Working With Stacks


Very few photographers shoot only a single frame of a particular subject or moment. Whether it's to experiment with different exposures or compositions or to try to capture a fleeting moment in an ever-changing scenario, most photographers tend to cover their subjects with large batches of images.

Of course, while shooting multiple images is a great way to improve your odds of getting a usable shot, it's also a great way to complicate your post-production workflow. In addition to having more images to transfer and manage, you have to take the time to select the best image from each batch.

Just as film photographers sort related slides or prints into piles for comparison, Aperture lets you sort your images into virtual stacks. At the simplest level, stacks provide an organizational structure for keeping groups of related images together. But Aperture improves on this simple grouping idea with a sophisticated comparison mechanism that eases the process of selecting the best image from a stack. And, as you'll see later in this chapter, stacks can have a profound impact on the rest of your workflow.

You got a brief introduction to stacks in Chapter 3, because Aperture provides simple stacking tools within its Import dialog box. These same tools are available in the main Aperture application.

Stacking is an incredibly powerful, unique Aperture feature, so it's worth spending some time learning the following concepts.

Stack Basics

You can easily create a stack by selecting multiple images, either consecutive or not, and then choosing Stacks > Stack or pressing Command-K.

Stacks are displayed like a normal series of thumbnails, but enclosed in a gray border. The first image in the stack includes a small number to indicate the number of images contained in the stack (Figure 4.29). If you click the image, the stack will "close," and only the first image of the stack will be visible (Figure 4.30).

Figure 4.29. After stacking, these three images are enclosed in a gray box with a badge on the first image indicating the number of images in the stack.


Figure 4.30. A closed stack displays the first image of the stack along with the stack number badge.


Tip

You can quickly open all of the stacks in the project you're currently viewing by pressing Option-' (apostrophe) or by choosing Stacks > Open All Stacks. You can close all stacks by pressing Option-; (semicolon) or by choosing Stacks > Close All Stacks.


When stacked, your images behave just as they normally would. You can select and deselect them, edit them, add keywords and metadata, and so on. The stack structure itself doesn't impede any of your normal operations.

Creating a Stack

To create a stack, select the images that you want stacked together and then choose Stacks > Stack or press Command-K. The images will be combined into a stack. They will appear in the stack in the same order in which you selected them.

Adding to a Stack

There are two ways to add images to an existing stack:

  • In the Browser pane, drag images and drop them onto an existing stack. A vertical green bar will appear to indicate where the image will be placed in the stack (Figure 4.31).

    Figure 4.31. You can drag and drop an image onto an existing stack. A green bar shows where the image will be inserted.


  • Select the images that you want to add to the stack; then select any image in the destination stack. Press Command-K or choose Stacks > Stack. The selected images will be added to the end of the selected stack.

You can combine any two stacks by selecting any number of images from each and then executing the Stack command.

Removing Images from a Stack

There are three ways to remove an image from a stack:

  • If you decide that you want to remove an image from a stack, simply select it and drag it to a new location in the Browser pane. A vertical green bar will indicate the image's new location.

  • Select the image and choose Stacks > Extract Item. If you're working in full-screen mode and can't see the Browser pane or menu bar, you can extract the item by pressing Command-Shift-K.

  • You can break a stack into smaller stacks by selecting an image in the stack and then choosing Stacks > Split Stack or pressing Option-K. The stack will be split in two at the point just before the image you selected.

Moving Images within a Stack

There are many ways to move images within a stack. The most basic way is to simply drag them about within the stack (Figure 4.32).

Figure 4.32. One way to rearrange the images in a stack is to drag them to a new location within the stack.


Moving a Stack

Just as you can rearrange images in the Browser pane to put them in a custom order, you can rearrange stacks. However, be aware that a stack must be closed before you can drag it to a new location. If you click an image in an open stack and start dragging, you'll drag the selected image out of the stack rather than moving the entire stack.

Unstacking

You can completely break apart a stack and restore all of its images to regular, unstacked images by selecting any image within a stack and choosing Stacks > Unstack.

You can unstack all of the images in a project by choosing Edit > Select all or pressing Command-A and then executing the Unstack command.

Auto-Stacking

As its name suggests, Aperture's Auto-Stack command can automatically create stacks for you. Auto-Stack works by assuming that images shot within a particular span of time probably belong in the same stack.

To auto-stack all of the images in a project, choose Stacks > Auto-Stack. Aperture will present the Auto-Stack Images HUD, a simple slider that works just like the Auto-Stack slider in the Import dialog box.

As you move the slider to the right, the images in your project will automatically group together into stacks (Figure 4.33). If, for example, you set the slider to :10, then all images shot within 10 seconds of each other will automatically be collected into separate stacks.

Figure 4.33. As you drag the slider in the Auto-Stack Images HUD, your images will automatically clump together into stacks.


You can continue to use all of the normal stacking operationsmoving images in and out of stacks, splitting stacks, and so onwhile the Auto-Stack Images HUD is open.

When the auto-stacking feature encounters a series of images that it thinks have been bracketed, it will automatically group them into a stack and set the neutral imagethe one shot at the camera's recommended meteringas the pick of the stack. The alternate exposures will be included in the order they were shot.

Picking and Comparing

While you can place the images in a stack in any order, the first imagethe leftmost imageis considered the pick of the stack. It is the image that is displayed when the stack is closed, and it has special relevance for many Aperture commands.

So far in this chapter we've been taking things in a particular orderadding keywords, now stackingbut in a real-world workflow, you'll often be performing these operations simultaneously. You'll probably also be rating your images at the same time, a topic we'll cover after stacking. Because of Aperture's nonmodal design, you can easily mix all of these different tasks. So just because we're choosing to look at them separately, don't think that your workflow has to proceed in this order.

Selecting a New Pick

The leftmost image in a stack is always the pick, but you can easily assign a new pick by selecting another image in the stack and then pressing Command-\ or choosing Stacks > Pick.

1.

Switch to Standard layout by pressing Command-Option-S.

You can use any layout for making a pick, but for the sake of this exercise, we want both a Browser and a Viewer pane.

2.

In the Browser pane, open a stack and select an image in that stack other than the pick.

3.

Press Command-\ to set the selected image as the new pick (Figure 4.34).

Figure 4.34. Here, the last image in this stack is selected; pressing Command-\ will promote the image so that it becomes the pick.


The selected image will move to the leftmost, first position in the stack. The image that was in the first position will shift to second place, and all other images will be shuffled down. Because Aperture shuffles the old pick down as you try different picks, your images will automatically fall into order from best to worst.

It doesn't matter whether you select your new pick image in the Browser or Viewer pane. The Pick command will make whatever is the primary select the new pick.

Using Stack View

Aperture's ability to simultaneously display multiple images side by side makes comparing and picking much easier than in a program where you must open separate documents for each image. To make comparisons even easier, though, Apple has added some features specifically for performing comparisons.

On the left side of the control bar is a pop-up menu called Viewer Mode (Figure 4.35). The options in the Viewer Mode menu let you change the way that Aperture displays selected images.

Figure 4.35. The Viewer Mode menu on the control bar lets you change the way that Aperture displays selected images in the Viewer pane.


When you select Stack, Aperture displays the pick of the current stack on the left side of the Viewer pane. The second image in the stack is placed on the right side of the Viewer pane (Figure 4.36).

Figure 4.36. In Stack mode, you can easily compare all of the images in a stack against the current pick, replacing the pick with better candidates along the way.


As you press the Left and Right Arrow keys to change the current selection, that image is shown on the right, allowing you to easily compare the pick image to all of the other images in the stack. When you find a new image that you like better, press Command-\ or choose Stacks > Pick to make that new image the pick.

Using Stack view, you can very quickly compare all of the images in a stack to find the best pick. Here are some other points to keep in mind while comparing:

  • You can use the Promote and Demote commands to move the currently selected image up and down the stack. Choose Stacks > Promote or Stacks > Demote, or press Command-[ to promote the image or Command-] to demote the image.

  • If you can't decide between the pick and the current select because they're both good enough to be picks, then press Command-Shift-K to extract the current selection from the stack (you can also extract by choosing Stacks > Extract). Now you'll have easy access to both images.

  • You don't have to have a Viewer pane visible to use Stack view. If only the Browser pane is visible, you can still use Stack view; you just won't have a large preview of the images.

  • If you prefer using the mouse for organizing your stacks, you can use the stack buttons on the control bar (Figure 4.37).

Figure 4.37. Using the buttons on the control bar, you can perform all of your stack comparison operations using only the mouse.


Using Stacks

Stacks are interesting entities because in one way they act as containers and in another way they act as images. Once you've stacked your images, you can close the stacks and forget about all of your alternate images. They're there if you need them, and you can always reorder or fiddle with them, but for the most part you can focus the rest of your workflow on your stack picks: the images at the front of your stacks.

To understand the full value of stacks, let's take a quick look at how to use stacks with some other parts of Aperture.

Adding a Stack to an Album

As you saw in Chapter 2, albums are organizational structures that allow you to create groups of images without duplicating any of the media in your library.

You can add a stack to an album by dragging it into the album, just as you would any other image (Figure 4.38). Aperture adds the entire stack to the album, not just the stack pick.

Figure 4.38. To add a stack to an album, just drag it to the album as you would a regular image.


Now try this:

1.

Open a stack and select an image in the stack that is not the pick.

2.

Drag that image to an existing album.

3.

Open the album and examine it.

You should see the stack that included the image that you added, but the stack pick will be the image shown at the front of the stack, not the image you dragged.

If an image that's in a stack is not the pick and you want to add that image to an album, you can always extract it from the album and then add the individual image. However, there's a much better way that doesn't require you to break your stack groupings.

Defining an Album Pick

When you put any image from a stack into an album, Aperture places the entire stack in the album, but always defaults to displaying the stack's pick image. If you want to display a different image from the stack, then you will need to specify a different image in that stack as the album pick for that album. Defining an album pick is simple.

1.

Place the stack that contains your desired image in the album of your choice.

2.

Open the stack and select the image that you want to appear at the front of the stack in that album.

3.

Choose Stacks > Set Album Pick or press Command-Shift-\.

A check mark badge will appear on the image (Figure 4.39).

Figure 4.39. This stack was placed in an album, but we want the second image to appear at the front of the stack instead of the pick. To accomplish this, we set the second image as the album pick. It will now appear at the front of the stack in that album.


When you close the stack, the album pick image will be displayed at the front of the stack. The stack pick remains the sameif you return to the library, you'll still see your original pick at the front of the stackbut for this one album, the album pick that you defined appears at the front of the stack.

You can define separate album picks from the same stack for any number of albums, Smart Albums, Web journals, books, or Web galleries.

Stop Thinking about Your Images like Documents

Stacks are a deceptively simple concept. The full implication of the effect of stacks on your workflow may not be immediately obvious, and this is partly because they represent a very different way of working with your computer.

Consider the following pre-Aperture workflow scenario:

You've been asked by a local promoter to cover an arts festival. He's hoping for photos that can be used as promotional materials and posters for next year's festival, so you spend several days shooting people and artists and performances at a variety of locations.

When you're finished, you copy the images to your computer and use your favorite image cataloger to sort them and find a selection of your best two dozen shots. You edit these and build them into a slideshow using your favorite presentation program.

The client comes to your studio and views your slides. He's very pleased with your work and likes everything except for a couple of pictures of some dancers. He asks if you have any alternatives. You immediately remember some other shots that you now believe he'd like better.

You quit your presentation program and go to your folder of arts festival images. These images all have incomprehensible, camera-generated names, of course, so you have to open the images in a file browser and find the right ones. Once you've found the names, you import those images into your slide-show presentation and start your presentation again. Of course, these images haven't been edited, so you have to ask your client to imagine them looking as good as the ones they're replacing.

In this scenario, the amount of time needed to perform all of this document management and searching will vary depending on how many files you have to wade through and how fast your computer is. In addition, depending on the software you're using for image browsing and slideshow creation, you may need to save your images in different formats as you move them around.

Now consider the same scenario using Aperture:

After shooting the arts festival, you import your images into Aperture. You use the auto-stacking feature to automatically group the pictures into stacks of related images. Then you work your way through your project, rating your images and making your picks. Finally, you move your select images into an album and perform some quick color and tone adjustments.

You invite the client over and show him the album as a slideshow. When he gets to the dancer images that he doesn't like, though, and asks for alternatives, you remain in Aperture. Because your images are stacked, you can very easily find alternatives. You simply open the stack that contains the image that the client doesn't like and look inside. Because the stack contains all of the additional related images, you can quickly present a range of alternatives. When the client identifies the image he likes better, you make that image the pick of the stack.

You give it a quick crop and then use the Lift and Stamp tools to copy the color and tone adjustments from the former pick to the new one.

Now when you run the slideshow, the new image appears in place of the old one. What's more, it already has reasonable color and tone corrections, so the client gets a very good impression of what the final image will look like.

The thing to realize about stacking is that it not only lets you keep your images organized within Aperture; it also obviates the need for most of the document management that you normally have to perform in the Finder. In fact, with Aperture you can stop thinking about individual documents at all. With your images stacked, you only need worry about the pick images that you choose to work with. However, if you ever happen to need another image, you can simply open the relevant stack to find it. With stacks, all related images travel with your pick at all times.




Real World(c) Aperture
Real World Aperture
ISBN: 0321441931
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 106
Authors: Ben Long

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