If you want to see how a crop will look in the final image but still play with it, set your workspace up like this:

After starting the crop with the C key, adjustments of the crop rectangle in the viewer are accompanied by thumbnail regeneration in the browser. Once it looks right, press A to finish. The same trick works in full screen mode:

Just make sure that the thumbnails are set to be visible all the time by setting the viewer mode to On:

Tags: Tips And Tricks, Aperture, Cropping, Workflow, Workspace, Thumbnails

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

Love your site and have enjoyed learning Aperture. My problem occurs while I am working in a book or light table.    When I click on an image that is small in my browser I cannot for the life of me find a way to look at that image alone in a viewer so I can edit it.    I can open it in photoshop, but not separately in Aperture.  In any other kind of folder clicking on a image shows it larger in the viewer.  But in the book or Light table layouts all you see is the book or light table.  It is frustrating to need to do a quick edit, but not be able to quickly see the image larger on the screen.    In I photo I was able to double click on the image, see it large, edit it and go back into the book.  In Aperture I have to search for the image in a different browser to see it large enough to edit it. What am I missing? Suggestions?

You are missing the F key. Pressing F will display the selected thumbnail (one or many) full screen. There images can be adjusted via the HUD.

There is a second way that involves less clicking if you have a number of images to view and/or edit. The grid browser includes this icon when working on a book or light table:

Click it to select and it will replace the book or light table viewer with the standard image viewer. Work on your images and click it again to get the book or light table back.

The lock icon to the right will lock the viewer to this browser. This is useful if you have multiple browsers open and want to look through them while keeping the book or light table on the screen.

This Full Screen article shows how useful the full screen mode is. This Laying Out A Book article has an example of creating a new image version and editing it while in book view. And Working With Multiple Browsers shows all the ways that multiple browsers can be usefully employed.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Workspace

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.

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.

Tags: Aperture, Browsers, Workspace, Smart Albums, Filtering

James Duncan Davidson comments on his blog about the new color control in Aperture 1.5 (just the top half shown):

and compares it to the one in Lightroom, now, ahem, Photoshop Lightroom:

I agree with what he says. However, he omits one major problem with the Lightroom tool: when a person goes to adjust colors they do it one color at a time; but the Lightroom tool is organized by attribute first and then color second. So to adjust one color you must jump about between the sections, hoping you don't click the wrong slider in error. Aperture gets this right and provides the color attribute controls for each color next to that color and does so using a cleaner layout.

Tags: Aperture, Color, Workspace, Lightroom

Quick! -- What time of day was that photo taken? Was their any exposure compensation used?

You can find out this kind of thing in Aperture with a single key press. Put the cursor over the image (or thumbnail) and hit T. Up will pop a little overlay that gives you some information about the image. Hit T again and it will go away. It's especially useful in full screen mode or any view with all thumbnails because you don't have to make any workspace changes and then undo them again.

Here is a full-screen image with the pop-up showing:

For this image, the pop-up looks like this. It is only as big as it needs to be to display the information that is available:

In theory the pop-up should change as you drag the cursor about over different images, but I have found this to be unreliable. So I generally hit T then T again to make sure it has gone. Apple calls this an Image Tooltip, but that is a rather odd name. It has nothing to do with tools or tips. Metadata Quick Look or something like that would be more meaningful.

The information it displays is customizable too, and that makes this an even handier tool. You will find the controls for this in View > View Options (or hit command J):

It's the last one. All you can do is to set the metadata set that is displayed by selecting one from the pop-up. Clicking the checkbox is the same as hitting T. You can enable the tooltips and see what effect the different metadata sets have with the window open.

Also on here are all the other settings for metadata display for both the viewer and the grid (thumbnails) and the list view. I choose to display everything Over thumbnails, but that doesn't really mean that everything overlays them because there isn't enough room. Here is a thumbnail with the display set to Over:

and here is the same thumbnail with the display set to Below:

The badges get their own space in the Below view, but the other data is always below. Show Labels will prefix each item of data with what it is, such as "Image Date". I keep this turned off since it just uses more space.

To change what the metadata sets such as Tooltips - expanded actually specify, you have to press I (uppercase i) to get the inspector and then select the one you want to change:

Then when it has been selected, you can edit it, rename it, or duplicate it, or create a completely new set:

If you chose to edit it, you will get a display like this:

You can remove items with the little symbols, or add them by clicking the checkboxes in the lower part of the panel. And you can change the order of the data by dragging the metadata labels.

I have my metadata views set up so that I have Viewer - Basic normally overlaying the image. What this means is that I get badges only and they are on top of the image. This allows the image to be as big as possible and have almost no clutter.

If I switch sets with Shift Y I get everything (Viewer - Expanded) below the image:

For thumbnails I can use Shift U to switch between the sets. Again Grid - Basic overlays the badges but I also have it set up to show the size of the image in pixels and bytes. This is small data and fits easily:

Grid - Expanded overlays the badges too, but puts other data below the image. I display keywords and captions in this mode so I can see how far I have gotten in adding that data to my images:

Although the controls are a little spread out, the metadata viewing capabilities of Aperture are pretty good. The only thing that I wish I could do that I cannot is to have more selections for the placement of data. For instance I would like to have metadata on the left or right side of many images. I have the screen space and it is black, but Aperture only puts the data it at the bottom, so shrinking the image size.

Tags: Aperture, Metadata Views, Workspace

The fastest way to see things big in Aperture is to go full screen. It's a lot quicker than trying to adjust all the various parts of the workspace to get the biggest viewer you can and then having to adjust it all back again once you are done looking. Just hit F and the screen will change to this layout:



Hit escape or F again to go back to where you were. This display needs some adjustment: there is wasted space at the bottom (taken by the filmstrip) and at the sides.

To improve things, first move the filmstrip to the left or right side by clicking on it and dragging:



The image scales to suit. Next reduce the size of the filmstrip. How? It is not obvious at all. You move the slider at the top (as shown above). As the thumbnails get smaller the filmstrip gets narrower. This is the opposite behavior to the thumbnail browser in that here the thumbnail size drives the window size. In the thumbnail browser the window size drives the thumbnail size. If you use a graphics tablet you will find that there are some odd visual interactions between the filmstrip and the pen position cause by the absolute coordinates coming from the tablet.

The filmstrip can also be longer or shorter. Click close to the ends and drag to stretch or compress it.

Next, change the way the filmstrip interacts with the big image. The way I have my display set up is so that the filmstrip fits into space not used by the large image. You can change this behavior in several ways:



The leftmost menu item selects the viewing mode. It has the five normal modes, plus the ability to control the filmstrip behavior. On makes it always visible if selected. Auto will make it appear if the mouse rolls over it. Avoid moves the large image out of the way of the filmstrip, but only if it is visible. So I normally set mine up as Auto, Don't Avoid. In that way the whole screen is available for the big image, but if I need the filmstrip I can mouse over and it will appear for me. The aspect ratio of my images and the screen is such that with a narrow filmstrip I lose almost nothing on the left edge, so Avoid is not helpful.

You can't use the projects pane (W) or display the adjustment pane (I). But that is not why you are here, so it does not matter. The adjustment HUD (H) is available, and so is the keywords HUD (shift H). All the normal display modes work too, so you can zoom (Z), open multiple images, etc. and it all works as expected.



I normally turn off metadata display, or have just the badges overlaying. Rating works as well; you just have to learn the key presses necessary to do what you want.

Navigation works the same way as in the normal display mode, but you cannot see where you are in the thumbnails. So I normally just use the left and right arrow keys to scroll back and forth. Another nice set of keys to use are J, K, and L. Mouse over to the film strip to make it visible and hit J to scroll one way and L to stroll the other. Hit those keys more than once to speed up the scrolling. K stops it dead. Home and End take you to the first and last respectively.

If you have stacks, then it is handy to know Option Page Up and Option Page Down. Those jump from stack to stack. If the stacks are open all the enclosed images will be shown in Multi mode or Stack mode. If the stacks are closed, they will be opened automatically (but not closed later). In Primary mode, only the pick will be shown. This means that you can either view every image (right arrow, right arrow, ...), or only stack picks, skipping all others (including images that are not in stacks) (option page down, option page down, ....).

With multiple images displayed and zoomed (Z) like this:



You can scroll them about using the space bar and click-dragging. If you modify that with Shift-Space, then clicking and dragging moves all the images around together. This is very useful for comparing many images in detail. The M key will show the master images at any time.

One thing to watch out for, or at least know about, is another way to "lose" images. If you have one image displayed on the screen in full screen mode and command-click the image the screen will go black. What happened?! All that you did was to deselect the current and only image. To get something back, hit Home and your first image in the filmstrip will appear.

If your cursor wanders to the top of the screen you will see the command bar appear as an overlay. It is normally auto-hiding, but you can change this with the third-from-left icon:



I usually just keep it out of the way. The loupe and all the adjustment tools are available too. And they have keyboard shortcuts, such as Control-S for sharpening, and Command O for Lift.

Tags: Aperture, Full Screen, Workspace

Can your viewer do this?

The movie above shows nine images in the Aperture viewer chasing around in a square. I'll show you how it is done.

In the thumbnail viewer (grid) make sure you have at least twenty images. Make the viewer visible and set the viewer into Multi mode (option U). Scroll to the top of the thumbnails and mentally label the first nine images from 1 to 9.

Click on the first image (number 1), then command click on eight more in the order 2 3 8 9 4 7 6 5. Once you have done that you will have nine images in the viewer.

Now hit command right-arrow a few times. Images appear in the middle and disappear on the left! Command left-arrow will do the opposite. Command arrow is the Slide function. By clicking on the images in that special order you defined how they slide on the screen.

Here are some things you can do with four images (click image to download movie):

To slide two images up together, click in the order 1 2 3 4 and hit command-right twice in quick succession. To do a double down, the order is 4 3 2 1 and command-right twice. A double left is 1 3 2 4, and a double right is 4 2 3 1. So expressed in shorthand this is:

1 2 3 4 RR slides up
4 3 2 1 RR slides down
1 3 2 4 RR slides left
4 2 3 1 RR slides right

You can make four images rotate too. Try these. This time they use a single command-right key:

1 4 2 3 R clockwise, enter top right
3 2 4 1 R clockwise, enter bottom left
2 3 1 4 R counter, enter bottom right
4 3 1 2 R clockwise enter top left

This next one I call "the rocket" (click image to download movie):

Notice that you have to use seven images for this one.

1 4 5 7 R Rocket to top right
1 7 5 2 R Rocket to top left

It works with six images too, but this is different. Depending on the shape of the viewer six images can be arranged in either two rows or two columns. Here is a six image rotate for two rows (click image to download movie):

For two columns, these patterns work:

1 2 3 4 5 6 RR Double slide up
1 4 3 6 5 2 R Kisses, new middle right

The last one I call "kisses" because all the images kiss in the middle. With two rows you can do these:

1 3 5 2 4 6 RR Double slide left
1 3 5 4 6 2 R Kisses, new bottom middle
1 2 3 6 5 4 R Counter clockwise, bottom left

And here are some tricks with nine images. First a kiss (click image to download movie):

1 2 3 8 9 4 7 6 5 R Rotate counterclockwise new in the middle
1 3 5 8 9 7 6 4 2 R Kiss

The last one, another rocket, needs more than 18 images to work (click image to download movie):

1 4 8 5 9 12 16 13 18 R Rocket to top right

Now it's your turn.

Tags: Aperture, Fun, Workspace, Movies