Apple Aperture - 2.0 Exploring

Exploring Aperture

Apple Inc.

The owner or authorized user of a valid copy of Aperture software may reproduce this publication for the purpose of learning to use such software. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, such as selling copies of this publication or for providing paid for support services.

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7 Chapter 1: Exploring Aperture

Opening Aperture

Try This: Exploring the Main Window

Try This: Exploring Basic Procedures

Learning About the Projects Inspector

Basic Concepts You Should Know

21 Chapter 2: Importing Basics

Try This: Exploring Import Options

Learning About Where Your Image Files Reside

Try This: Selecting Version Names for Imported Images

Basic Concepts You Should Know

35 Chapter 3: Learning About the Browser

Try This: Exploring the Browser

Try This: Stacking Images

Try This: Displaying the Images You Want to Work With

Learning About Masters and Versions

Basic Concepts You Should Know

49 Chapter 4: Learning About the Viewer

Try This: Exploring the Viewer

Try This: Exploring Adjustment Tools

Try This: Displaying Metadata with Images

Learning About the Metadata Inspector

Learning About Badges

Basic Concepts You Should Know

63 Chapter 5: Adjusting Images in Full Screen View

Try This: Exploring Full Screen View

Try This: Adjusting Exposure with the Adjustments Pane of the Inspector HUD

Try This: Enhancing an Image

Try This: Adjusting White Balance

Learning About the Adjustments in the Inspector HUD and Adjustments Inspector

Basic Concepts You Should Know

81 Chapter 6: Applying Keywords to Images

Try This: Exploring the Keywords HUD

Try This: Working with Keywords in the Keywords HUD

Learning About the Lift & Stamp HUD

Basic Concepts You Should Know

Contents

93 Chapter 7: Presenting Your Images

Try This: Exploring Slideshows

Try This: Exploring Aperture Webpages

10 6

Try This: Exploring Aperture Books

111

Learning About Books

115

Basic Concepts You Should Know

117 Chapter 8: Printing Images

118

Try This: Exploring Printing

121

Basic Concepts You Should Know

12 3 Chapter 9: Backing Up Your Images

12 3

Learning About Making Backups

12 5

Try This: Exploring the Vault Pane

12 9

Basic Concepts You Should Know

131 Chapter 10: Getting Answers

131

Try This: Exploring Aperture Help

13 2

What’s Next?

Contents

Exploring Aperture

Welcome to Aperture. If you’re new to the Aperture digital image workflow, this guide is for you. Here you’ll open sample projects and learn by doing.

Each chapter of this book presents major features and guides you in trying things out. Feel free to explore on your own. Have fun learning the basics. Later, when you feel comfortable, you can bring in your own photos and begin serious work with Aperture.

This book assumes that you’ve installed Aperture on your computer and that you have the Aperture installation disc in your computer’s drive.

If you haven’t installed Aperture yet:

If you haven’t inserted the Aperture installation disc in your drive:

installation disc in your Aperture box and insert it in your disc drive now.

If you prefer to start by reading in-depth explanations of concepts and procedures used with Aperture:

Open Aperture, then choose Help > Aperture User Manual.

See the

Installing Your Software

booklet.

Locate the Aperture

Opening Aperture

You’ll start by opening Aperture and using a sample project.

To open Aperture:

Double-click the Aperture icon in your Applications folder.

The first time you open Aperture, you have several choices.

Click the Start Using Aperture button.

Click Continue.

When a dialog appears asking whether you want to import sample projects, click Import.

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Exploring Aperture

After Aperture takes a few moments to import the sample projects, your screen will look similar to this:

These sample projects hold sample images and albums. Click a project or

Inspector button

Projects inspector

album to see its images in the Browser.

Toolbar

Viewer

Browser

On the left you see the Projects inspector, where you create and work with projects that hold your images. Now you’re ready to explore the main window.

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Exploring Aperture

Try This: Exploring the Main Window

First you’ll look at some images, and then you’ll explore some important parts of the Aperture interface.

Remember, you first select a project or album in the Projects inspector to display the images it contains.

Getting Ready

Select the Nature project in the Projects inspector.

Click the Nature project here to select it.

The project’s images appear in the Browser.

A selected image appears in a white border.

10 Chapter 1

Exploring Aperture

Jumping In

Feel free to try out any of the following to see what happens.

Select images:

Click an image in the Browser. Press the arrow keys.

Shift-click images in the Browser.

Holding down the Shift key, press the arrow keys.

Change main window views:

Choose View > Browser Only to display the Browser only. Press the arrow keys.

Choose View > Viewer Only to display a selected image in the Viewer only. Press the arrow keys.

Press V (for view, and Viewer Only view.

Choose View > Browser Only from the View pop-up menu in the toolbar.

Double-click an image in the Browser to display it in Viewer Only view. Double-click the image in the Viewer to change back to the Browser Only view.

Chapter 1

view

) several times to switch between Browser Only view, Browser & Viewer

Exploring Aperture

Change Browser views:

Choose View > Browser & Viewer. Click the List View button to see images in the Browser in list view.

Filmstrip View button

Click the Grid View button to see images in the Browser in grid view again.

Click the Filmstrip button to see images in the Browser in filmstrip view, a single row of

List View button

Grid View button

images that you can use to navigate through images.

Press I to hide the Inspector pane. Press I again to show the Inspector pane.

Get to know the Metadata inspector:

Click the Metadata tab at the top of the Inspector pane. Select different images to see information about them. Enter a caption or keyword in the metadata fields. (You’ll learn more about this later.)

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Exploring Aperture

Get to know the Adjustments inspector:

Click the Adjustments tab at the top of the Inspector pane. Click the disclosure triangle of an adjustment to see its options. Select an adjustment’s checkbox and try making changes. Deselect the checkbox to turn off the changes. Press I to close the Inspector pane.

Get to know the Keywords heads-up display (HUD):

Click the Keywords button in the toolbar. Use the HUD scroll bar to scroll through the keywords in the HUD. Click the disclosure triangles in the Keywords HUD to see the keywords associated with the different categories. Drag keywords to a selected image. Press Shift-H to close the Keywords HUD.

Switch to Full Screen view:

Click the Full Screen button in the toolbar (or press F for

full screen

). Position the pointer centered at the bottom of the screen to display the filmstrip. Select images in the filmstrip. Press the arrow keys.

Get to know the Inspector HUD:

Press H (for

HUD

). Drag the HUD to a convenient position. Click the Projects, Metadata, and Adjustments buttons at the top of the HUD to see the panes. Notice that this movable HUD provides the same options as the inspectors. Press H to close the Inspector HUD. Press F to exit Full Screen view. (You’ll learn more about Full Screen view later.)

Chapter 1

Exploring Aperture

Display the contents of albums in a project:

Press I to display the Inspector pane. Click the Projects tab to display the Projects inspector. Click the disclosure triangle beside the Nature project name to see all the folders and albums in the project. Open the folders and click the albums in the project to see the different albums.

Create a new album to hold a selection of images:

Shift-click five or six images in the Browser to select them. Choose File > New from Selection > Album. Give the new album any name you like.

You’ll learn more about many of these features later in this guide. Just explore and get accustomed to the different parts of the main window for now.

Try This: Exploring Basic Procedures

You probably have questions about how to do fundamental procedures. This section helps you try out some basic tasks yourself. The following list gives pointers to help you start a procedure without providing full explanations. If you prefer to know the details before trying something, you can find comprehensive explanations in Aperture Help.

Jumping In

Create a new empty project:

project using the import commands, or you can drag images from the Aperture Browser after selecting another project or album. A project is a basic container of your images and all versions of them.

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Exploring Aperture

Choose File > New Project. You can import images into the

Import images from a camera or card reader:

Connect your camera or card reader to your computer. The Import dialog appears, allowing you to select the images you want to import. Select your new project in the Projects inspector. Your images will now be imported into this project. Select and import a few practice photos, if you want, or click Cancel to close the Import dialog. (You’ll learn the details of importing images in the next chapter.)

Rate images:

In the Browser, select an image you want to rate and press a number key from 1 to 5 to apply a rating from one to five stars. Press 0 (zero) to remove a rating. Press 9 to reject an image. Press plus sign (+) to increase the rating by one star, or press minus sign (–) to decrease the rating by one. Rate several images five stars. (You’ll learn more about rating later.)

Display a selection of images based on their rating:

Choose a rating level from the search field pop-up menu. Aperture shows only those images with the rating you chose. Choose Show All to show all the images again.

Search field pop-up menu

Search field

Delete a project:

Select the project that you created. Choose File > Delete Project. (Don’t delete the sample projects, which you’ll be using throughout this guide. If you already deleted one, reimport it from the Aperture Installation disc by choosing File > Import > Projects.)

Chapter 1

Exploring Aperture

Learning About the Projects Inspector

Now, take a look at the Projects inspector, where your library of images, projects, and albums resides.

At the top of the Projects inspector, you see the Library icon.

Library

Predefined Smart Albums

Selected project opened to show its folders and albums

Projects

The Aperture library tracks every project, album, and image, no matter whether the images are stored in the Aperture library or in other hard disk or storage media locations. When you imported the sample projects, all the project information, images, and albums were placed in the library.

16 Chapter 1

Exploring Aperture

Aperture creates a library in the Pictures folder on your hard disk the first time you open Aperture. You can choose to import images into the library or have Aperture access them from other locations on different hard disks.

When you click the disclosure triangle beside the Library icon, you see predefined Smart Albums that gather images automatically based on specified criteria. For example, the Smart Album named “5-star” displays all images rated five stars. The Smart Album named In the Last Week gathers all the images taken in the last week.

You can create your own Smart Albums that gather images based on any criteria you want. For example, you might create a Smart Album that automatically gathers all images that have the keyword

Portrait

Headshot

You organize your images into projects. A project is a container that holds digital master files, called

masters

, and their corresponding image versions. A master is the

original image imported from your camera or other source.

As you work with and change images, Aperture creates versions from the master. A version file is much smaller than the master that it’s based on. This means that creating new versions doesn’t fill up your hard disk by duplicating all the information in the master. As you work with Aperture, you are always working with versions; you never change masters. Your original masters are always preserved just as you shot them.

A project can hold tens of thousands of masters and even more versions, and you can create as many projects as you wish up to the limitations of your disk space. For example, you can create a new project for each of your shoots. Projects are the most fundamental component of Aperture because they contain your masters.

Chapter 1

Exploring Aperture

An album is a container in a project or in the Projects inspector that organizes versions of your images. You create albums for a specific purpose. For example, you might create an album of photos of a specific type of bird. You use albums to organize images, making your selections of versions easier to manage.

Albums

To place a version into an album, drag the image from the Browser into an album in the Projects inspector.

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Basic Concepts You Should Know

Masters:

The original image files imported from your camera, memory card, computer, or external storage media. The masters are never changed by Aperture, so that the original image is preserved and can be used again.

Versions:

The images you see and change in Aperture are called based on the original master, and you can change, copy, and adjust them any way you want.

Projects:

Containers used to hold masters, versions, and albums. When project files

are moved, the contents are moved with them.

Albums:

Containers used to organize versions for a specific purpose. You can create albums within projects or outside them. Types of albums include Smart Albums, Light Table albums, webpage albums, web journal albums, and book albums.

Library:

A database that manages your files from import to image adjustments and final distribution. Once you import images, the library records and tracks your masters and corresponding versions. The library also tracks projects and albums you create to organize your images. Changes that you make to images, including adjustments and metadata, are stored in the library no matter whether the master is stored in the library or another disk location.

Â Heads-up display (HUD): A floating window that you can move to a convenient

position on the screen and use to change images.

Next, you’ll learn more about importing images into Aperture.

Chapter 1

Exploring Aperture

versions

. Versions are

2 Importing Basics

Aperture provides a variety of import options designed to suit the needs of advanced photographers.

In this chapter, you’ll experiment with importing selected images and familiarizing yourself with basic import features. You’ll create a test project and import images into it, trying out different methods of assigning names and preparing images for import. After you’ve had some basic experience importing sample images, you can begin envisioning how to import your own images.

Important: Make sure to get acquainted with the Aperture import methods and plan

the structure of your Aperture library before you begin importing your images in earnest. You’ll be building an organized system for tracking thousands of images, and planning ahead can make file management easier in the long run. For a detailed explanation of planning an import strategy and setting up an Aperture system, see the Aperture User Manual in the Aperture Help menu.

Try This: Exploring Import Options

Aperture provides easy ways of selecting images to import, naming files, assigning identifying information called metadata, and storing images.

When you connect a camera or insert a card of images into a card reader connected to your computer, the Import pane and Import dialog appear. You then select the images you want to import and specify import options.

Import pane

Toolbar

Import dialog

Import Images button

22 Chapter 2 Importing Basics

Getting Ready

Rather than importing images from a camera or card reader, for now you’ll just import some sample images from a folder on your hard disk. If you have five or six images of your own that you feel comfortable experimenting with, place them in a folder on your desktop.

If you’d prefer to experiment with images from the Aperture sample projects, export five or six images to a folder on your desktop.

To export sample images to a folder on your desktop:

1 Select the Nature project in the Projects inspector.

2 Select five or six images in the Browser.

3 Choose File > Export > Masters. Press Command-D to select the desktop as the

destination for your exported images.

4 Click the New Folder button, type Samples as a folder name, and click Create.

5 Click the Export Masters button.

Aperture exports the selected images to the folder on your desktop. Now you can import these images again, trying out Aperture filenaming and other import options.

Chapter 2 Importing Basics 23

To open the Import dialog and get ready to import sample images:

1 Choose File > New Project to create an empty project. Give the project a name such as

Import Test, then press Return.

2 Click the new project in the Projects inspector to select it, if necessary.

3 Click the Import button in the toolbar to open the Import pane.

4 Click Local Files in the Import pane.

24 Chapter 2 Importing Basics

The Import dialog appears.

Select a camera, card reader, hard disk, or other storage device that holds your images.

Select disk and folder icons to navigate to the images you want.

Image file information

Select the destination of the image files here. You can place them in the library or leave them in another hard disk location.

Specify the types of metadata you want added here.

Import Images button

The Import arrow points to the selected project, where the images will be stored.

Chapter 2 Importing Basics 25

Auto-Stack slider

Jumping In

Navigate to your images:

m Click Desktop in the Import pane and select the folder that holds your sample images.

You see the sample images appear as thumbnails.

Select images to import:

m Click a thumbnail to select it. Inspect the Image Information area to see information

about the image. Press the Right Arrow or Left Arrow key to select other images.

m Hold down the Shift key and press the arrow keys to select multiple images.

Command-click specific images to select or deselect them. To select all the images again, choose Edit > Select All, or click the gray area between images to deselect everything.

Select a project to hold your images:

m Click the Soccer project in the Projects inspector. Notice that the Import arrow moves

to indicate that images will be imported into this project. Click the new empty project that you created in the Projects inspector to select it again.

Choose where masters will reside on your hard disks:

m Select five or six images in the Import dialog. Open the Store Files pop-up menu to see

its options. Choose In the Aperture Library to store the files in the Aperture library on your hard disk. You can also choose to store files in a different location on your hard disk, or, if the files already reside on a hard disk, you can choose to leave the files in their current location.

26 Chapter 2 Importing Basics

Choose an image-naming convention:

m Choose Custom Name with Index from the Version Name pop-up menu. Type a name

that you want applied to each image in the Name Text field. Aperture will give each newly imported image that custom version name and add an index number. Look at the red Adjusted File Name field in the Image Information area to see how the version names will appear. Applying custom names to imported images is optional; you can also simply accept the filenames the images currently have.

Add metadata:

m Choose General from the Add Metadata From pop-up menu. Fields appear that allow

you to specify metadata to be recorded about the imported images.

m Type the caption “Import test” in the Caption field. This caption will be added to each

imported image.

m Type “Test, Sample” (no quotation marks, but separated by a comma) in the Keywords

field. All imported images will now have these two keywords automatically assigned.

m Add any other metadata you like in the other fields.

Import the images and review them in the Browser:

m Click the Import Images button in the lower-right corner of the Import dialog to import

the selected images.

Import Images button

m Select the imported images in the Browser. Press Control-D to display the Metadata

inspector, and examine the metadata you assigned. Notice that you can change the metadata if you want.

Chapter 2 Importing Basics 27

Learning About Where Your Image Files Reside

When you import images, you can choose whether to store the masters in the Aperture library or store them on a hard disk outside the library.

Managed images are physically placed in the Aperture Library file on your hard disk, and the files and all information about them are managed and backed up by Aperture.

Referenced images are images whose masters are not stored in the library. They are located elsewhere on a hard disk or other media, and Aperture merely refers to the masters in that location. The advantage of using referenced images is that you can import your portfolio of legacy images as they are currently stored on disk, without having to physically copy or move them into the Aperture library. You can also give Aperture access to images on different hard disks. You can simply allow Aperture to refer to the files, using your current file organization and image filenames. Aperture doesn’t back up or change referenced images; you must maintain them yourself.

It’s important to plan how you want to import your existing portfolio of digital images. The Aperture library can easily track any mix of managed and referenced images. Because you may have many thousands of images previously stored on disk, you can decide which images to import into the Aperture library and which to import as referenced images, leaving them in their current hard disk locations. You can also copy or move images into a different hard disk location when importing them.

28 Chapter 2 Importing Basics

After importing images as referenced images, you can work with versions of those images just as you can with the managed images in the Aperture library. All adjustments and metadata applied to referenced images are tracked in the Aperture library just the same way they are for managed images.

Important: If you remove or disconnect a hard disk drive or other media that contains

referenced masters, Aperture can still display and track the versions of those images that you’ve created. However, if you want to make adjustments to those images, you must reconnect the hard disk or media to give Aperture access to the masters. Aperture can automatically find and access the files when you reconnect the hard disk or media.

Try This: Selecting Version Names for Imported Images

Now it’s time to look a little deeper into how you assign names to your images.

When you import images, you can have Aperture use the original name assigned by the camera, or use a filenaming convention that you choose or create. Aperture provides a number of preset name formats, and you can also create your own naming conventions to suit the different types of shoots you do. You can choose a preset name format when you import new photos.

Chapter 2 Importing Basics 29

Aperture provides the following preset name formats.

Preset name format Example

Master Filename IMG001

Image Date/Time 2005-10-14 09.03.25 PM

Version Name IMG001

Version Name and Date/Time IMG001 - 2005-10-14 09.03.25 PM

Version Name with Sequence IMG001 (1 of 2), IMG002 (2 of 2), and so on

Version Name with Index IMG001 1, IMG002 2, and so on

Custom Name with Index Thailand 1, Thailand 2, and so on

Custom Name with Counter Thailand 001, Thailand 002, and so on

You can apply names to your image files when you import them and when you export them. For example, when you import images from your camera, you can specify that a name format be applied to each image version that Aperture creates. You can also apply the same names to the masters as they are stored in the library or on a hard disk. Next, try importing the same images several times, applying a different filenaming convention each time.

Note: Aperture provides a “Do not import duplicates” option in the Import dialog that you can select to prevent importing duplicate photos. Leave this option deselected to try out importing images in this section.

30 Chapter 2 Importing Basics

+ 102 hidden pages

Apple Aperture - 2.0 Exploring

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Contents

Exploring Aperture

Opening Aperture

Getting Ready

Jumping In

Jumping In

Learning About the Projects Inspector

Basic Concepts You Should Know

2 Importing Basics

Getting Ready

Jumping In

Learning About Where Your Image Files Reside