Aperture: How Do I Delete Referenced Masters?
2006-10-29
There is a misunderstanding here that is causing some confusion. By dragging your photo folders into Aperture you created a project inside the library and also caused Aperture to copy those images into its library: your images are actually managed, not referenced. The dialog you saw:
Shows this to be the case. If you were attempting to delete any referenced images, then you would have seen this dialog:
which includes an option to trash the masters that are outside the library.
In order to import your images as referenced masters you will have to use the File > Import > Images or File > Import > Images Into a Project items from the menu. Once you do that to bring up the dialog makes sure that the Store Files: option is set appropriately, in your case to In their current location:
But your question raises an interesting problem. What if I were to delete my library images but not move the referenced files to the trash? Where does that leave me? It leaves me with a problem. I now have masters on a disk somewhere that are not connected to the library in any way. So if I want to delete them or use them somehow later I am out of luck. I have no way to find or isolate them to delete them. I will call these orphaned masters.
How To Recover Orphaned Masters
Here is a folder on my disk that contains referenced files. There are sixteen of them:
I imported all sixteen by reference so that the masters were left in this folder and the Aperture library just contained pointers to them. Then I deleted three images, but did so without letting Aperture move the masters to the trash, so in this folder are three orphaned masters. But which three?
Here is how to find out. First in Aperture I select everything that could be in the folder (project, album, import session, or whatever does it) and then relocate those to some temporary location, choosing to move the masters, not copy:
Now look at what is left in the original folder:
Just the three that Aperture did not know about: the three I had deleted. So now I can delete them for real or move them or do whatever else I want. Once that is complete I can use relocate again to restore my masters to their original position if that is what I want.
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Picture Story: What Is That?
2006-10-29
When I show this picture to people they say "What is that?" It doesn't resemble anything familiar, although I am sure that some people reading this will recognize it immediately. It is viewed daily by hundreds of thousands of people, but not quite the way I have depicted it. This picture story is about creating something puzzling from something already unusual.
Send Me Your Aperture Keywords
2006-10-28
Since a number of people have asked, I am going to describe my keyword system. It is not really designed in any way, but does have some thought behind it as to how it should work. Like most people I really just use what works for me.
But before I describe my system, I would like to collect some keyword lists from other people. If you want to play this game, open the keyword HUD, click on Export, save the file, and email it to me at bagelturf@mac.com. That list will show all your keywords and their hierarchy. I think it may be very interesting to share some examples and techniques.
Here are the rules of the game. Unless you explicitly tell me otherwise I won't publish your name or email address and I will strip or modify any personally-identifying information from any keyword lists you send and I post. If you want to describe your system or give me any other details, then that is good too.
But before I describe my system, I would like to collect some keyword lists from other people. If you want to play this game, open the keyword HUD, click on Export, save the file, and email it to me at bagelturf@mac.com. That list will show all your keywords and their hierarchy. I think it may be very interesting to share some examples and techniques.
Here are the rules of the game. Unless you explicitly tell me otherwise I won't publish your name or email address and I will strip or modify any personally-identifying information from any keyword lists you send and I post. If you want to describe your system or give me any other details, then that is good too.
Aperture: Update On Negative Filtering
2006-10-27
I missed a trick in my article on negative filtering, and it was the originator of the question that pointed it out to me. You can directly do negative filtering on keywords via the IPTC metadata. This works because the IPTC field is kept up to date with the keywords that are added to the image.
I have updated the article to reflect this newfound knowledge.
I have updated the article to reflect this newfound knowledge.
Burning Man
2006-10-27
NK Guy has a web site with some amazing pictures of Burning Man. There are eight previous years too.
Aperture: How Do I Create A Filter That Excludes Keywords?
2006-10-26
This can be done with keywords, but with some caveats. And there are other ways to work that will let do what you are trying to achieve -- perform negative filtering.
In short the answer is to use IPTC metadata fields, or use custom fields and exploit the features of those. The full solution, together with a technique for using this metadata in your workflow requires a whole article on negative filtering (posted just below this Q&A on the blog and archived in the Metadata section of the Aperture Articles).
Aperture: Negative Metadata Filtering
2006-10-26
A question that frequently arises is how to do negative filtering in Aperture. Negative filtering includes an image if it does not match some criterion, usually in combination with other logic. For instance "photos taken in March that have not been retouched". Since keywords are the most familiar form of metadata in Aperture, users apply them to images and then look around for the Keyword Is Not check box, cannot find it, and wonder what to do next.
First, here are several ways of doing negative filtering that either don't work or are clumsy:
1. Albums and project membership
Although you can "mark" images that have been processed in some way as part of your workflow by their location or by album or project membership, this is a clumsy way to work. It involves a lot of moving things around and you cannot filter on membership.
2. Version names
Not recommended. Again, clumsy. But you can filter on version names, so it's not all bad. Naming systems break easily though.
3. Rating bands
By dividing ratings into two sets, say greater than three and three and under it is possible to use the Rating is less than or equal to and Rating is greater than or equal to selections to create negative filtering. But that only gives you one thing you can filter on, chops up your ratings, and is prone to error.
So here is the meat: three ways that do work. The first uses IPTC keywords, the second an existing metadata field and the third a custom metadata field. You didn't know you could have those did you?
The IPTC Keywords field is kept up to date with the keywords that are added to the image, so you can use all the features of the IPTC string matching. Select IPTC from the + menu top right and select IPTC. Select Keywords from the pop-up and you can do this:
For simple negative filtering this works, but it has some disadvantages too. This stems from the fact that the IPTC keyword field is simply a list of keywords strung together with commas. Let's say your images contain two people called Bob and Bobby. If you try to filter on IPTC Keywords contains Bobby and IPCT Keywords does not contain Bob (because nobody likes Bob any more), you will find that he stubbornly sticks around. That's because simple lexical matching is used and so Bob matches Bob and Bobby. Worse, you find that is and is not are case-sensitive while contains and does not contain are not. And worse still is the odd fact that while Cow will match Cow if is is used, it will not if another keyword is added. Give me a list of checkboxes, please!
The keyword list does not exhibit this behavior. Nor does using separate IPTC fields to achieve the negative filtering.
An inconvenience is that there is a lot of clicking and typing involved: click on the +, select IPTC, click on the pop-up, scroll down to Keywords, select the logic, and finally type in the keyword. If you typo it, then you won't get what you expect.
A possibly more serious problem is that searching IPTC fields is very slow for many images because Aperture does not index that in its database. Try selecting your whole library and setting up a search for contains "e" and does not contain "zzzzzzzzzzz". It will take a while. Try the opposite too.
A future problem is that when Apple implements proper hierarchy filtering (filtering on keyword Animal where Animal is above Cow without resorting to a plain text search), this trick with IPTC metadata will not work with Animal just as it does not now. That's because the higher-level keywords are not in the IPTC metadata field unless you specifically put them there and if they are not there, you can't filter on them at all.
Let's say you want to be able to filter on one attribute, Retouch, or Not Retouch. To do this select all the images you want to be able to distinguish (either positively or negatively), and then open the metadata inspector (control D). Select IPTC at the bottom, and then All IPTC from the pop-up title bar. Now pick one of the fields to commandeer. In the example below I have chosen Action Advised, because I will never use it for its intended purpose.
Now bring up the Batch Change window with command shift B and type retouch into the Action Advised field:
Press Enter on the numeric keypad or click OK and that metadata will be added to all the selected images. The metadata pane that you previously opened will show that the images now have that metadata added:
So now all the images you want to retouch are tagged and all the ones you don't want to retouch are untagged.
Let's filter on that. Bring up a filter and select IPTC from the + menu top right:
From the IPCT pop-up, select Action Advised, and then one of the matching verbs:
Use contains or is for positive filtering and is empty for negative filtering. You would think that is not would match on an empty field, but it does not.
Voila! Negative filtering.
This method has the advantage that it can also be used to add metadata on import. You can tag everything with a certain value (like retouch) and then adjust the metadata when workflow actions have been performed or a decision is made that they do not need to be performed.
Another way to achieve the same goal without abusing the IPTC fields is to add custom metadata. This takes a few more steps because the Batch Change window cannot be used to do this. But custom metadata can be added on import if it is included in one of the metadata sets.
Select just one image you want to tag (either positively or negatively). Go back to the metadata pane bottom right of the Aperture window and select the General view. Click on Other at the bottom, and where it says New Custom Metadata in gray add the word Retouch. On the right where it says Metadata Value in gray, add the word Yes:
Now click on the circle + on the right and it will be added as a metadata value to the single image you selected. There it is:
Click on the checkbox on the left if you want to add this field to the General metadata set. You probably want to add it to some set just so it is visible (the Tooltip set would be a good choice to).
So far so good, but that is only one image, and there could be hundreds.
Press the O button on the keyboard (letter Oh) to bring up the Lift and Stamp window and click on the image you just added the metadata to. That will show the copied data. Open the Custom line by clicking the disclosure triangle:
Now edit this by deleting the unwanted lines by selecting and hitting the delete key to get this:
The remaining task is to stamp this onto all the images that need it. Clicking on the thumbnails will do it since the cursor is now the down-arrow Stamp tool. Press A when you are done.
To filter images that have been tagged in this way, you will need a slightly different filter than used before with IPTC. Bring up a filter and select Other from the + pop-up top right. Select Retouch from the pop-up:
And use contains, is, is empty, etc. to perform positive and negative filtering as needed. There is also no reason not to use several different values for the Retouch field if that does what you want.
Voila again! Negative filtering.
An advantage of this method over the IPTC trick is that there is no limit to the number of custom metadata fields you can add to an image.
But neither of these solutions are really any good since you are looking at thumbnails while you do it. How do you know which ones to retouch? More than likely you are in full-screen mode and you want to decide whether to retouch or not as you go along, as part of an overall workflow. That can be achieved too.
With the Lift and Stamp window the way you want it (like above), work as follows. Close the Lift and Stamp window with the X top left. Click on the first image in your set and hit F to go to full-screen. Scroll through the images working on them as usual (but not lifting and stamping anything) until you find one you want to retouch. Press O to bring up the Lift tool (up arrow) and the Lift and Stamp window. But don't click on anything!
Hold down the option key and the cursor changes into the Stamp tool. Click on the full screen image to add the custom metadata to it. There is no feedback to tell you that this has worked, but it has. Close the Lift and Stamp window and continue working on images. Repeat as needed and close the Lift and Stamp window at the end.
I will stop writing French now.
First, here are several ways of doing negative filtering that either don't work or are clumsy:
1. Albums and project membership
Although you can "mark" images that have been processed in some way as part of your workflow by their location or by album or project membership, this is a clumsy way to work. It involves a lot of moving things around and you cannot filter on membership.
2. Version names
Not recommended. Again, clumsy. But you can filter on version names, so it's not all bad. Naming systems break easily though.
3. Rating bands
By dividing ratings into two sets, say greater than three and three and under it is possible to use the Rating is less than or equal to and Rating is greater than or equal to selections to create negative filtering. But that only gives you one thing you can filter on, chops up your ratings, and is prone to error.
So here is the meat: three ways that do work. The first uses IPTC keywords, the second an existing metadata field and the third a custom metadata field. You didn't know you could have those did you?
Negative Filtering With IPTC Keywords
The IPTC Keywords field is kept up to date with the keywords that are added to the image, so you can use all the features of the IPTC string matching. Select IPTC from the + menu top right and select IPTC. Select Keywords from the pop-up and you can do this:
For simple negative filtering this works, but it has some disadvantages too. This stems from the fact that the IPTC keyword field is simply a list of keywords strung together with commas. Let's say your images contain two people called Bob and Bobby. If you try to filter on IPTC Keywords contains Bobby and IPCT Keywords does not contain Bob (because nobody likes Bob any more), you will find that he stubbornly sticks around. That's because simple lexical matching is used and so Bob matches Bob and Bobby. Worse, you find that is and is not are case-sensitive while contains and does not contain are not. And worse still is the odd fact that while Cow will match Cow if is is used, it will not if another keyword is added. Give me a list of checkboxes, please!
The keyword list does not exhibit this behavior. Nor does using separate IPTC fields to achieve the negative filtering.
An inconvenience is that there is a lot of clicking and typing involved: click on the +, select IPTC, click on the pop-up, scroll down to Keywords, select the logic, and finally type in the keyword. If you typo it, then you won't get what you expect.
A possibly more serious problem is that searching IPTC fields is very slow for many images because Aperture does not index that in its database. Try selecting your whole library and setting up a search for contains "e" and does not contain "zzzzzzzzzzz". It will take a while. Try the opposite too.
A future problem is that when Apple implements proper hierarchy filtering (filtering on keyword Animal where Animal is above Cow without resorting to a plain text search), this trick with IPTC metadata will not work with Animal just as it does not now. That's because the higher-level keywords are not in the IPTC metadata field unless you specifically put them there and if they are not there, you can't filter on them at all.
Negative Filtering With IPTC Metadata
Let's say you want to be able to filter on one attribute, Retouch, or Not Retouch. To do this select all the images you want to be able to distinguish (either positively or negatively), and then open the metadata inspector (control D). Select IPTC at the bottom, and then All IPTC from the pop-up title bar. Now pick one of the fields to commandeer. In the example below I have chosen Action Advised, because I will never use it for its intended purpose.
Now bring up the Batch Change window with command shift B and type retouch into the Action Advised field:
Press Enter on the numeric keypad or click OK and that metadata will be added to all the selected images. The metadata pane that you previously opened will show that the images now have that metadata added:
So now all the images you want to retouch are tagged and all the ones you don't want to retouch are untagged.
Let's filter on that. Bring up a filter and select IPTC from the + menu top right:
From the IPCT pop-up, select Action Advised, and then one of the matching verbs:
Use contains or is for positive filtering and is empty for negative filtering. You would think that is not would match on an empty field, but it does not.
Voila! Negative filtering.
This method has the advantage that it can also be used to add metadata on import. You can tag everything with a certain value (like retouch) and then adjust the metadata when workflow actions have been performed or a decision is made that they do not need to be performed.
Negative Filtering With Custom Metadata
Another way to achieve the same goal without abusing the IPTC fields is to add custom metadata. This takes a few more steps because the Batch Change window cannot be used to do this. But custom metadata can be added on import if it is included in one of the metadata sets.
Select just one image you want to tag (either positively or negatively). Go back to the metadata pane bottom right of the Aperture window and select the General view. Click on Other at the bottom, and where it says New Custom Metadata in gray add the word Retouch. On the right where it says Metadata Value in gray, add the word Yes:
Now click on the circle + on the right and it will be added as a metadata value to the single image you selected. There it is:
Click on the checkbox on the left if you want to add this field to the General metadata set. You probably want to add it to some set just so it is visible (the Tooltip set would be a good choice to).
So far so good, but that is only one image, and there could be hundreds.
Press the O button on the keyboard (letter Oh) to bring up the Lift and Stamp window and click on the image you just added the metadata to. That will show the copied data. Open the Custom line by clicking the disclosure triangle:
Now edit this by deleting the unwanted lines by selecting and hitting the delete key to get this:
The remaining task is to stamp this onto all the images that need it. Clicking on the thumbnails will do it since the cursor is now the down-arrow Stamp tool. Press A when you are done.
To filter images that have been tagged in this way, you will need a slightly different filter than used before with IPTC. Bring up a filter and select Other from the + pop-up top right. Select Retouch from the pop-up:
And use contains, is, is empty, etc. to perform positive and negative filtering as needed. There is also no reason not to use several different values for the Retouch field if that does what you want.
Voila again! Negative filtering.
An advantage of this method over the IPTC trick is that there is no limit to the number of custom metadata fields you can add to an image.
Workflow Enhancement
But neither of these solutions are really any good since you are looking at thumbnails while you do it. How do you know which ones to retouch? More than likely you are in full-screen mode and you want to decide whether to retouch or not as you go along, as part of an overall workflow. That can be achieved too.
With the Lift and Stamp window the way you want it (like above), work as follows. Close the Lift and Stamp window with the X top left. Click on the first image in your set and hit F to go to full-screen. Scroll through the images working on them as usual (but not lifting and stamping anything) until you find one you want to retouch. Press O to bring up the Lift tool (up arrow) and the Lift and Stamp window. But don't click on anything!
Hold down the option key and the cursor changes into the Stamp tool. Click on the full screen image to add the custom metadata to it. There is no feedback to tell you that this has worked, but it has. Close the Lift and Stamp window and continue working on images. Repeat as needed and close the Lift and Stamp window at the end.
I will stop writing French now.
Aperture 1.5: Export SDK Now Available
2006-10-25
Apple recently released an export SDK for Aperture 1.5.
What is that? It's a set of files used by programmers who want to add functionality to Aperture's exporting capabilities. Programmers use the SDK with other Apple tools to create plug ins. Once installed, they show up in the File > Export menu. The idea is that anyone who wants to export from Aperture to another application or web service can now write the necessary code to do so.
The code is currently pre-release, so it is only available to Apple developers (who are subject to non-disclosure agreements). Go to the developer site and log in to download it. However the reference documentation and the SDK overview are freely available.
What is that? It's a set of files used by programmers who want to add functionality to Aperture's exporting capabilities. Programmers use the SDK with other Apple tools to create plug ins. Once installed, they show up in the File > Export menu. The idea is that anyone who wants to export from Aperture to another application or web service can now write the necessary code to do so.
The code is currently pre-release, so it is only available to Apple developers (who are subject to non-disclosure agreements). Go to the developer site and log in to download it. However the reference documentation and the SDK overview are freely available.
Finger Food
2006-10-25
Aperture 1.5: Burning Masters to DVD and The Referenced File Manager
2006-10-24
Now that Aperture supports image masters outside of the library (referenced masters), it is possible to store these large files on removable media. Accessing referenced masters on entire drives, such as networked volumes and Firewire drives this is straight forward: just mount the volume.
However, for write-only media such as DVDs and CDs there is a hiccup that will require a trip to Aperture's Referenced File Manager. I will burn a CD with some images to illustrate. Here are my images in the Grid view:
They are currently all inside my library (managed), so to put them on a CD I have to make them referenced with the Relocate Masters. First I put a blank CD in the drive first so it shows up on the desktop and I will be able to specify it as a destination for my masters:
I select all of my images and go to File > Relocate Masters and choose a folder scheme that stores them by date. Aperture does not split a group of files across several disks, so it is necessary to make sure that all my files fit on a single disk --easy in this case because there are only a few.
I press Relocate Masters and my files are been copied to the CD. But they are not really there yet. They are on a disk image that the Finder has created for me that mimics the CD. Here is the Finder view of this disk, all ready to burn:
So the next step is to actually burn the files onto the disk. Once I have chosen a name for this disk (Masters) and the burn is complete I have my finished disk:
Of course that's a terrible name for a disk if I were doing this for real. I'd pick something with a date in it and make sure that the disk name was unique.
But now there is a problem. If I try to do anything with the images on the CD, they are tagged to show that the master cannot be found. Not only does Aperture not have the masters in its library, but it knows that it does not know where the masters are. They are disconnected:
So where are my masters? Why can't Aperture find them? If I Iook on the CD they are definitely there:
So what has happened?
Aperture has recorded the location of the masters as being on the disk image the Finder created for me instead of on the CD I just burned. So the library references point to locations on my hard disk that no longer have the master files. Somehow I have to correct those references.
It is time to fire up the Referenced File Manager and tell Aperture where the masters really are. I'll work with just six images first, by selecting them and control-clicking:
The window that appears has two halves. The upper half shows the status of the files that are referenced. This is the "problem" half:
On the left are the volumes that the images are supposed to reside on. Clicking on a volume will bring up the selected files that were last seen on that volume on the browser in the center. Red means that they cannot be found. And on the right is a pane that details the selected image from the browser:
The lower half of the window is the "solution" half, known as Reconnect Options:
It is a standard column file browser. I can reconnect the image I have selected in the upper half to its master by using this browser and checking that the image matches. I locate the selected master image like this:
After a short delay (and a confusing one too) the Reconnect and Reconnect All buttons become enabled. If I click on Reconnect, then the status on the top half changes, since one out of five is now reconnected:
And the file name in the upper browser turns black from red. If I had to do this one at a time it would be horribly tedious. But I don't. If I select all the remaining images in the upper half, and then navigate to just one of them in the lower half, pressing Reconnect All will do exactly that and all will be reconnected with their master files:
Once repeated for all the remaining images in this project, the thumbnails look like this:
If I eject the CD, the icons change to indicate that the masters are offline, but not disconnected:
Now what if I decide that I don't want the masters on the CD any more? It may be that I have pulled this CD out of storage and want to use the images. It's way too slow to try to work with the masters this way. I simply make the images managed again by using Consolidate Masters. They are copied off the CD into the library and Aperture uses them from that location. I can pop out the CD.
But when I am done with that project I don't want the images in the library any more. I can't delete them or I will lose everything about them. I don't want to burn another CD or DVD with my masters on again -- I already have a perfectly good copy in storage.
If I try to relocate them, then it does not work:
There is a way to do it. First create a temporary folder on your desktop called Temp. Then relocate all the masters into that folder using the same naming scheme that you used on the CD or DVD. That step gets them out of the library. Next, drag that folder to the trash. Yes really. No need to empty the trash.
Select all the images in the grid view and Open up the Referenced File Manager. Select All Volumes from the list of volumes and click the Verify button. Aperture will suddenly realize that it has lost the masters and they will appear on the browser pane. Now on the lower half of the window navigate to the CD or DVD and reconnect all the images.
Once you are happy that everything is OK, empty the trash.
However, for write-only media such as DVDs and CDs there is a hiccup that will require a trip to Aperture's Referenced File Manager. I will burn a CD with some images to illustrate. Here are my images in the Grid view:
They are currently all inside my library (managed), so to put them on a CD I have to make them referenced with the Relocate Masters. First I put a blank CD in the drive first so it shows up on the desktop and I will be able to specify it as a destination for my masters:
I select all of my images and go to File > Relocate Masters and choose a folder scheme that stores them by date. Aperture does not split a group of files across several disks, so it is necessary to make sure that all my files fit on a single disk --easy in this case because there are only a few.
I press Relocate Masters and my files are been copied to the CD. But they are not really there yet. They are on a disk image that the Finder has created for me that mimics the CD. Here is the Finder view of this disk, all ready to burn:
So the next step is to actually burn the files onto the disk. Once I have chosen a name for this disk (Masters) and the burn is complete I have my finished disk:
Of course that's a terrible name for a disk if I were doing this for real. I'd pick something with a date in it and make sure that the disk name was unique.
But now there is a problem. If I try to do anything with the images on the CD, they are tagged to show that the master cannot be found. Not only does Aperture not have the masters in its library, but it knows that it does not know where the masters are. They are disconnected:
So where are my masters? Why can't Aperture find them? If I Iook on the CD they are definitely there:
So what has happened?
Aperture has recorded the location of the masters as being on the disk image the Finder created for me instead of on the CD I just burned. So the library references point to locations on my hard disk that no longer have the master files. Somehow I have to correct those references.
It is time to fire up the Referenced File Manager and tell Aperture where the masters really are. I'll work with just six images first, by selecting them and control-clicking:
The window that appears has two halves. The upper half shows the status of the files that are referenced. This is the "problem" half:
On the left are the volumes that the images are supposed to reside on. Clicking on a volume will bring up the selected files that were last seen on that volume on the browser in the center. Red means that they cannot be found. And on the right is a pane that details the selected image from the browser:
The lower half of the window is the "solution" half, known as Reconnect Options:
It is a standard column file browser. I can reconnect the image I have selected in the upper half to its master by using this browser and checking that the image matches. I locate the selected master image like this:
After a short delay (and a confusing one too) the Reconnect and Reconnect All buttons become enabled. If I click on Reconnect, then the status on the top half changes, since one out of five is now reconnected:
And the file name in the upper browser turns black from red. If I had to do this one at a time it would be horribly tedious. But I don't. If I select all the remaining images in the upper half, and then navigate to just one of them in the lower half, pressing Reconnect All will do exactly that and all will be reconnected with their master files:
Once repeated for all the remaining images in this project, the thumbnails look like this:
If I eject the CD, the icons change to indicate that the masters are offline, but not disconnected:
Now what if I decide that I don't want the masters on the CD any more? It may be that I have pulled this CD out of storage and want to use the images. It's way too slow to try to work with the masters this way. I simply make the images managed again by using Consolidate Masters. They are copied off the CD into the library and Aperture uses them from that location. I can pop out the CD.
But when I am done with that project I don't want the images in the library any more. I can't delete them or I will lose everything about them. I don't want to burn another CD or DVD with my masters on again -- I already have a perfectly good copy in storage.
If I try to relocate them, then it does not work:
There is a way to do it. First create a temporary folder on your desktop called Temp. Then relocate all the masters into that folder using the same naming scheme that you used on the CD or DVD. That step gets them out of the library. Next, drag that folder to the trash. Yes really. No need to empty the trash.
Select all the images in the grid view and Open up the Referenced File Manager. Select All Volumes from the list of volumes and click the Verify button. Aperture will suddenly realize that it has lost the masters and they will appear on the browser pane. Now on the lower half of the window navigate to the CD or DVD and reconnect all the images.
Once you are happy that everything is OK, empty the trash.
A Finder Bug?
2006-10-23
I tried to move some large files from one place on my hard drive to another today and found what looks to me like a bug in the 10.4.8 Finder. A move like that should be quick: all it does is move pointers around in the filing system. None of the file data is copied.
But I got a dialog that showed it was copying. So I cancelled that, and tried again, this time making sure that I really didn't hold Option down to turn a move into a copy. But even without Option I got the green + showing that a copy was going to take place. Huh?
Here is the bug: if you try to move a bunch of files and at least one of them is locked, the whole list of files is copied to the new destination, not just the locked ones that cannot be deleted after the copy. I find it hard to believe that this is the intended behavior.
But I got a dialog that showed it was copying. So I cancelled that, and tried again, this time making sure that I really didn't hold Option down to turn a move into a copy. But even without Option I got the green + showing that a copy was going to take place. Huh?
Here is the bug: if you try to move a bunch of files and at least one of them is locked, the whole list of files is copied to the new destination, not just the locked ones that cannot be deleted after the copy. I find it hard to believe that this is the intended behavior.
Ten More Photos In The Canon S3 IS Gallery
2006-10-23
I recently added ten more images to the Canon S3 IS gallery, bringing the total to 126. These are all unmodified, full size, and with EXIF.
If you are new to the S3 or are considering buying one, these should help you see what can be done with the camera alone.
Link To This Blog
2006-10-21
I've been dusting off my Photoshop skills to create some badges for the site:
These have been posted, together with some HTML on the Link To This Blog page.
These have been posted, together with some HTML on the Link To This Blog page.
Picture Story: Boy at Sunset
2006-10-21
This picture tells the story of combining moving my vantage point with cropping to get the image I was after. I am learning that one of the skills of a photographer's "eye" is being able to identify small parts of the total field of view as being complete photos in the raw. The task then is to capture, process, and present so the viewer sees only and immediately what I want them to see.
Aperture: Why Can't I Filter On Words In The Keyword Hierarchy?
2006-10-19
but I can't seem to get this to behave that way in Aperture 1.5. Has something changed? am I slightly retarded? Is it possible to bring up this picture with "surf" by searching for all pictures that contain "Water?"
You are right, you did see it done, and the keyword is associated with the image. But you are also right that you can't get it to behave that way because you are making a very common assumption, one that I made too, that Apple has fully implemented a keyword hierarchy. There is a partial workaround.
To illustrate what works and what doesn't, here is a simple keyword hierarchy:
I have a project called Vacation with some images I want to keyword, so I drag the Chicken keyword to the image of the chicken, the Ostrich keyword to the image of the ostrich, and the Cow keyword to the image of the cow. The other words you see below the thumbnails are the captions I added previously:
To see the full keyword information applied to each image I go to the metadata pane (Control D) and click on the Keywords button at the bottom and then selct an image:
This shows me that the Cow keyword is applied and gives its lineage.
So far so good. Now if I want to filter my Vacation project based on keywords I click on the search icon on the thumbnail window and select the Keywords checkbox:
But where are my keywords? Only the lowest level keywords are there: Chicken, Cow, and Ostrich. I can't filter by Bird or Mammal!
Until Apple fixes this, there is a partial workaround. Use the + menu top right to make the Text box visible and type the higher level keyword in there:
You can also do this by typing the keyword into the text box top right. But in either case, make sure that Limited Text Search is selected:
That restricts the search to just keywords, omitting EXIF, captions, etc. In Full Text Search mode, the filter below finds the cow, for instance, because the caption includes "Levi", the cow's name.
There is also a setting in the application preferences that selects what the initial search scope is for each project or smart album:
This workaround is not perfect. If I have another keyword section called Animal Crackers, then a text search I do on "Animal" will find all the images with keywords under Animal and all the images with keywords that are or are under Animal Crackers. So unless all the keywords are very carefully designed this rather limits the use of the hierarchy.
Mailbag
2006-10-18
This email I received today summarizes what a number of people have written:
A reply includes these two important thoughts:
* Thank you!
* Help other people find the site by linking your site to this one (you will find that http://www.bagelturf.com also works) and by telling other people.
And it asks a question:
* What do you want to see that you don't see already?
So let me know -- what are you missing?
Hello I just wanted to let you know that you have a GREAT and VERY helpful site when it comes to dealing with Aperture. I love all the stuff you posted on Aperture and it has helped me out a great deal. Thanks a bunch!
A reply includes these two important thoughts:
* Thank you!
* Help other people find the site by linking your site to this one (you will find that http://www.bagelturf.com also works) and by telling other people.
And it asks a question:
* What do you want to see that you don't see already?
So let me know -- what are you missing?
Aperture 1.5: Keyword Import Gotchas
2006-10-17
If you import keywords from a text file be aware of a couple of things.
1. The file must have a .txt extension, or Aperture will not let you open it. Easy to fix.
2. Make sure that the text file has Unix line endings (line feeds -- hex 0A). Not quite so easy to fix.
DOS line endings (line feed, carriage return -- hex 0D 0A) will seem to work, but will actually create keywords with carriage returns on the end and confuse you like crazy later on.
MacOS 9 line endings (carriage return -- hex 0D) will import only the first word in the file. But repeated imports of the same list will keep adding more and more copies of the same first keyword to the HUD.
You can easily check and clean your file if you suspect a problem. Get a copy of TextWrangler and open the file containing the keywords. Click on the document icon at the top of the window:
And if Unix is not selected, select it and save the file. That's it. You can also use TextWrangler to view invisible characters, indent whole blocks of text, clean up bad characters, and dump the file in hex.
1. The file must have a .txt extension, or Aperture will not let you open it. Easy to fix.
2. Make sure that the text file has Unix line endings (line feeds -- hex 0A). Not quite so easy to fix.
DOS line endings (line feed, carriage return -- hex 0D 0A) will seem to work, but will actually create keywords with carriage returns on the end and confuse you like crazy later on.
MacOS 9 line endings (carriage return -- hex 0D) will import only the first word in the file. But repeated imports of the same list will keep adding more and more copies of the same first keyword to the HUD.
You can easily check and clean your file if you suspect a problem. Get a copy of TextWrangler and open the file containing the keywords. Click on the document icon at the top of the window:
And if Unix is not selected, select it and save the file. That's it. You can also use TextWrangler to view invisible characters, indent whole blocks of text, clean up bad characters, and dump the file in hex.
Aperture 1.5: The Six K's of Keyword Health
2006-10-16
I have formulated a strategy for keeping my keywords healthy in Aperture 1.5. I have far fewer images than many people (about 19,000, all JPEGs), and only a couple of libraries to deal with, but my plan should work well for really big collections.
The challenge is this: since Aperture collects keywords whenever it can from where ever it can, any system I set up will become poisoned by imports (images, projects, libraries) that bring in keywords that don't match anything. So I have two things to deal with: recognizing that it has happened, and fixing it when it does. So here is the six K plan:
Klothe, Kapitalize, Kreate, Kollect, Klean, Korrect.
So it's also Korny. But I wanted to used K's if I could.
Klothe
This means that I have no naked keywords at the top level. I other words I use a hierarchy for everything that can be applied, never applying Germany to an image, always applying Geography > Europe > Germany instead. This makes it easy to see if any new keywords appear at the top level. There should be only ten or so top level categories.
Kapitalize
All my keywords will be capitalized. I could prefix them to make extra sure that nothing unusual has snuck in: instead of Groom, use bgtGroom for instance. But that looks like a lot of trouble for little gain. Besides, capitalization looks right and is easy to do.
Kreate
Create the keyword system I want and implement it. Do this first. This gives me the ability to rekeyword whatever I find amiss. For example I can change anything with the naked keyword New York to Geography > United States > New York > New York City. At the top level I will have a category: Geography, Content, Actions, Event, Location, etc. and beneath that have a hierarchy of keywords I can use, applying only the lowest level keywords to images. The reason for the categories at the top is that I can have a keyword like Vermont and store its meaning too: Content > Food > Cheese > Vermont is not the same as Geography > United States > Vermont, for instance. I could have a photo of Vermont cheese taken in Hawaii. The benefit of this organization will be greater once Apple fixes Aperture so that the hierarchies are better displayed and made more usable for filtering.
Kollect
Collect all the keywords everywhere in all my images and libraries. Do this second. This is an important step. By opening all my libraries one at a time, Aperture will collect all the keywords from each of them (and update them to 1.5 format if needed). So when I am done I will have a list of all the keywords there are. From here on out there will be no surprises.
Klean
Clean up all libraries. Do this third. Go through each library one at a time and delete any unused keywords and rekeyword anything that does not fit my planned scheme. There will be no keywords left at the top level once this is complete. As each library is opened, old keywords will (re)appear, but once the last one has been processed, everything will be under control.
Korrect
Every so often, new keywords will appear. They should be easy to spot and easy to deal with. If want to be really careful I can export the keyword list every so often and compare it to a master copy that I keep outside Aperture.
Keeping the Keyword HUD locked is a big help. Not only does it stop keywords from being moved or modified accidently, it also keeps any keywords that come in with new images (imports) separated. They all go into an <Imported Keyword> section at the end of the top level list. Ideally, I think the Keyword HUD should be locked automatically each time Aperture is launched.
The challenge is this: since Aperture collects keywords whenever it can from where ever it can, any system I set up will become poisoned by imports (images, projects, libraries) that bring in keywords that don't match anything. So I have two things to deal with: recognizing that it has happened, and fixing it when it does. So here is the six K plan:
Klothe, Kapitalize, Kreate, Kollect, Klean, Korrect.
So it's also Korny. But I wanted to used K's if I could.
Klothe
This means that I have no naked keywords at the top level. I other words I use a hierarchy for everything that can be applied, never applying Germany to an image, always applying Geography > Europe > Germany instead. This makes it easy to see if any new keywords appear at the top level. There should be only ten or so top level categories.
Kapitalize
All my keywords will be capitalized. I could prefix them to make extra sure that nothing unusual has snuck in: instead of Groom, use bgtGroom for instance. But that looks like a lot of trouble for little gain. Besides, capitalization looks right and is easy to do.
Kreate
Create the keyword system I want and implement it. Do this first. This gives me the ability to rekeyword whatever I find amiss. For example I can change anything with the naked keyword New York to Geography > United States > New York > New York City. At the top level I will have a category: Geography, Content, Actions, Event, Location, etc. and beneath that have a hierarchy of keywords I can use, applying only the lowest level keywords to images. The reason for the categories at the top is that I can have a keyword like Vermont and store its meaning too: Content > Food > Cheese > Vermont is not the same as Geography > United States > Vermont, for instance. I could have a photo of Vermont cheese taken in Hawaii. The benefit of this organization will be greater once Apple fixes Aperture so that the hierarchies are better displayed and made more usable for filtering.
Kollect
Collect all the keywords everywhere in all my images and libraries. Do this second. This is an important step. By opening all my libraries one at a time, Aperture will collect all the keywords from each of them (and update them to 1.5 format if needed). So when I am done I will have a list of all the keywords there are. From here on out there will be no surprises.
Klean
Clean up all libraries. Do this third. Go through each library one at a time and delete any unused keywords and rekeyword anything that does not fit my planned scheme. There will be no keywords left at the top level once this is complete. As each library is opened, old keywords will (re)appear, but once the last one has been processed, everything will be under control.
Korrect
Every so often, new keywords will appear. They should be easy to spot and easy to deal with. If want to be really careful I can export the keyword list every so often and compare it to a master copy that I keep outside Aperture.
Keeping the Keyword HUD locked is a big help. Not only does it stop keywords from being moved or modified accidently, it also keeps any keywords that come in with new images (imports) separated. They all go into an <Imported Keyword> section at the end of the top level list. Ideally, I think the Keyword HUD should be locked automatically each time Aperture is launched.
Aperture 1.5: Move Keywords To The Top Level
2006-10-16
If I put a keyword in the wrong place in the keyword hierarchy, then I can just drag it to where it should be. If I want the keyword to be at the top level, then I just drag it past the end of the list and drop it there. So far so good.
Here I have a keyword Oops that should not be under Animals. I want it at the top level, so I just drag it.
But I can't do that if I want it at the top level and the HUD is full of keywords because there is no end of list to drag it past.
To solve this problem, I type the keyword (or a part of it) into the search box to shorten the list. Now I can drag the keyword past the end of the list and get it to the top level again. Here is the same list in a much smaller HUD, but it is filtered by the search word and the move works:
Clicking the little X on the right of the search box gets the complete list back.
Here I have a keyword Oops that should not be under Animals. I want it at the top level, so I just drag it.
But I can't do that if I want it at the top level and the HUD is full of keywords because there is no end of list to drag it past.
To solve this problem, I type the keyword (or a part of it) into the search box to shorten the list. Now I can drag the keyword past the end of the list and get it to the top level again. Here is the same list in a much smaller HUD, but it is filtered by the search word and the move works:
Clicking the little X on the right of the search box gets the complete list back.
Aperture 1.5: Make Zero the Reject Key Again
2006-10-14
Right, zero, right, right, right , zero, right I used to go, rejecting images quickly with Aperture 1.1. But Aperture 1.5 changed the Reject key to nine. Nine? That's three keys away on the numeric keypad.
So lets change zero back to being the Reject key.
The simple modification described below swaps 0 and 9 on the keypad, but not on the main keyboard. So zero becomes the Reject key and nine becomes the Unrated key. It uses a text editor (TextEdit will work fine) and no special tools or skills.
1. Quit Aperture
2. Find the Aperture application on your disk (in Applications probably) and control click it. Select Show Package Contents. You will see a single folder called Contents.
3. In the Finder window search box top right type keycode as below:
Four files will be listed (you will probably have generic document icons on those files instead of the icon you see above). Those four file are identical. Each exists in a different folder inside Aperture, corresponding to English, Japanese, French and German language localizations. You can see where each document is by looking at the bottom of the Finder search window:
4. Select the one you want according to your language setting. Option-drag it to the desktop. This is your back-up copy in case you want to restore to the original settings.
5. Control-click the KeycodeMapping.strings file you chose in (4) above and select Open With > Other. Find a simple text editor such as TextEdit or TextWrangler and select it to open the file. It is a plain text file so needs an editor than can handle plain text. You are going to modify this file. Here is what the file contains:
The "from" line contains the keypad key codes for the keys 0 through 9. The "to" line contains the main keyboard codes for the numbers 0 through 9. Change the text to look like this:
The changes simply swap the first and last numbers, making the 0 and 9 keys on the numeric keypad swap functions.
6. Save the file with command-S and quit the editor
7. Repeat for other three languages if you like (you don't have to make any more back up copies)
8. Close the Finder search window
Launch Aperture and try it out.
To put Aperture back the way it was, repeat the steps, this time swapping the two numbers back. The file you saved to the desktop is your reference for what it should look like.
So lets change zero back to being the Reject key.
The simple modification described below swaps 0 and 9 on the keypad, but not on the main keyboard. So zero becomes the Reject key and nine becomes the Unrated key. It uses a text editor (TextEdit will work fine) and no special tools or skills.
1. Quit Aperture
2. Find the Aperture application on your disk (in Applications probably) and control click it. Select Show Package Contents. You will see a single folder called Contents.
3. In the Finder window search box top right type keycode as below:
Four files will be listed (you will probably have generic document icons on those files instead of the icon you see above). Those four file are identical. Each exists in a different folder inside Aperture, corresponding to English, Japanese, French and German language localizations. You can see where each document is by looking at the bottom of the Finder search window:
4. Select the one you want according to your language setting. Option-drag it to the desktop. This is your back-up copy in case you want to restore to the original settings.
5. Control-click the KeycodeMapping.strings file you chose in (4) above and select Open With > Other. Find a simple text editor such as TextEdit or TextWrangler and select it to open the file. It is a plain text file so needs an editor than can handle plain text. You are going to modify this file. Here is what the file contains:
The "from" line contains the keypad key codes for the keys 0 through 9. The "to" line contains the main keyboard codes for the numbers 0 through 9. Change the text to look like this:
The changes simply swap the first and last numbers, making the 0 and 9 keys on the numeric keypad swap functions.
6. Save the file with command-S and quit the editor
7. Repeat for other three languages if you like (you don't have to make any more back up copies)
8. Close the Finder search window
Launch Aperture and try it out.
To put Aperture back the way it was, repeat the steps, this time swapping the two numbers back. The file you saved to the desktop is your reference for what it should look like.
Aperture 1.5: Haunted Keywords Explained
2006-10-13
With Halloween almost here, it should not be all that surprising to know that keywords in Aperture 1.5 are haunted. Really they are. In 1.1 keyword management was somewhat confusing and a little dusty, but at least it was under control: you applied keywords to images and there they sat. Suddenly in 1.5 they jump out at you in the dark.
I have turned my attention to keywords. Before I tackled my own scramble of keywords, I wanted to understand what makes the new system tick so I could use if effectively and not fall afoul of anything sinister. I had read a number of reports of some very odd behavior; some of it I had seen myself. One of the first things I did after upgrading to 1.5 was open up the keyword HUD. Where did all that come from? I had many more keywords than before, all sorts of old stuff, and things I didn't think I had ever entered.
So I looked at Apple's documentation for guidance on keywords in Aperture 1.5 and saw what it has to say:
Automatic Updating of the Keywords HUD
The Keywords HUD provides a versatile way to apply keywords to images. The Keywords
HUD is now updated automatically with any keywords you add. For example, when you
enter a new keyword in the Metadata Inspector, that keyword also appears in the
Keywords HUD. When you change a keyword, for example, by changing its spelling or
capitalization, the keyword is updated on all images that have that keyword assigned. In
addition, the Keywords HUD can be locked to prevent unintended changes.
That is all I could find. Two new features; no mention of the spirit world's involvement.
Investigation has shown that there are a lot of changes under the hood, and they are for the better. The behavior of keywords has quite substantially changed in Aperture 1.5 and with a little work I hope to help you understand them. But first, I need to explain keywords in Aperture 1.1.
The diagram below shows how I understand keywords worked in Aperture 1.1 (you may want to drag a copy of this to the desktop and open it so you can view it alongside the text):
The dotted lines are manual operations and the solid lines are automatic operations. When Aperture 1.1 was launched, the Keyword HUD got its list of keywords from a global list of keywords stored in the user's Application Support folder. When the application quit, that list was written back to the Keywords.plist file. If you imported a list of keywords, that list just overwrote what was in the plist and the Keyword HUD was updated automatically.
The images themselves were stored as files in the library (managed images only on 1.1) with sidecar files that contained the metadata. When a keyword was manually applied to an image, those sidecar files were updated to reflect the new keywords. If an image was imported and it had keywords, those were put in the sidecar file too. I have also shown another library, Library B. When Library B was opened with Aperture 1.1 it was handled the same way as Library A, reading from the global list of keywords. In that way adding keywords only had to be done once, and they were available in every library.
If new keywords were added to the HUD or current keywords were edited, nothing happened to the keywords in the image sidecar files unless the new keywords were manually applied. So tagging 55 images with Ferd meant that those keywords had to be removed in one operation, then the HUD edited, and then Fred added to the images to correct the error.
Now look at this diagram that attempts to illustrate how keywords are managed in Aperture 1.5. Note that although all of the images are not present (they are referenced), their sidecar files are still in the library:
The big difference is that there is a thing called SQLite database inside the libraries. In the 1.1 diagram I did not show the library database because although it is there, it does not participate in keyword management. The other thing to notice is that the database is central to everything connected to keywords. And Aperture's database is very hungry for keywords. Every keyword Aperture 1.5 ever comes across is put into the currently open library's database.
The keywords in the database are synchronized to the Keyword HUD and to the sidecar files. So if you edit a keyword, Aperture 1.5 knows exactly where it is used and can update it immediately. This centralization also explains why Aperture 1.5 is so much faster than 1.1 on filtering with keywords: it's just a database query and it is easily combined with other queries that are used to make the complex filtering that is possible. Aperture 1.5 also allows you to move keywords between hierarchies and move hierarchies of keywords around. All the affected images have their keywords updated to match the new organization.
Because of the close association between the database and the sidecar files, 1.5 can enforce the requirement that the database contain all the keywords of all the images it is managing at all times. This is why in 1.5 when you go to delete a keyword you are forced to remove it from all the images that have it if you proceed: if this were not done, then the keyword database would no longer be complete. The database also contains keywords that are not used in any image.
Another difference is that imported keywords now add to the list of keywords in the HUD (via the database) rather than replacing the list, as was the behavior in 1.1. And images with keywords that are imported, alone or as part of an imported project, (or have keywords added during import) also have those keywords added to the hungry database.
This explains the first spooky behavior of Aperture 1.5: where did all those old keywords come from? They came from Aperture 1.5 rescanning all of my images and sidecar files during the upgrade and storing everything it could find in its database. So all those old images with old keywords have come back from the dead to haunt me. I also think that 1.1 was incorrectly recording the keyword hierarchy in the sidecar files in some cases, so I actually had Activity > Running as well as Running on my images. On 1.1 it made no difference, they behaved the same. But on 1.5 the two show up in two places on the Keyword HUD.
The reason for my including Library B is more obvious now. When Aperture quits and the database is written out to the Keywords.plist file, it will include every keyword that is in any image of library A. If library B is opened, all the keywords used in images in library A will be added to the database in library B because that global list of keywords will be read in. So even if I delete keywords in one library, those same keywords can come back to haunt me via another library that still has them in its database. This is the second type of spooky behavior: Zombie Keywords. To kill them once and for all (after you have added the appropriate correct keywords), select all the zombies with command-clicks, and delete them from all versions. Then close Aperture and open another library. Repeat the delete with all the libraries in turn and they will finally be dead.
There is a third spooky behavior that I think is simply a bug. Sometimes if I delete a keyword and accept that it is going to be removed from all the versions it disappears. But then a short while later it reappears in the Keyword HUD, right in front of my eyes! However if after deleting the keyword I immediately quit Aperture, all is well and it does not come back.
So how will I work with the new keyword system of 1.5? I haven't tried yet, so I don't know (another article). But I already know that I prefer the new way: it is faster, more consistent, more comprehensive, and importantly more comprehensible. It gives me the complete picture, warts and all, and allows me to do something about what I see.
I did find a couple of keyword bugs. Show keyword Controls (shift D) is grayed out unless the viewer is visible. And using the period and comma shortcuts for moving up and down the list of keyword sets results in some very odd widths for the keyword buttons. What is with the central justification of the buttons and pop-up anyway? Just right-justify the whole thing and it will stay in exactly the same place as I navigate.
The filter dialog really needs to show keywords as a hierarchy. The biggest improvement to the keyword system I can think of centers around the HUD. Each line should show how many images in the library use that keyword. And all keywords used in the current selection should be bolded. iView works like this and it is very, very useful.
I have turned my attention to keywords. Before I tackled my own scramble of keywords, I wanted to understand what makes the new system tick so I could use if effectively and not fall afoul of anything sinister. I had read a number of reports of some very odd behavior; some of it I had seen myself. One of the first things I did after upgrading to 1.5 was open up the keyword HUD. Where did all that come from? I had many more keywords than before, all sorts of old stuff, and things I didn't think I had ever entered.
So I looked at Apple's documentation for guidance on keywords in Aperture 1.5 and saw what it has to say:
Automatic Updating of the Keywords HUD
The Keywords HUD provides a versatile way to apply keywords to images. The Keywords
HUD is now updated automatically with any keywords you add. For example, when you
enter a new keyword in the Metadata Inspector, that keyword also appears in the
Keywords HUD. When you change a keyword, for example, by changing its spelling or
capitalization, the keyword is updated on all images that have that keyword assigned. In
addition, the Keywords HUD can be locked to prevent unintended changes.
That is all I could find. Two new features; no mention of the spirit world's involvement.
Investigation has shown that there are a lot of changes under the hood, and they are for the better. The behavior of keywords has quite substantially changed in Aperture 1.5 and with a little work I hope to help you understand them. But first, I need to explain keywords in Aperture 1.1.
Keywords in Aperture 1.1
The diagram below shows how I understand keywords worked in Aperture 1.1 (you may want to drag a copy of this to the desktop and open it so you can view it alongside the text):
The dotted lines are manual operations and the solid lines are automatic operations. When Aperture 1.1 was launched, the Keyword HUD got its list of keywords from a global list of keywords stored in the user's Application Support folder. When the application quit, that list was written back to the Keywords.plist file. If you imported a list of keywords, that list just overwrote what was in the plist and the Keyword HUD was updated automatically.
The images themselves were stored as files in the library (managed images only on 1.1) with sidecar files that contained the metadata. When a keyword was manually applied to an image, those sidecar files were updated to reflect the new keywords. If an image was imported and it had keywords, those were put in the sidecar file too. I have also shown another library, Library B. When Library B was opened with Aperture 1.1 it was handled the same way as Library A, reading from the global list of keywords. In that way adding keywords only had to be done once, and they were available in every library.
If new keywords were added to the HUD or current keywords were edited, nothing happened to the keywords in the image sidecar files unless the new keywords were manually applied. So tagging 55 images with Ferd meant that those keywords had to be removed in one operation, then the HUD edited, and then Fred added to the images to correct the error.
Keywords in Aperture 1.5
Now look at this diagram that attempts to illustrate how keywords are managed in Aperture 1.5. Note that although all of the images are not present (they are referenced), their sidecar files are still in the library:
The big difference is that there is a thing called SQLite database inside the libraries. In the 1.1 diagram I did not show the library database because although it is there, it does not participate in keyword management. The other thing to notice is that the database is central to everything connected to keywords. And Aperture's database is very hungry for keywords. Every keyword Aperture 1.5 ever comes across is put into the currently open library's database.
The keywords in the database are synchronized to the Keyword HUD and to the sidecar files. So if you edit a keyword, Aperture 1.5 knows exactly where it is used and can update it immediately. This centralization also explains why Aperture 1.5 is so much faster than 1.1 on filtering with keywords: it's just a database query and it is easily combined with other queries that are used to make the complex filtering that is possible. Aperture 1.5 also allows you to move keywords between hierarchies and move hierarchies of keywords around. All the affected images have their keywords updated to match the new organization.
Because of the close association between the database and the sidecar files, 1.5 can enforce the requirement that the database contain all the keywords of all the images it is managing at all times. This is why in 1.5 when you go to delete a keyword you are forced to remove it from all the images that have it if you proceed: if this were not done, then the keyword database would no longer be complete. The database also contains keywords that are not used in any image.
Another difference is that imported keywords now add to the list of keywords in the HUD (via the database) rather than replacing the list, as was the behavior in 1.1. And images with keywords that are imported, alone or as part of an imported project, (or have keywords added during import) also have those keywords added to the hungry database.
This explains the first spooky behavior of Aperture 1.5: where did all those old keywords come from? They came from Aperture 1.5 rescanning all of my images and sidecar files during the upgrade and storing everything it could find in its database. So all those old images with old keywords have come back from the dead to haunt me. I also think that 1.1 was incorrectly recording the keyword hierarchy in the sidecar files in some cases, so I actually had Activity > Running as well as Running on my images. On 1.1 it made no difference, they behaved the same. But on 1.5 the two show up in two places on the Keyword HUD.
The reason for my including Library B is more obvious now. When Aperture quits and the database is written out to the Keywords.plist file, it will include every keyword that is in any image of library A. If library B is opened, all the keywords used in images in library A will be added to the database in library B because that global list of keywords will be read in. So even if I delete keywords in one library, those same keywords can come back to haunt me via another library that still has them in its database. This is the second type of spooky behavior: Zombie Keywords. To kill them once and for all (after you have added the appropriate correct keywords), select all the zombies with command-clicks, and delete them from all versions. Then close Aperture and open another library. Repeat the delete with all the libraries in turn and they will finally be dead.
There is a third spooky behavior that I think is simply a bug. Sometimes if I delete a keyword and accept that it is going to be removed from all the versions it disappears. But then a short while later it reappears in the Keyword HUD, right in front of my eyes! However if after deleting the keyword I immediately quit Aperture, all is well and it does not come back.
The Way Ahead
So how will I work with the new keyword system of 1.5? I haven't tried yet, so I don't know (another article). But I already know that I prefer the new way: it is faster, more consistent, more comprehensive, and importantly more comprehensible. It gives me the complete picture, warts and all, and allows me to do something about what I see.
I did find a couple of keyword bugs. Show keyword Controls (shift D) is grayed out unless the viewer is visible. And using the period and comma shortcuts for moving up and down the list of keyword sets results in some very odd widths for the keyword buttons. What is with the central justification of the buttons and pop-up anyway? Just right-justify the whole thing and it will stay in exactly the same place as I navigate.
The filter dialog really needs to show keywords as a hierarchy. The biggest improvement to the keyword system I can think of centers around the HUD. Each line should show how many images in the library use that keyword. And all keywords used in the current selection should be bolded. iView works like this and it is very, very useful.
Aperture 1.5: Speed Impressions
2006-10-12
Some impressions of the speed of Aperture 1.5. On my lowly iMac G5 Rev B 2GHz 2GB Aperture 1.5 is faster. Two things are obviously faster to me: displaying thumbnails, and bringing up the filter dialog.
But more than just being faster it is more consistently fast. Dropping into full screen is now smooth. Scrolling thumbnails moves like I would expect it to. Scrolling around zoomed images just happens.
Adjustments are still slow, but not glacially slow. Crop and straighten are jerky. Shadows and Highlights take a while. But all that is expected because my machine has a very basic graphics chip.
But the new loupe helps this now. By setting the loupe on the image and making adjustments, I can watch the image in the loupe change much faster than if adjusting the whole image. When I stop adjusting, the change is fully applied. That's a nice touch for those with low-spec machines.
Filters, especially those with keywords are faster. The only thing I have found that is slower is quitting: it takes time to write out information about the previews. Aperture is tough to benchmark -- just about the only thing that can be reasonably measured is image export and that is dependent on so many non-Aperture things it is hard to use any numbers sensibly. So all we have to go on are our impressions.
But more than just being faster it is more consistently fast. Dropping into full screen is now smooth. Scrolling thumbnails moves like I would expect it to. Scrolling around zoomed images just happens.
Adjustments are still slow, but not glacially slow. Crop and straighten are jerky. Shadows and Highlights take a while. But all that is expected because my machine has a very basic graphics chip.
But the new loupe helps this now. By setting the loupe on the image and making adjustments, I can watch the image in the loupe change much faster than if adjusting the whole image. When I stop adjusting, the change is fully applied. That's a nice touch for those with low-spec machines.
Filters, especially those with keywords are faster. The only thing I have found that is slower is quitting: it takes time to write out information about the previews. Aperture is tough to benchmark -- just about the only thing that can be reasonably measured is image export and that is dependent on so many non-Aperture things it is hard to use any numbers sensibly. So all we have to go on are our impressions.
Raynox 6600 Wide Angle Lens for the Canon S3
2006-10-10
I now have a wide angle lens for my Canon S3, a Raynox DCR-6600PRO. This lens multiplies the focal length by 0.66 without affecting the aperture, allowing the 36 mm equivalent wide end of the S3 to become 24 mm. It has a 52 mm mount and screws into the Lensmate barrel that I already have. This is what it looks like attached to the camera:
In this photo, the start of the Raynox is indicated by the white writing. Also shown is the 72 mm lens cap. I have also posted a Wide Angle gallery which contains photos taken with this lens and some comparison photos of the same scene taken without it.
The lens advertises a usable zoom range with digital cameras of 3x. I was able to get it to focus at zooms out to 8x, but not beyond. At about 6x the quality of the image deteriorates, especially at the corners. It is handy to be able to use some of the zoom range because I can get less wide shots without removing the lens. I can see distortion with this lens, especially if I am close to something with straight lines. And I have to be very careful of lens flare. It flares easily and with an ugly line of circles. It is perfectly usable with the macro and super macro settings.
It is particularly good for chasing kids and pets around and shooting movies. The image quality does not matter so much for movies and the added field of view and exaggerated depth of movement allow me to capture their antics very easily. Indoors it is very useful as well. Even in a confined space I can get far enough back to capture what I want to record. One thing I cannot do is use the flash. A chunk of the image is completely black, caused by the shadow of the front of the lens.
I like it because I can now take pictures like this one that include the close foreground and the horizon:
And I can get some unusual perspectives:
It is great for putting close to the ground and angling up. The pop-out viewfinder of the S3 is essential for this kind of use. And the bayonet mounting to the camera body means that I can pop it on and off quickly. If I am out with this lens I wear a fanny pack so I can put it away quickly and find myself quickly attaching, snapping, and detaching the lens as I walk about.
See example photos with originals and EXIF in the Wide Angle gallery.
Aperture: Can I Store Previews Outside The Library?
2006-10-10
Previews are stored in the Aperture Library and that cannot be changed. I have some details of exactly how and where in an article on Preview Storage. However, there are a couple of ways of achieving what you want to do.
The first is to copy out the previews from the library each time you want to travel. If you have iView then quit Aperture and drop your Library file onto the iView icon and let it catalog. It will find all your originals and two sizes of preview, one at full size (or whatever you selected in Aperture's prefs), and one at 240x240. Use iView's search features to isolate the previews by finding those created after a certain date, or of a certain type (previews are JPG), or of a certain size, or some other salient features that will work. Once isolated you can use iView's copy tool to duplicate the selection on your laptop. This will also give you an incremental solution because you will be able to see the date you last updated your laptop by examining the file dates and use that to filter the iView results.
The second is to change the way you are working. Put your library on your laptop, complete with previews, and store the originals as referenced images on your Firewire drive. This will mean that you no longer have to make copies and manage the previews so much. If you also have a desktop machine then you can also have a library on that and have it reference the same images on your Firewire drive.
Recover 800MB of Disk Space
2006-10-09
When I installed Aperture I also included the Tibet installation so I would have something to play around with. Not only did Aperture create an 800MB library for me, it also added a file called Tibet.approject in Application Support which is also 800MB in size. I had since trashed the library I was playing with, but only recently discovered the extra 800MB project sitting there.
An easy way to find this and other unseen Aperture project files is to open the boot disk and type "approject" in the search box.
A handy tool for finding where gigabytes have been consumed is a Java tool called JDiskReport. Let it run on your disk and it will graphically show you what the big hits are.
An easy way to find this and other unseen Aperture project files is to open the boot disk and type "approject" in the search box.
A handy tool for finding where gigabytes have been consumed is a Java tool called JDiskReport. Let it run on your disk and it will graphically show you what the big hits are.
Aperture 1.5: Online and Offline Images
2006-10-09
Since referenced images can now be stored on volumes that are remote to the computer, there are times that the data will not be immediately accessible. These are offline volumes: DVDs not in the drive, Firewire drives not connected, servers not logged into, and the like. Images with a referenced master stored on an offline volume have a badge like these:
So it is easy to see that the master is not available. But where to get it? I cannot edit the image because the whole adjustments panel is grayed out. The metadata is no help because it just tells me what I know: that this image is in the Vacation project of my Blog library:
And attempting to consolidate the masters for this project gives me this unhelpful dialog:
But connect what? Which disk do I put in? There are two ways to find out. The quickest is to control-click an image and select Show In Finder:
That will get a dialog box with the missing information:
Alternately you can fire up the referenced image manager. This is a better option if you have lots of offline images because you can select them all at once and get information on all of them in one go:
The volume name of each referenced file is in the list:
And it also shows the detail for each item in the list you select so you can be sure of what you are looking at:
Bringing the volume back on line immediately restores the online status and the badges change back. Any offline image displayed in the viewer is updated too.
It is also possible to filter images on the basis of their online status. Just select File Status from the + menu on the filter panel:
and pick the option you need:
The Show In Finder trick will open the enclosing folder with the image master selected now that the volume is online. But if multiple selections are made, it will only select the primary selection, so you cannot use this to do much more than find where the masters are stored.
The loupe still works, but gives a warning that it is not working with the master:
It is using the built-in library image in this case. Once reconnected the warning goes away and the magnification is greater because the master has many more pixels than the built-in image:
I would have expected that the high resolution preview (if generated) for the image would be available to the loupe when the master was offline, but this is apparently not the case. Another missed opportunity for previews.
Offline images can still be rotated in 90 degree steps, but once any rotation is performed, the loupe gives up and will display only gray until the image comes back on online.
And of course rating and rearranging works as expected. You can move offline images between projects too. And exporting a project with offline images gives an option to consolidate into the exported project, so ensuring that all the masters are really there and portable:
Management of online and offline images is well done and pretty comprehensive. That referenced image manager, however, will need another whole article to explain.
So it is easy to see that the master is not available. But where to get it? I cannot edit the image because the whole adjustments panel is grayed out. The metadata is no help because it just tells me what I know: that this image is in the Vacation project of my Blog library:
And attempting to consolidate the masters for this project gives me this unhelpful dialog:
But connect what? Which disk do I put in? There are two ways to find out. The quickest is to control-click an image and select Show In Finder:
That will get a dialog box with the missing information:
Alternately you can fire up the referenced image manager. This is a better option if you have lots of offline images because you can select them all at once and get information on all of them in one go:
The volume name of each referenced file is in the list:
And it also shows the detail for each item in the list you select so you can be sure of what you are looking at:
Bringing the volume back on line immediately restores the online status and the badges change back. Any offline image displayed in the viewer is updated too.
It is also possible to filter images on the basis of their online status. Just select File Status from the + menu on the filter panel:
and pick the option you need:
The Show In Finder trick will open the enclosing folder with the image master selected now that the volume is online. But if multiple selections are made, it will only select the primary selection, so you cannot use this to do much more than find where the masters are stored.
The loupe still works, but gives a warning that it is not working with the master:
It is using the built-in library image in this case. Once reconnected the warning goes away and the magnification is greater because the master has many more pixels than the built-in image:
I would have expected that the high resolution preview (if generated) for the image would be available to the loupe when the master was offline, but this is apparently not the case. Another missed opportunity for previews.
Offline images can still be rotated in 90 degree steps, but once any rotation is performed, the loupe gives up and will display only gray until the image comes back on online.
And of course rating and rearranging works as expected. You can move offline images between projects too. And exporting a project with offline images gives an option to consolidate into the exported project, so ensuring that all the masters are really there and portable:
Management of online and offline images is well done and pretty comprehensive. That referenced image manager, however, will need another whole article to explain.
Color Zoom
2006-10-08
Interact 10 Ways has a fascinating piece of Flash animation that turns pixels into images and then images into pixels.
Picture Stories
2006-10-07
From time to time I will be posting one of my photographs on the front page of the blog with a link to the Picture Stories page. On the Picture Stories page I show the original and final images and describe the circumstances of the image and how and why I got from the original to the final version.
Key Value Coding 10: Do Some Math
2006-10-06
KVO10 adds another ivar and some math to the mix. Download the code and see how KVC can do math for you.
There are the five ivar text fields that were there previously, but now five more are added that do math on the other fields. Doing this used no code, just key paths. AppController implements the functionality like this:
To calculate the sum a key path with a special @sum element is used. So in the example above, the key path is collection.@sum.passengers. That means to get the array referenced by collection and apply the passengers message to each element, then sum the returned values. So this gets the sum of passengers for all the vehicles in the collection.
The other fields work the same way. The only odd one is the count of values. That one uses the key path collection.@count and does not need an ivar name to do its work since it is just counting array elements.
So far I have shown KVO doing the work of accessors, storage management, and math. Saving code, errors, and maintenance. Key paths do more than that, but a visit will be postponed until some other things have been covered.
There are the five ivar text fields that were there previously, but now five more are added that do math on the other fields. Doing this used no code, just key paths. AppController implements the functionality like this:
To calculate the sum a key path with a special @sum element is used. So in the example above, the key path is collection.@sum.passengers. That means to get the array referenced by collection and apply the passengers message to each element, then sum the returned values. So this gets the sum of passengers for all the vehicles in the collection.
The other fields work the same way. The only odd one is the count of values. That one uses the key path collection.@count and does not need an ivar name to do its work since it is just counting array elements.
So far I have shown KVO doing the work of accessors, storage management, and math. Saving code, errors, and maintenance. Key paths do more than that, but a visit will be postponed until some other things have been covered.
Aperture 1.5: Relocate and Consolidate
2006-10-06
Now that Aperture 1.5 is here, it is possible to store the masters outside of the library. For some this is just perfect: their library is huge and big parts of it could be put on Firewire drives, or a server, or on DVDs. Right-clicking on an individual project shows the two new options that take care of this: Relocate Masters for Project and Consolidate Masters For Project:
You don't get these options for albums or blue or brown folders, just for projects and selections of thumbnails (to manage selections of thumbnails you will have to use the menu bar and select the File menu: the control-click menu does not show these options). Masters for the entire library can also be relocated and consolidated.
Relocate means move the masters from where ever they are to somewhere else and reference them.
Consolidate means bring the masters back from where ever they are to the library and manage them.
It's only the masters that are affected by these operations, so there is still data left in the library: thumbnails, adjustments, versions, keywords and other metadata. But the masters are usually huge in comparison, so moving them out makes the most difference when library space is at a premium.
A project can contain a mix of referenced (masters outside the library) and managed (masters inside the library) images through failures during relocation or consolidation, imports to projects, or selections of images being moved in or out of the library. If you edit an image in an external editor, the new image is always put into the library and managed. So if you want it somewhere else, you will have to do that manually.
Lets break up my library by relocating the masters for my Vacation project. Relocate Masters for Project brings me to this dialog:
I've chosen a folder called Media on a volume called Turkey that is on a server. Using the Subfolder Format pop-up I can choose the way that the individual master files from the project are stored in the Media folder. Choosing None gives me this organization:
And the masters (my masters are all JPGs) are stored flat. But I actually had a problem doing this relocate. For some reason Aperture thought there was insufficient space to store some my files on that volume and so left them in the library. Three of the thumbnails don't have the badge that shows they are referenced. You can see one of them below:
That one doesn't have a badge, but how would I know if I had thousands of images which ones were managed or not? It is easy because I can filter on the file status:
By picking File Status and then selecting Managed, I can see the three that were not relocated:
The other options here, Online and Offline refer to the volumes that are storing the referenced masters. If I had a closet full of Firewire drives and only three of them plugged in to my machine I could easily see which images were on those drives and which were in the closet by using those filter selections.
I can still work with my referenced images exactly the same way I can work with my managed images. I can create versions, do adjustments, crop, rotate. It might be a little slower in my case because my master is on an aging G3 iMac at the end of a 100Mb network, but otherwise the experience will be the same.
I will consolidate the files that were relocated and so make them managed again. By selecting the project and Consolidate Masters For Project I get this dialog:
The warning here is because I could have other Aperture libraries that also reference the same masters. If I move them, they will not be usable from those other libraries. I click Continue, move them all back, and the badges all disappear. My Media folder is empty again.
Relocating again and selecting Image Year/Month/Day for the subfolder gets me this organization inside the Media folder on my server:
This corresponds to the date the images were shot. I can also use Relocate Masters For Project to relocate the masters at any time without consolidating them. They are simply moved from one place to another. If I now choose Project as the subfolder name, then they are all moved out of the year/month/day folders and into a folder called Vacation without coming back into the library over the network. So this is very fast on a remote server:
It's very flexible. Not only can I move the masters about willy-nilly, but I can also make my own structure out of building blocks by selecting Edit... from the subfolder pop-up. Here I have redefined the preset Project Name:
That results in the following organization:
There is more. Because Aperture keeps a lot of information about the referenced files in the library, the referencing is very robust. It will even find them if you give them new names or move them somewhere else on the same volume. If the project contains master files that have the same name Aperture renames one of them like this:
Note that relocate and consolidate operating on a project don't take account of any filtering: they work on all the masters in the project at once. Filtering can be used though: just filter, select the images, and use the File menu to relocate or consolidate.
You don't get these options for albums or blue or brown folders, just for projects and selections of thumbnails (to manage selections of thumbnails you will have to use the menu bar and select the File menu: the control-click menu does not show these options). Masters for the entire library can also be relocated and consolidated.
Relocate means move the masters from where ever they are to somewhere else and reference them.
Consolidate means bring the masters back from where ever they are to the library and manage them.
It's only the masters that are affected by these operations, so there is still data left in the library: thumbnails, adjustments, versions, keywords and other metadata. But the masters are usually huge in comparison, so moving them out makes the most difference when library space is at a premium.
A project can contain a mix of referenced (masters outside the library) and managed (masters inside the library) images through failures during relocation or consolidation, imports to projects, or selections of images being moved in or out of the library. If you edit an image in an external editor, the new image is always put into the library and managed. So if you want it somewhere else, you will have to do that manually.
Lets break up my library by relocating the masters for my Vacation project. Relocate Masters for Project brings me to this dialog:
I've chosen a folder called Media on a volume called Turkey that is on a server. Using the Subfolder Format pop-up I can choose the way that the individual master files from the project are stored in the Media folder. Choosing None gives me this organization:
And the masters (my masters are all JPGs) are stored flat. But I actually had a problem doing this relocate. For some reason Aperture thought there was insufficient space to store some my files on that volume and so left them in the library. Three of the thumbnails don't have the badge that shows they are referenced. You can see one of them below:
That one doesn't have a badge, but how would I know if I had thousands of images which ones were managed or not? It is easy because I can filter on the file status:
By picking File Status and then selecting Managed, I can see the three that were not relocated:
The other options here, Online and Offline refer to the volumes that are storing the referenced masters. If I had a closet full of Firewire drives and only three of them plugged in to my machine I could easily see which images were on those drives and which were in the closet by using those filter selections.
I can still work with my referenced images exactly the same way I can work with my managed images. I can create versions, do adjustments, crop, rotate. It might be a little slower in my case because my master is on an aging G3 iMac at the end of a 100Mb network, but otherwise the experience will be the same.
I will consolidate the files that were relocated and so make them managed again. By selecting the project and Consolidate Masters For Project I get this dialog:
The warning here is because I could have other Aperture libraries that also reference the same masters. If I move them, they will not be usable from those other libraries. I click Continue, move them all back, and the badges all disappear. My Media folder is empty again.
Relocating again and selecting Image Year/Month/Day for the subfolder gets me this organization inside the Media folder on my server:
This corresponds to the date the images were shot. I can also use Relocate Masters For Project to relocate the masters at any time without consolidating them. They are simply moved from one place to another. If I now choose Project as the subfolder name, then they are all moved out of the year/month/day folders and into a folder called Vacation without coming back into the library over the network. So this is very fast on a remote server:
It's very flexible. Not only can I move the masters about willy-nilly, but I can also make my own structure out of building blocks by selecting Edit... from the subfolder pop-up. Here I have redefined the preset Project Name:
That results in the following organization:
There is more. Because Aperture keeps a lot of information about the referenced files in the library, the referencing is very robust. It will even find them if you give them new names or move them somewhere else on the same volume. If the project contains master files that have the same name Aperture renames one of them like this:
Note that relocate and consolidate operating on a project don't take account of any filtering: they work on all the masters in the project at once. Filtering can be used though: just filter, select the images, and use the File menu to relocate or consolidate.
Question And Answer
2006-10-05
I receive a number of questions about Aperture and related topics and usually reply by email. The new Question and Answer Page is a way of sharing those questions and answers with others who read this blog. Send me your questions and we will see how it works out!
Hopefully all your questions about the Q and A page are answered already on the Q and A page.
James Duncan Davidson on the Aperture 1.5 Color Control
2006-10-05
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.
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.
Knithrify
2006-10-04
According to WordGizmo, knithrify is a verb, meaning to encase a person of noble standing in armor. Actually according to me, that is what knithrify means because I created and submitted the definition. At WordGizmo you define the meaning of pseudowords the page throws at you.
You can Google them too. Knithrify is on the Best Of page along with such gems as brib, bambage, mnempe, and gemblime for size. Resolve to use them in casual conversation.
You can Google them too. Knithrify is on the Best Of page along with such gems as brib, bambage, mnempe, and gemblime for size. Resolve to use them in casual conversation.
Aperture 1.5: Preview Storage
2006-10-04
When Aperture upgraded its library the first time 1.5 ran, it changed a few things. One of the things it did was to add a new file called ApertureData.xml to the library. Here is the top level of a small library (opened by control-clicking and selecting Show Package Contents) before the update:
and here it is after the update:
Opening that file XML with a text editor, or better still an XML editor like Property List Editor shows it to be a complete description of all of the previews and where they can be found. In fact it shows two locations: a preview in a Preview folder and a another in a Thumbnail folder.
The purpose of this XML file is to allow other applications such as Keynote to dive into the library and pull out a list of albums and projects, present them to the user for browsing with names and thumbnails, and then fetch the high resolution preview image. In this way, Keynote does not have to mess with Aperture's folder structure, database, or built-in image thumbnails that are used for screen display. And Aperture does not have to be running. An application like Keynote can also keep a copy of some of that data so it can present the user with a window of thumbnails quickly and then update it as it scans and processes in the background.
When you quit Aperture it will sometimes pause while it writes this file to disk. You may see a dialog box appear to this effect.
If I drill down into the project and the import session to the folder with my butterfly image inside, I see the following files:
This image is managed so the original is here too, that's the first file. The .apfile file is a file that helps Aperture maintain the integrity of the file project structure. And the .apmaster and .apversion files describe to Aperture how to process the master for display, including RAW conversion and adjustments. But none of those have any information about previews -- previews are sort of tagged on.
What is new in 1.5 is that there are two folders added: Previews and Thumbnails. The former holds the generated previews for all versions. These can be as big as the master, or can be limited in size by the choice in the prefs window. They do contain metadata, so that is available to any application that can extract it from the JPG file. The thumbnail is always fitted to a 240x240 pixel square. Here is the one from the window above:
So this mechanism, XML file for information and JPG files for data, provides a parallel and independent image system for Aperture. It means that Aperture does not have to know anything about the applications that use the images, and the applications do not need to know anything about how Aperture works or where the originals are or how they were prepared. It is a very simple system.
and here it is after the update:
Opening that file XML with a text editor, or better still an XML editor like Property List Editor shows it to be a complete description of all of the previews and where they can be found. In fact it shows two locations: a preview in a Preview folder and a another in a Thumbnail folder.
The purpose of this XML file is to allow other applications such as Keynote to dive into the library and pull out a list of albums and projects, present them to the user for browsing with names and thumbnails, and then fetch the high resolution preview image. In this way, Keynote does not have to mess with Aperture's folder structure, database, or built-in image thumbnails that are used for screen display. And Aperture does not have to be running. An application like Keynote can also keep a copy of some of that data so it can present the user with a window of thumbnails quickly and then update it as it scans and processes in the background.
When you quit Aperture it will sometimes pause while it writes this file to disk. You may see a dialog box appear to this effect.
If I drill down into the project and the import session to the folder with my butterfly image inside, I see the following files:
This image is managed so the original is here too, that's the first file. The .apfile file is a file that helps Aperture maintain the integrity of the file project structure. And the .apmaster and .apversion files describe to Aperture how to process the master for display, including RAW conversion and adjustments. But none of those have any information about previews -- previews are sort of tagged on.
What is new in 1.5 is that there are two folders added: Previews and Thumbnails. The former holds the generated previews for all versions. These can be as big as the master, or can be limited in size by the choice in the prefs window. They do contain metadata, so that is available to any application that can extract it from the JPG file. The thumbnail is always fitted to a 240x240 pixel square. Here is the one from the window above:
So this mechanism, XML file for information and JPG files for data, provides a parallel and independent image system for Aperture. It means that Aperture does not have to know anything about the applications that use the images, and the applications do not need to know anything about how Aperture works or where the originals are or how they were prepared. It is a very simple system.
IBM Has Sent Me A Rock
2006-10-03
I received a rock in the mail the other day from IBM. It came in a small box, together with a smelly card and a temperature-sensitive disk:
What an odd way to spend my money! (since I am a shareholder it really is my money, or at least a tiny bit of it is). I had to look all over the thing to figure out what they were promoting and even then I could not see why I would want it.
Marketing has one function: to communicate value. To avoid going broke most companies amend this: marketing's function is to communicate value within a reasonable and fixed budget (unless your business was called Digital Convergence and you sent out bar scanners by the truck load a few years back).
But this package seems to be missing everything. It hardly communicates and it has no value.
Canon S3 Widescreen
2006-10-03
The Canon S3 can take photos (but not movies -- drat!) in widescreen 16:9 format and I have increasingly been shooting this way. To change to widescreen, press FUNC and then scroll down to the image size icon at the bottom. Select W, and exit by pressing FUNC again. Now the camera will chop off the top and bottom 1/8 of the image and deliver a smaller file.
The look of the image is very different from the normal 4:3 format, certainly for viewing on a computer. This first image is a regular photo viewed in Aperture at full screen:
The black bars at each side are filled in because the ratios do not match. The same photo taken in wide screen mode displays like this:
There are still bars, but the narrower horizontal bars are much less obtrusive, the uninteresting sky and road parts of the image are no longer present, and the image fills a wider field of my eyes' view. Altogether a nicer picture, achieved just by throwing information away.
The look of the image is very different from the normal 4:3 format, certainly for viewing on a computer. This first image is a regular photo viewed in Aperture at full screen:
The black bars at each side are filled in because the ratios do not match. The same photo taken in wide screen mode displays like this:
There are still bars, but the narrower horizontal bars are much less obtrusive, the uninteresting sky and road parts of the image are no longer present, and the image fills a wider field of my eyes' view. Altogether a nicer picture, achieved just by throwing information away.
Aperture: Fishing for Apple Kbase Docs
2006-10-03
Rather than bring you fish, I will tell you how to catch them yourself. Go to Apple's search page and type kf8 into the search box. All the Aperture Knowledge Base articles are tagged with "kf8". On the results page, sort by date to see the latest. Or you can just bookmark this URL to do the search in one click.
Aperture 1.5: Preview Correction
2006-10-02
In a previous article I said this about previews:
2. Previews are never used for on-screen display except for slide shows
I'm wrong about this. Aperture does use the high resolution previews for regular screen display, but only if it thinks it can do better than the built-in library image and the master is off-line.
You can test this yourself. Set the preview quality to be 0 and the size to be 1280x1280. Take a project that uses big images and regenerate all the previews. Now move the project masters to another volume and take it off-line. Try displaying the images in the project at 100% and you will see the fuzzy image based on the built-in library image appear first and then the blocky low-quality preview replace it. If the master is on-line then the preview is not used -- or at least I have never been able to catch it using it with the technique just described.
However, this error does not change my advice. Most people don't need high resolution previews for every image. If you have off-line images and you need high resolution, then previews are most definitely for you.
2. Previews are never used for on-screen display except for slide shows
I'm wrong about this. Aperture does use the high resolution previews for regular screen display, but only if it thinks it can do better than the built-in library image and the master is off-line.
You can test this yourself. Set the preview quality to be 0 and the size to be 1280x1280. Take a project that uses big images and regenerate all the previews. Now move the project masters to another volume and take it off-line. Try displaying the images in the project at 100% and you will see the fuzzy image based on the built-in library image appear first and then the blocky low-quality preview replace it. If the master is on-line then the preview is not used -- or at least I have never been able to catch it using it with the technique just described.
However, this error does not change my advice. Most people don't need high resolution previews for every image. If you have off-line images and you need high resolution, then previews are most definitely for you.
Aperture 1.5: Preview Management
2006-10-02
Quick -- which of these two images has a preview?
Managing previews in Aperture 1.5 is a little tricky. First, there is no "preview" badge that tells you whether an image has a preview already made. Secondly, the controls you need to use to manage these things you cannot see are scattered and confusing.
The easiest way I have found to check if a preview exists is to try to drag the images to the desktop. If there is no preview in the selection they will all spring back to the browser. On the left below, neither image has a preview. On the right, at least one does:
Managing previews in Aperture 1.5 is a little tricky. First, there is no "preview" badge that tells you whether an image has a preview already made. Secondly, the controls you need to use to manage these things you cannot see are scattered and confusing.
A Game Of Spot The Preview
The easiest way I have found to check if a preview exists is to try to drag the images to the desktop. If there is no preview in the selection they will all spring back to the browser. On the left below, neither image has a preview. On the right, at least one does: