Aperture is a comparatively ‘deep’ program - there are lots of things you can do in it, and there are often multiple ways of achieving an objective, like the four different way of sharpening - RAW Fine Tuning, Sharpen, Edge Sharpen and Definition.

This means that it can take some time to get to grips with Aperture, especially combined with the virtual organisational structure and virtual images (more on that in a future post). Anyway, to get to the point, that means there are often a lot of little functions (especially keyboard shortcuts, I love keyboard shortcuts...) that people aren’t aware of, a few of which I’ll list here.

Adjustment Slider Tips

It’s in the manual, but nobody ever seems to read that far... but you can get extreme value ranges for a lot of image adjustments by click-dragging on the value box - really handy if you want a particularly high or low temperature value for extreme lighting conditions, or black corners via the Vignette adjustment.
In case you’re wondering why the sliders don’t simply use the full range in the first place, I think it’s a case of practicality. Take the example of colour temperature - the extended range goes from 2,000K to 50,000K, but when the HUD or adjustments pane is made as narrow as possible the slider is only 95 pixels long - which would give a shift of 505K per pixel, which is a teensy bit unwieldy...
Next up are the use of modifier keys. Try clicking on one of the arrows next to the temperature value - the value will go up or down by ten. Do the same while holding down the Alt/Option key* and it’ll change by one instead. Use Shift and it’ll change by 100. The same shortcuts apply when click-dragging in the value field.

Keyboard Image Adjustments (Aperture 2 only)

In Aperture 1-1.5 you could double-click in the value fields for adjustments and enter values directly. You could even tab from one field to the next, but only in the current adjustment ‘brick’.
Aperture 2 takes this a lot further - you can tab (and Shift-Tab to go back) through all visible value fields, and use the up and right arrow keys to increase the value or down and left keys to reduce the value.
Guess what? The same Shift and Option/Alt modifier keys work here as well. Even neater, Aperture 2 added Command-Arrow shortcuts for navigating to the next image without leaving the current field in the Adjustments or Metadata panes.

General Keyboard Shortcuts

I did mention that I like shortcuts, didn’t I? Fortunately, this is an area where Aperture really excels, particularly Aperture 2. I’ll not go into much detail as it’s a large subject in itself, but make sure you have a glance through the keyboard shortcut foldout that came in the Aperture box, or download it from Apple. Alternatively, open up the new keyboard editor (Aperture>Commands>Customize...) and click with the mouse on a key - in the bottom right you’ll see a list of the commands for that key with all their modifier keys, along with colour coding for the different types of commands such as metadata, interface etc.

Multiple Browser Panes

It’s always been possible to open up two Browser panes in Aperture, which can be quite handy. Select a Project, Album or Folder, then Shift-click Command-click on another one to open it in a new, tabbed Browser pane. Alt/Option-click will instead open the two Browsers side-by-side, or one above the other if you’ve rotated the workspace (Shift-W).

To sum up, there’s a lot of functionality just under the surface in Aperture - don’t be afraid to hold down modifier keys when doing things and seeing what happens, or Right/Command-clicking on items to see what hidden gems there are in the contextual menu, such as full text formatting controls for text boxes in book layouts.
About the only combinations you need to be wary of are Command-Delete (delete Version and Master) and 9, which in various combinations can mark the selected Versions as rejects. Oh, and if lots of images suddenly disappear you probably hit Control and 1-5, which filters the visible Versions by the relevant star rating...

Have fun exploring!

Ian Wood

*This week’s footnote is a note for people in the US - I’m English, if you hadn’t already guessed from ‘colour’ instead of ‘color’. US keyboards have an Option key. The rest of the world has an Alt key (for Alternative). You wouldn’t believe the frustration I went through in the dim distant past, trying to follow a beginner’s tutorial for Photoshop two-and-a-half, which went fine until the point when I got to the clone-stamp tool and that ‘Option-click to define a source point’ dialog kept coming up. ‘Option-click? I don’t HAVE an Option key!’