Berend Hasselman has a page dedicated to Aperture scripts he has put together. He needed to get at the metadata that Aperture stores but doesn't give access to, like Lens ID and Auto Focus point used so created these scripts. They run fine under Tiger and Leopard.

Tags: Aperture, Metadata, Applescript

Aperture's smart album filtering logic offers only the most basic logical choice: all the conditions set in the dialog or any of the conditions set in the dialog. This means that while there are many different criteria provided, it not apparently possible to combine them in complex ways.

However, due to the fact that there are actually two levels of filtering provided by the thumbnail and grid views, impossible filters can be constructed. For instance, I can find images taken on Wednesday OR Thursday OR Friday AND at between 100 and 130mm focal length. I can find images with the keyword Duck OR Swan OR Goose AND the keyword Lake AND rated two stars and above. And if I want, I can make these type of smart filters specific to a single project or to a collection of projects in a blue folder.

Here is how to combine logic using the two available levels. I'll use the requirement that I need to view all RAW images taken in 2007. To find all RAW images I have to create a filter that ORs together all the different kinds of RAW there can be, since there is no setting for "is RAW".

First I select the library and create a new smart album and call it RAW-2007:

I select the Library before I create the smart album because I want this to work on all my images. The dialog reflects this in its title.

Then I set the match to be ANY and filter to Filename ends with .CR2. I add some more conditions for the file name ending that deal with all the RAW formats I am going encounter:

I could check the Ignore stack groupings box at the bottom if I wanted to look inside stacks. This first filter finds all the RAW images in my library.

I close the dialog and with the smart album still selected I click on the filter icon on the browser, top right.

To set up the second level of filtering I filter on the EXIF capture year and match it to 2007:

I could add more conditions at this point, such as ratings or camera model, if I wished.

To make more filters similar to this one, say for different years, I duplicate the smart album, rename it, and then change the year number in the filter:

This second level of filtering works because each album, project, and smart album remembers its current filter setting. I have to be careful not to change it once I have the thumbnails displayed or else it will not work as expected when I reinvoke it. One way to reduce this risk is to select all the RAW-2007 images and create a new regular album from them (or just use the New Album With Current Images button) Since no more images will be added in 2007, the contents of that static album should never change.

Tags: Aperture, Filtering, Metadata, Smart Albums, RAW, Library

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

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.

Tags: Aperture, Metadata, Metadata Views, Thumbnails, Captions, Workspace

I quite often do searches for pics by keywords etc.. but when I do find an image through the search I would like then to look at the other images from that project, so how do I find out what the project is and where it is in the Aperture Projects view, I could do with something similar to the 'Show in Finder' feature... am I missing something obvious somewhere?

You are not missing anything obvious. The features for doing this are somewhat limited, but it can be done.

Here is an album that displays some images. I want to find out which project the dog photo comes from:

By selecting the image and bringing up the metadata panel of the information pane I can look at the Master Location:

The Master Location is the name of the project that contains the master, so I can just go look there. If the project is in a blue folder or two, then those folder names will be given in a bread-crumb style list: Outer folder > Inner folder > Project.

A more specific method that will locate the master image more uniquely is to copy the File Name, and do a search on it. Start by creating a filter on the entire library:

And then either paste the file name into the text box:

Or use the + pull-down menu top right to add a new search term (Other Data) and specifically choose the File Name option.

The former can be very slow because it may search all the text in the library in a linear fashion. The latter takes longer to set up, but is more precise, matching only file names, and much faster. In either case, check the Ignore stack groupings box if you want to look inside stacks. More than one image may be found because, depending on how you have your master files named, there may be duplication. In the example I show here, the name that the camera gave me has the date appended, so I will only find a single image.

The same technique can be applied to the caption. I caption everything I keep, layering captions onto many images at a time. To find "similar" images, usually from the same project, I just search using part of the caption.

A fast way of finding images taken with the original (and usually part of the same project) is to note the date it was taken and filter the library on that date:

Using the calendar uses very few clicks and uses indexed information, so can often be the fastest.

None of these methods will show which albums contain a particular image. Nor is is possible to find out how many time and image has been used in albums. The best workaround I can think of is to delve into the library and search for image UUIDs, but this is messy.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Filtering, Projects, Metadata

I have a website where I post my photos and with every photo a "saying". When I manage my photos in Aperture I add the "Saying title" in the metadate "Byline Title" field and the saying in the metadata "Byline" field. So far so good. Now I want to make a book but when I add a "Metadata Box" I´m not able to pick the Byline Title or Byline in the "Set Metadata Format" option. Can this easily be fixed or what?

In a word, no. The choices given are the only ones available. Your only practical option at this point is to move or copy the metadata to one of the available choices before you import into Aperture. There are no capabilities inside Aperture for moving or copying metadata between fields automatically.

When laying out a book, metadata boxes can be added and linked to images. Having selected the Edit Layout mode and clicked on an image, the Add Metadata button (center) creates the box:

The metadata box is linked to the selected image and includes the data shown by the tag:

There is a drop-down menu that allows the contents to be changed:

Only this small selection of possible metadata can be displayed. The only way to get more data is to move it into the available fields.

But I have never been able to get anything to appear for the Title, Author, or Copyright selections. It's as though Apple has simply missed something out here.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Metadata, Books, Bugs