Okay, it really works. I needed to quickly go through 11,232 RAW images to pick out some personal photos I promised to print for people before my Friday trip to Kigali. In Aperture 2.0 using Quick View, I was able to go through every one of those unrated pictures, lightening fast.

Marking the ones I needed with four stars, I basically was able to keep the right arrow key pressed and watched the referenced previews in the filmstrip blow by, stopping when I needed to rate a keeper.

Once finished, I made a few adjustments and exported the 130 picks as 6 inch JPEGS and uploaded them to be printed. I don’t think there’s any software out there that would have taken care of this job as quickly and efficiently as did Aperture.

2.0 For Teachers

Another Aperture 2.0 solution involved the updated Web Gallery Feature that is making my seminar class at the International Center of Photography much easier. Since I’m leaving for Rwanda tomorrow, I’m going to have to miss my next class. So I created new web galleries for each of my students hosted through my .mac account.

When you create a new gallery, a dialog box pops up and asks you a few questions. Name the gallery, put in some notes, password protect or make it viewable by all. I want the students to download work, so I allowed: downloading, uploading or emailing to the web page for maximum flexibility. Then I click “Publish”. The album shows up in the Projects Pane in Aperture.

In Aperture, when you click on the Web Galleries Pop-up menu, you can choose to visit the Gallery, which automatically launches the web page in Safari. I then copy and pasted the URL to email to the student to let them know where they can upload their images.

What’s nice is, when students upload or email their images to the webpage, I can view it there, or just look at the images in Aperture, which automatically refreshes the library with any new images downloaded. In Aperture Preferences under Web Gallery, I tell Aperture to check for new photos every day, adding to the library as students email or upload images to their page. There are also a few options for viewing the images on the page; Mosaic, Carousel, Slideshow or Grid. Try them.

When I click on My Gallery, I see all the student galleries I created that have photos in them, similar to All Projects View, which also lets me scroll through the thumbnails by moving the mouse across the Key Thumbnail image. When I click on it, it takes me to that web page.

It’s a fantastic way for me to see the latest work from students and provide fast feedback, as they continue to work on their long-term projects even when I’m thousands of miles away. Of course there are many ways to work with Web Galleries with your own work, where all these great features apply.