Finding and Filtering Using The Query Hud

At the top of the Browser pane in any of Aperture's layouts, you'll find a small magnifying glass next to a text field. This is the control for activating Aperture's Query HUD (Figure 4.42).

Figure 4.42. The Query HUD lets you search the currently selected project or album or even your entire library.

The Query HUD lets you perform searches and filterings of your current view (project, album, book, light table, and so on). With the Query HUD, you can easily find only your five-star images or only the five-star images tagged with a particular keyword. What's more, because the Query HUD can filter images based on their EXIF metadata, you can even find only the five-star images tagged with a particular keyword that were shot at a specific ISO rating.

A list of search criteria appears in the main part of the HUD. You can activate or deactivate any of these criteria by selecting the box next to it.

The Match pop-up menu at the top of the HUD lets you specify whether you want the Query HUD to match any one of the specified criteria or all of the specified criteria (Figure 4.43). By default, the Query HUD is configured to match all.

Figure 4.43. This Query HUD is configured to find only three-star images with Bass keywords attached.

The + menu at the upper right of the Query HUD lets you add criteria to your search (Figure 4.44). Configuring each type of criteria is easy.

Figure 4.44. The action menu in the Query HUD lets you add search criteria.

• Rating simply searches for images with a particular star rating. You can change the Rating pop-up menu to specify whether you want to find images with a rating that is less than, equal to, or greater than the rating that you specify using the Rating slider. The Rating slider lets you search for any rating, including Reject and Unrated.

• The Calendar criteria let you search for images shot on a particular date. Aperture highlights days on the calendar on which photos in the current selection were taken. This keeps you from performing searches that won't turn up any images.

  The double-arrow buttons at the top of the Calendar panel move forward or backward three months at a time, while the single arrows move in one-month increments. The diamond button takes you to the current month (Figure 4.45).

  Figure 4.45. You can use the arrows at the top of the Calendar panel to navigate forward and backward. The calendar will highlight only dates for which there are images that match.

  

• Keywords lets you search for images by keyword. All of the keywords found in the currently viewed images are presented in the Query HUD, and you can simply select the ones you want to search for. With the Keywords pop-up menu, you can specify whether you want to find any or all of the selected keywords.

• Import Session enables you to find all of the images that were imported in a particular batch. Every time you import a batch of images, Aperture tags them all as part of the same session.

• Date lets you search for images with a specified date. Unlike with Calendar, you can enter any date and specify whether you want to find images before or after that date or exclude images with that date.

• EXIF lets you search for a particular EXIF tag.

• IPTC lets you search for IPTC data that you may have entered.

• The Text field lets you enter any text that you want. All metadata fields are then searched for this text. If you can't remember whether you entered a particular tag in the Version Name or Comment field, this is the way to find it.

  Tip

  You can also perform a text search by entering text in the text field at the top of the Browser pane. You don't have to open the Query HUD. To search for multiple text items, separate them with commas.

  
  

• Other Metadata lets you specify a metadata field that may not have been covered by one of the other criteria.

As you specify criteria, Aperture performs its search, and the results will appear in real time in the Browser pane.

Working with your Search Results

After you've performed a search, you can click the New Smart Album button to automatically create a Smart Album from the selected criteria, or you can click New Album with Current Images to create an album with the found images. The pop-up menu lets you select other Aperture constructs that you can send the images to: books, Web galleries, and so on. You'll learn about all of these features in Chapter 8.

You can also, of course, close the Query HUD and work with your found images just as you normally would. The Query HUD text field at the top of the Browser pane indicates that you're currently looking at filtered output and displays a series of small icons to give you an idea of what the current query is. At any time, you can click the small X in the Query HUD text field to cancel the query and return to a complete view of your images.

Tip

As you already saw in Chapter 2, you can also filter your entire library by clicking the small magnifying glass next to the Library entry at the top of the Projects pane. This action brings up a special Query HUD that will search all of the entries in your library.

Finding Shutter Speed

Although the Query HUD will let you search for specific EXIF information in your images, there are a few caveats to keep in mind if you want to search for particular shutter speeds.

To search for shutter speed, begin by selecting EXIF from the + menu in the Query HUD. This will add an EXIF search field to the HUD. Set the EXIF pop-up menu to Shutter Speed (Figure 4.46).

Figure 4.46. To search for images shot with a particular shutter speed, begin by adding an EXIF search field to the Query HUD and then configure the search for Shutter Speed.

Photographers traditionally refer to shutter speeds as fractions: 1/60, 1/100, 1/1000, and so on. Aperture uses this same notation when it displays the shutter speed in an image's metadata. However, in the original image file, shutter speed is probably stored as a decimal value, so a shutter speed of 1/3 of a second may actually be stored as 0.4.

When you view the metadata for an image, Aperture automatically converts decimal values to fractions. The Query HUD, though, simply searches the contents of the metadata field as-is; no conversions are made. So if you enter 1/3 in the query HUD, Aperture will simply truncate everything from the / on, and you'll end up performing a search for 1.

Therefore, when searching for shutter speeds, you must enter the decimal equivalent of the shutter speed that you want to find. Aperture's query HUD uses eight decimal places of precision, so rather than entering 0.01 to search for 1/60 of a second, try 0.01666666.

When performing greater-than and less-than searches, Aperture simply looks for decimal values that are greater than or less than the value you specify.

Finding the Aperture

You can also use the Query HUD to search for images shot with a particular aperture. First use the + menu in the Query HUD to add an EXIF search field to the Query HUD; then set the pop-up menu to Aperture.

Though apertures are usually notated as f/ plus the aperture value, you need to enter only the aperture value itself in the Query field. So if you want to search for images shot at f/4, just enter 4 in the Query HUD.

When performing a greater-than or less-than search, be aware that Aperture searches for numeric values that are greater or less than the number you specify. It doesn't search for larger or smaller aperture sizes. So if you want to find images with an aperture size larger than f/16, you actually need to use the less-than option (since larger apertures have smaller numeric values).

Finding Duplicates

Having duplicate images in your library uses up disk space and can create version-control headaches. Although you sometimes may intentionally create multiple copies of an image, it's also very easy to import multiple copies of an image accidentally, especially when you're first making the move to Aperture and importing images from multiple locations.

Aperture does not include a feature especially for finding duplicates, but you can use the Query HUD to search for duplicate images in your library.

To search your entire library for duplicates, do the following:

1.	Click the Smart Settings icon next to Library in the Projects pane and configure it as shown in Figure 4.47. Figure 4.47. To find duplicate images in your library, first configure the Smart Settings HUD to find all of the images in your library. This configuration will filter out all images with a rating greater than Unrated, which should find all of the images in the library.
2.	Close the Smart Settings HUD.
3.	Change to Project Management layout by pressing Command-Option-M.
4.	Switch to list view by clicking the List view button at the top of the Browser pane (Figure 4.48). Figure 4.48. Click the List view button at the top of the Browser pane to view your library as a list. Your library will now be shown as a list.
5.	From the sort order pop-up menu, choose File Name. The list will be sorted by filename, and any duplicates should show up right next to each other.
6.	Scroll to the right until you reach the Master Location column. This column shows the name of the project that contains the master file for image. You can rearrange the columns in list view by dragging them to new locations.
7.	Drag the Master Location column to the left until it is closer to the filename. Now you can see file names and their locations without scrolling (Figure 4.49). You can simply look for duplicate names and then immediately see which project both images are located in. Figure 4.49. In List view, you can see that there are two identical copies of _MG_1100 in the Mexico 2-2006 project. Finding duplicates in list view is a little easier than finding them in grid view because you can sort by name to get all copies of an image together.
8.	To delete one of the duplicates, select it and press Command-Delete. You can perform this same procedure on a project-by-project basis by using the Query HUD to search for all of the images in a specific project rather than searching the entire library.