I recently taught an Aperture workshop in Boston for my friends over at the Aperture Users Professional Network. It was a great event, and about 20 Aperture users — both experienced and new users — trudged through the snow to come out and learn about Aperture. I was dealing with a bad cold, and maybe this is my blurry, cold medicine-influenced perception of the day, but I thought this was one of the best Aperture workshops I've ever been involved in. The attendees came from a variety of backgrounds and each was able to share their body of knowledge within the scope of the workshop.

I love teaching workshops with a medium-sized group of around 20 people, because it's the perfect size to encourage group discussions and head off on tangents that aren't part of the regular course curriculum. One attendee was still shooting film and interested in Aperture as a visual database tool for his scans. Another was an experienced sports photographer who was wrestling with how to import massive quantities of photos into Aperture. Still another was an Apple Consultant Network member who was experienced in supporting Aperture and Macs. The smallness of the group combined with the attendees' wide range of backgrounds made for a really nice environment for me as an instructor. When faced with a question for which I didn't have an answer, I was able to open the question to the group and see if anyone could share any insight. It's not always easy to do that as an instructor. You face the fear that people will doubt your expertise (after all, teachers know all the answers, right?), and you risk the group turning on one another if they disagree with someone's opinion. But this particular workshop just had that nice safe vibe to it. I had several attendees come up and chat with me after the course, and for the most part, I think that they were as pleased as I was.

So, how about an Aperture tip? Most readers will probably know that the scope of a smart album is determined by where the album is created: if the smart album is created in a project, then it will be limited in scope to photos inside that project. Similarly, if a smart album is created at the library level, it can include photos from the entire Aperture library. This is pretty straightforward, but things can become tricky when you move a smart album.

In the example below, I have three projects, one for each round of headshots that were taken. In the 071213 CG Headshots project, I've created a smart album for John's headshots. But I want to organize this smart album with my other smart albums in the CG Management Headshots folder, which is at the library level in my projects pane.

When I move the John smart album to the folder, its scope does not change — i.e., it is still only searching the 071213 CG Headshots project. But this isn't obvious from looking at it. In order to find out the scope of a smart album, simply click on the magnifying glass icon at its right to reveal the smart settings for that album.

At the top of the settings HUD, to the right of the title, you'll see the scope of the smart album show in parenthesis. This can invaluable when trying to track down the source of a smart album that may not be behaving as expected.