Captions
Aperture Caption: An Applescript To Quickly Caption Images
2008-02-11
Adam Tow has posted an Applescript called Aperture Caption that allows captioning of a series of images without all that frustrating switching between the mouse an the keyboard. You can use FastScripts Lite to create a keyboard shortcut for invoking it, so removing even more mousing.
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Send Your Photos To The Fail Blog
2008-01-31
The Fail Blog consists of pictures of things gone wrong and the word FAIL added. Some are set up, some are likely fake (as above), but most are real situations that just ooze failure of one sort of another.
Aperture: Display Full Captions and Keywords For Thumbnail Images
2007-10-20
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.
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.
Intimidated By Keywording -- Use Captions Instead
2007-10-05
Fraser Speirs, author of FlickrExport plug-in for iPhoto and Aperture, is intimidated by keywording:
I made a reply in the comments that I reproduce here: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.
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.
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.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.
Aperture: Layering Captions
2006-11-28
I caption all of my "keep" images: those with one star or more. That might seem like a huge amount of unnecessary work, but it is not. I caption tens, sometimes hundreds, at a time. And it is valuable. Since I only keyword the "show" and "brag" images (two or three stars), the captions offer a method of finding images and tying large groups of non-keyworded images to keyworded ones.
To start captioning I get rid of everything except the grid. Option command B maximizes the grid browser and W gets rid of the project pane if it is there.
Then I filter down to one star and select broad swaths of images by shift-clicking, command-clicking or just dragging boxes. Command-dragging boxes works too, and by a combination of command-clicking and shift-clicking I can quickly select all kinds of combinations of images.
I start by captioning the broadest set. Having select the images that the caption will be added to I hit command shift B to bring up the batch change dialog and select Caption Only from the Add Metadata From pop-up. This gets rid of extraneous clutter on the dialog. Then I type in the caption and hit Enter on the numeric keypad. That saves clicking the OK button. Return on the main keyboard adds a line return in the caption box.
In the example above I captioned hundreds of images with "A month in Europe". Next I make smaller selections and caption those. I am looking to capture information that would not be contained in the other metadata, so I am not going to caption by country or by date, or by something that is useless for finding things like "Week 3". Examples of useful captions are "Rhone Valley rail trip", "Car breakdown in the Italian alps", "North of the Arctic circle".
Since I leave the Append button selected in the Batch Change dialog, each caption gets added to the ones already there and separated with a comma. I always caption once, often twice, but have not needed to caption three times yet. That could happen if, for instance, I attended a memorable event inside the Arctic circle on the month-long European trip, and wanted to caption those images "Vegard's costume party".
To take a quick look at a thumbnail while captioning I can hit V to bring back the viewer and V to remove it again. Setting the Primary Only view mode (option R) from the View selection allows me to look at just the one image I have selected. As an alternative to V, I can hit F to go into full-screen mode and F to go back again.
To start captioning I get rid of everything except the grid. Option command B maximizes the grid browser and W gets rid of the project pane if it is there.
Then I filter down to one star and select broad swaths of images by shift-clicking, command-clicking or just dragging boxes. Command-dragging boxes works too, and by a combination of command-clicking and shift-clicking I can quickly select all kinds of combinations of images.
I start by captioning the broadest set. Having select the images that the caption will be added to I hit command shift B to bring up the batch change dialog and select Caption Only from the Add Metadata From pop-up. This gets rid of extraneous clutter on the dialog. Then I type in the caption and hit Enter on the numeric keypad. That saves clicking the OK button. Return on the main keyboard adds a line return in the caption box.
In the example above I captioned hundreds of images with "A month in Europe". Next I make smaller selections and caption those. I am looking to capture information that would not be contained in the other metadata, so I am not going to caption by country or by date, or by something that is useless for finding things like "Week 3". Examples of useful captions are "Rhone Valley rail trip", "Car breakdown in the Italian alps", "North of the Arctic circle".
Since I leave the Append button selected in the Batch Change dialog, each caption gets added to the ones already there and separated with a comma. I always caption once, often twice, but have not needed to caption three times yet. That could happen if, for instance, I attended a memorable event inside the Arctic circle on the month-long European trip, and wanted to caption those images "Vegard's costume party".
To take a quick look at a thumbnail while captioning I can hit V to bring back the viewer and V to remove it again. Setting the Primary Only view mode (option R) from the View selection allows me to look at just the one image I have selected. As an alternative to V, I can hit F to go into full-screen mode and F to go back again.
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