Aperture Tutorial: Less Really Can be More
By Jonathan Briggs
With a couple of flash cards in your back pocket, there’s the potential to come back from a day’s shoot with a few hundred images in the bag, all desperate to get out and prove their worth. But capture is only half the game with digital photography. Once your files are imported, you still need to organise and edit your day’s snapping.
Metadata is the power behind Aperture’s ‘stacking’ system, which is designed to do some of the organising for you, and is especially effective when you’ve captured a series of images or bracketed your exposures. This guide offers tips and tricks on how to import effectively and get stacking.
Step 1: As soon as you insert a flash card into a card reader connected to your Mac, Aperture senses that there are new pictures available and expands the left-hand side of the screen to include the Import Panel. By default, Aperture assumes that you want to import the new images into the last project you were viewing in the Project Panel. However, it’s possible you will want to import the files into the Library and create a new untitled project. If so, simply click on Library and the Import Path will change to flow between the card and the Library.
Step 2: Once the card is recognised by Aperture, a thumbnail view of the card’s contents appears. You don’t have to import every file on the flash card. Drag around a set of images or Shift + Click on the thumbnails to only import those files. But before clicking the Import button, it’s a good idea to add some ID to your images.
Step 3: Prior to importing the images, you can give the set of files a custom name — the options are under the Name Format drop-down menu. Applying your own naming convention can help when it comes to searching, exporting and grouping images later on. If you choose IPTC from the Add Metadata From drop-down menu, you have the option to further identify this complete import in one easy step — the level of detail is entirely up to you. IPTC information is data that you add yourself, and doing it when you import your photos is a habit that’s worth getting into.
Step 4: Now click Import (bottom right) and the panel collapses. There’s no need to plan a much-needed cup of tea or even twiddle your thumbs when the import is in progress. It looks after itself in the background, leaving you free to carry on working on other Aperture projects. By default you’ll get a prompt telling you when the import is complete.
Step 5: It’s far easier to browse through a lot of images if you group them together. In Aperture this is called ‘stacking’. It is a process that you can control manually, or that Aperture can look after either before or after you import files. If you use Autostack, Aperture looks at the metadata that came with the files from the camera (the EXIF information) and groups images by time between shots, or even sequences of aperture or shutter speed changes. To do it manually, shift + select a number of images then hit Apple + K. A darker area surrounds the images that are now in a stack.
Step 6: The number in the top left-hand corner of any stack tells you how many images are in the stack. The same number can also be clicked to open or close the stack itself. Alternatively use Shift + K to open or close a stack. All stacks can be opened and closed at a keystroke using Alt + ’ (open all stacks) and Alt + ; (close all stacks).
Step 7: When you’re dealing with a series of images on the same subject and you need to make fast decisions on which have the most potential, stacking really comes into its own. Rather than scrolling along trying to pick out the best, you can have Aperture split them up for you by using the Autostack command (Apple + Alt + A).
Jonathan Briggs is a former MD of The Association of Photographers (AOP). Now a director of Magic Bean — a company set up to offer technical training and event logistics for companies working within the creative industry — Briggs has over ten years’ experience working with Macs and associated software across the design, imaging and photographic sectors. This series of guides offers a real-world user perspective on how you can get the most out of Aperture.
All the images seen here were taken by cycling photographer Graham Watson. Graham shoots with two Nikon D2X cameras — one fitted with a long telephoto lens, the other with a wide angle — and uses Aperture running on a 15” MacBook Pro. To find out more about how Graham uses the Mac and Aperture, 