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Arrow Key Adjustments
Many of us use the arrow keys to move around our browser from image to image, but the arrow keys can also come in handy when adjusting your images.
Here’s a little tip for those who like to keep their fingers on the keyboard more than the mouse.
The arrow keys on your keyboard can then be used to increase or decrease all adjustment values from white balance to exposure to edge sharpen. To activate the keyboard control, simply click once in the numeric field in any of the adjustment controls, and the values are highlighted gray. You can then tap the right/up arrows to increase the values, or the left/down arrows to decrease. For more precise and subtle arrow key adjustments, hold down the option key while tapping the arrows.
Press the Tab key and you’re on to the next adjustment. Shift-Tab takes you back to the previous one.
I find using the arrow keys for adjustments can help you out particularly when using older, slower machines. I have an "old" pre-intel G5 tower which I hope to replace soon, where the spinning wheel often appears when trying to move a slider control, which is very frustrating. By using the arrow keys to perform the same function, the adjustment is often smoother and faster with less of the pretty rainbow wheel.
Just click once in any adjustment numeric field and you've activated the arrow keys.
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Comments (2)
*Raises hand.*
I have one of those older, slower machines (1.67Ghz PowerBook G4, 2GB RAM, Aperture library stored on a second internal HD- 5400rpm 250GB) and find myself often TYPING in the values, or at best clicking on one spot on the slider. There are a fair number of edits where I can get away with real-time sliding for effects like individual color fields, exposure, or any other of the more minor effects. But with things like temperature or hue, you'll have to type in a number to speed things up.
Someday I'll get that MacPro, but these measures work for now. It actually makes you more aware of what numeric values will do to a photo. All I've got to say is thank God for Aperture two. Now, if you watch the activity monitor, the machine will automatically pause preview and thumbnail builds that aren't part of what is on screen. Sure, if I stamp a couple dozen images, I have time to go grab a drink from the fridge before the queue is cleared up, but it gets done. All I have to say is a large external display is a MUST with Aperture. I picked up a NEC LCD2690WUXi last week, and my edit time is a fifth of what it used to be, and prints are dead on.
So, who thinks I'm crazy for using a dinosaur?
I have a bit more powerful machine than your G4 PowerBook (dual 2GHz G5 PowerMac), yet Aperture leads me down exactly the same path. I generally find myself typing in the fields rather than using the arrows.
When starting off in Aperture, however, I often enough found myself getting Aperture into wrong modes doing this, though. For instance, I'd type a number in the field in the HUD, hit "enter", then I'd be launched into "compare" mode (2-up), with no obvious way out (hitting enter again just moves the right pic over to the left). I've since learned that alt-enter will undo the enter command (exit compare with the primary picture selected), although often enough I hit command-enter instead and get the compared picture selected instead. It seems like Aperture 2.x no longer goes into Compare when a field is selected, which is a welcome improvement.
From a little experimenting, there are 2 modes: field selected, and text entry. Clicking once gets field selected (the entire area of the numbers gets grayed out); clicking again or typing moves to text entry (just the numbers are selected, or you have a cursor and no selection).
Return toggles between the two modes. Enter just moves from text entry to field selected. So does Tab for me (it doesn't move focus to the next field as said above). Other keys ("F" or "`" for instance) work just as they would otherwise. Note that pressing keys which change the selected photo (ex, Command-right arrow to move to the next pic) will remove the field selection (although it would be nice if they wouldn't!)
In field selected mode, the arrows work as described above (note that the little arrow "buttons" on either side of the field press in with the corresponding arrow key). Any number key pushes you into text entry mode, and replaces the value with the number pressed (as you'd probably expect). Esc does nothing. In fact, I can see no way to directly exit this mode.
In text selected mode, the arrows move the cursor (as in any other text selection), and any letters or numbers go into the text (even though letters pretty much never make sense there and keep you from accepting the value. "Return" or "Enter" both try to accept the entered value and push you back to field selected mode; if the value is invalid, though, these won't work. "Esc" cancels the edit and pushes you all the way out of both text and field selection modes.
Upshot: click then type, then hit Tab, Return, or Enter to accept. If you make a mistake, press Escape. If you need to get out of field selected mode, then either click elsewhere in the interface, or hit Return (get into text entry mode) then Esc (exit both modes).