Smart Albums
Aperture: How To Construct Impossible Smart Albums
2008-01-17
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.
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.
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Aperture: Why Is There No Built-in Smart Album For 2008?
2008-01-02
Those are built-in smart albums and there is nothing you can do about them:
I never use them. If you find where they are defined and change them, then Aperture will put them back to their defaults. But you would think that 2008 would have been automatically created since it follows 2007. Every time, so far at least.
The fix is to make regular smart albums for years. I click on Library and create a new smart album like this:
By selecting the library first, the scope of this smart filter is the entire library. Renaming the new smart album and clicking on the magnifying glass gives me the filter dialog. Notice that the title says (Library), showing the scope. I could use the + pop-up top right to add a Date line to the filter and then set a range of dates:
But this is messy. Once the dates are entered they change to include the time and time zone. When I set up one for 2007 the filter did not find images I had shot during the last 8 hours of 2007. I am 8 hours behind UTC, so I assume that this filter works on UTC. Handy for those who require the same universal time comparison worldwide so that everyone agrees on when 2008 starts and ends, but not what I need.
So I go for the quick fix by selecting select EXIF from the + button top right and matching the Capture Year:
In both cases I select Ignore stack groupings in order to allow images inside stacks to be included.
Aperture 1.5: Use Smart Albums To See Which Referenced Masters Are Available
2007-01-07
One problem with keeping referenced masters on removable media such as DVDs or Firewire drives is knowing what is actually on them. Mounting the disk or drive brings the masters on line and the badges change from this:
to this:
But it is difficult to see just these images among the thousands and register which ones are on the drive that just mounted.
An email from Johan Elzenga suggested an easy way to see just the referenced images that are on the mounted drive: use a pair of smart albums. This first one finds all offline images. It is set up to work only on images for my 2006-05 project:
The File status setting is found in the action (cog) menu on the top right.
Its sibling shows all masters that are referenced and online. Since managed masters are always online, the Match setting at the top is set to All and two conditions are needed:
This makes the album only show masters that are online and referenced and in the 2006-05 project. And with either of these I can also use additional filtering, searching, and sorting in the browser window where the images are displayed to narrow my choice further.
The neat thing about these smart albums is that they will change their contents as disks are mounted and removed. Put in a DVD, watch the album. Eject it and put an another. Repeat.
to this:
But it is difficult to see just these images among the thousands and register which ones are on the drive that just mounted.
An email from Johan Elzenga suggested an easy way to see just the referenced images that are on the mounted drive: use a pair of smart albums. This first one finds all offline images. It is set up to work only on images for my 2006-05 project:
The File status setting is found in the action (cog) menu on the top right.
Its sibling shows all masters that are referenced and online. Since managed masters are always online, the Match setting at the top is set to All and two conditions are needed:
This makes the album only show masters that are online and referenced and in the 2006-05 project. And with either of these I can also use additional filtering, searching, and sorting in the browser window where the images are displayed to narrow my choice further.
The neat thing about these smart albums is that they will change their contents as disks are mounted and removed. Put in a DVD, watch the album. Eject it and put an another. Repeat.
Aperture: How Do I Remove Built-in Smart Albums?
2006-12-28
Yes it is possible. But no, I don't know how to do it, or more importantly if you should do it.
What I do know is that these built-in smart albums are in every library and are built in to the Aperture application itself. If you remove them from a library, Aperture will put them back.
You can see them in Aperture by opening the application with a control-click and selecting Show Package Contents. Open the Resources folder and look for the FactoryLibraryQueries folder. I don't know the consequences of removing or editing them, so beware of making any modifications.
Aperture: Smart Albums
2006-12-06
[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.
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.
Aperture: Multiple Browsers For Fun and Profit
2006-12-05
One of those little-appreciated features of Aperture is that is is possible to display two thumbnail browsers at the same time. What is more, an unlimited number of browsers can be finger-tip ready in tabs for each of those browsers.
Here is a typical display with one browser. The project it shows is highlighted in the file pane on the left:
To get the second browser, I option-click on a different project or album:
With a viewer present, shift W and option W can be used to change the arrangement of the viewer and the grid views, but I don't have one in this example.
To add more browsers in tabs, I select the browser and command click on more projects or albums or smart galleries or anything else I like. I have added two more to the right-hand browser:
And I can rearrange these by dragging tabs from one browser to the other:
Fun! But where is the profit? Here are some of the things I can do with this. You can probably think of many more.
With a viewer displayed, I select an image in one browser and press Return. That sets the Compare item. Now I select images from the other browser to compare then side-by-side:
As well as comparing them I can also adjust one of them. I might have a certain "look" of one image that I want to get in another. If they are in separate projects I can display them by using Compare and adjust one while using the other as a reference.
By putting the projects or albums that contain the images for the web gallery on tabs (top right), I can use the other browser to hold the web album images (bottom right). I just drag the images from the tabbed browsers into the web gallery browser:
As I click on the tabs I lose the web gallery viewer as it displays the selected image in the other projects. If I want to prevent that (and I usually do) I lock the viewer to the web gallery browser by clicking on the lock:
This same technique also works for light tables:
This is a pretty obvious thing to be able to do, but it can be very useful. I might have a certain number of images that is needed for a specific purpose, or some reason for a specific order of some images. By being able to view both projects at the same time I can move images back and forth until I get what I want.
I set up the workspace with an album on one side and several projects on the other. For each project, I pick out the images I want and drag them to the album. This lets me view the album while I am building it:
This is handy if I am working on a small screen. I can open all the projects I will need in tabs and then close the project pane with W. And I can rearrange the tabs of a browser by dragging.
If I want to take a project and distribute its contents across several albums, I can do that easily with multiple browsers. I click on the project and create several empty albums inside that project, then put all of those albums in tabs on one browser alongside the project in the other browser. Now I can go through my project one image at a time and add the image to the appropriate album as I see fit:
All this works for smart albums too. I can set up two smart albums and view them together. Here is one smart album on the left that shows three star images only, and one on the right that shows two stars or less. As I change the ratings the images "move" from one browser to the other:
Smart albums can be used for many other purposes, so by appropriately setting up the albums I can mark images with a keyword using the keyword button shortcuts (option number) and watch them move from one browser to the other as they are processed in some way.
Sometimes the order of the images is important. Since albums have an order that is independent of other albums and the projects that they draw their images from, displaying albums side-by-side can be used to see the same images in different orders at the same time. Here are the same images viewed by date on the left and by version name on the right:
The same works for filtering. I can have two different filtered views of the same images side-by-side. And don't forget the list view:
The list view provides a very quick way of finding some information that is not so obvious from the other metadata views.
Here is a typical display with one browser. The project it shows is highlighted in the file pane on the left:
To get the second browser, I option-click on a different project or album:
With a viewer present, shift W and option W can be used to change the arrangement of the viewer and the grid views, but I don't have one in this example.
To add more browsers in tabs, I select the browser and command click on more projects or albums or smart galleries or anything else I like. I have added two more to the right-hand browser:
And I can rearrange these by dragging tabs from one browser to the other:
Fun! But where is the profit? Here are some of the things I can do with this. You can probably think of many more.
Compare Images in one album with those in another
With a viewer displayed, I select an image in one browser and press Return. That sets the Compare item. Now I select images from the other browser to compare then side-by-side:
As well as comparing them I can also adjust one of them. I might have a certain "look" of one image that I want to get in another. If they are in separate projects I can display them by using Compare and adjust one while using the other as a reference.
View a web gallery while browsing other projects
By putting the projects or albums that contain the images for the web gallery on tabs (top right), I can use the other browser to hold the web album images (bottom right). I just drag the images from the tabbed browsers into the web gallery browser:
As I click on the tabs I lose the web gallery viewer as it displays the selected image in the other projects. If I want to prevent that (and I usually do) I lock the viewer to the web gallery browser by clicking on the lock:
This same technique also works for light tables:
Move images from one project to another while looking at the contents of both
This is a pretty obvious thing to be able to do, but it can be very useful. I might have a certain number of images that is needed for a specific purpose, or some reason for a specific order of some images. By being able to view both projects at the same time I can move images back and forth until I get what I want.
Create an album from several projects by dragging between browsers
I set up the workspace with an album on one side and several projects on the other. For each project, I pick out the images I want and drag them to the album. This lets me view the album while I am building it:
Switch between projects without bringing up the project pane
This is handy if I am working on a small screen. I can open all the projects I will need in tabs and then close the project pane with W. And I can rearrange the tabs of a browser by dragging.
See a complete project alongside multiple albums from that project
If I want to take a project and distribute its contents across several albums, I can do that easily with multiple browsers. I click on the project and create several empty albums inside that project, then put all of those albums in tabs on one browser alongside the project in the other browser. Now I can go through my project one image at a time and add the image to the appropriate album as I see fit:
See only the two-star or less images alongside the three-star images of a project
All this works for smart albums too. I can set up two smart albums and view them together. Here is one smart album on the left that shows three star images only, and one on the right that shows two stars or less. As I change the ratings the images "move" from one browser to the other:
Smart albums can be used for many other purposes, so by appropriately setting up the albums I can mark images with a keyword using the keyword button shortcuts (option number) and watch them move from one browser to the other as they are processed in some way.
Display the same browser data sorted two ways using an album
Sometimes the order of the images is important. Since albums have an order that is independent of other albums and the projects that they draw their images from, displaying albums side-by-side can be used to see the same images in different orders at the same time. Here are the same images viewed by date on the left and by version name on the right:
The same works for filtering. I can have two different filtered views of the same images side-by-side. And don't forget the list view:
The list view provides a very quick way of finding some information that is not so obvious from the other metadata views.
Aperture 1.5.1: Problems With Smart Albums and Contact Sheets?
2006-11-04
I am seeing reports of a problem with smart albums under Aperture 1.5.1. It only affects smart albums that use ratings AND are have not been created inside a project (created at the library level). Creating a smart album inside a project makes it specific to that project, so this is not a workaround. Existing smart albums and those created under 1.5.1 seem to be broken.
Also, cropped images on contact sheets are said to be distorted.
I am not running 1.5.1 yet, so don't have any independent assessment of these.
Also, cropped images on contact sheets are said to be distorted.
I am not running 1.5.1 yet, so don't have any independent assessment of these.
Aperture Smart Albums and Gallery Creation
2006-06-28
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.Theey 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 S3 gallery, I export masters and use a preset export called GalleryS3 IS:
This helps me remember how I did the export last time. Clicking on the pop up list and selecting Edit... allows me to choose the export type:
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 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 2006. 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.
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.Theey 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 S3 gallery, I export masters and use a preset export called GalleryS3 IS:
This helps me remember how I did the export last time. Clicking on the pop up list and selecting Edit... allows me to choose the export type:
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 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 2006. 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.
Aperture Smart Albums Duplicates Problem
2006-06-01
I set up a Smart Album and a Smart Web Gallery today and immediately ran into a problem.
I made the smart filter match the keyword gallery and ignore stack grouping. That way I can simply tag anything with gallery and it will appear as if by magic. And it did. But then I dragged an image in a project into my Wallpaper album. That created a new version, and that version inherited its metadata from its original, so it also had the gallery keyword and it duly appeared in my Smart Web Gallery as a duplicate.
The fix was to make the Smart Web Gallery match the keyword gallery and match the version name if it does not include "version". So now the versions are rejected by the filter.
Another thing that worked was to remove the gallery keyword from the new version, but that is something I would have to do for every image that has a version anywhere. Tedious and error-prone.
I made the smart filter match the keyword gallery and ignore stack grouping. That way I can simply tag anything with gallery and it will appear as if by magic. And it did. But then I dragged an image in a project into my Wallpaper album. That created a new version, and that version inherited its metadata from its original, so it also had the gallery keyword and it duly appeared in my Smart Web Gallery as a duplicate.
The fix was to make the Smart Web Gallery match the keyword gallery and match the version name if it does not include "version". So now the versions are rejected by the filter.
Another thing that worked was to remove the gallery keyword from the new version, but that is something I would have to do for every image that has a version anywhere. Tedious and error-prone.
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