected:

But that uses up screen real estate all the time. I can also press the T key and have the metadata tooltip come up:

That saves the space used by the metadata pane, and I can just move the cursor to any image that interests me, but it still displays information for only one image at a time.

A better solution, and one that is available with a keypress, is to look at my images in list view. I can click the button at the top left of the browser, or more quickly, hit control L:

The thumbnail images are replaced with a dense display that shows one data for one image on each line (shift W is sometimes needed here to "rotate" the display for extra width). The currently selected images are shown with a white background, so it is easy to identify them. The list can be quickly sorted by clicking on a column, and the columns widened so that the whole caption and keyword list is visible:

And if I go back into grid view (control G) the sorting column I selected stays and the thumbnails are displayed in Caption order, grouping all those with no caption at the top:

The list view columns can be reordered, to put the caption on the left for instance, but unfortunately that change does not stick. To change the order of the columns permanently, a visit to the metadata pane is required -- the order of the columns in the list view is reflected in the order of the items in the metadata view that is applied to the list view. That's a mouthful, because there two steps needed to set this up.

To customize the list view, first press command J and select metadata views for the two list sets:

The set that is displayed can be switched on the fly with shift U just like the grid views. Here I am using List - Basic for one and List - Expanded for the other. I can use any metadata view I like, including new ones I have created.

Now by closing the View Options window and selecting one of those List views in the metadata pane, I can edit it to choose what it displays and in what order. I'm going to modify List - Expanded:

I can rearrange the items into the column order I want. I put the caption first by dragging the Caption field to the top:

And then move the Keywords field to the next spot. To end the editing, I deselect the button at the bottom of the metadata pane:

and the set-up is complete.

Looking at the list view I see that the Caption and Keywords are on the left, or at least as far left as they can go, since the Version Name column is always shown on the left:

I can create any number of different column arrangements and select two of them up at a time to be toggled with shift U.

Finally I can see all my captions and keywords in their full glory just by pressing control L. Control G gets me back the grid view.