Editing Metadata in Batches

As long as we're editing the keywords of our images, there are some other metadata changes that we can make now that will make future searching and organizing a little easier.

When we imported these images, we had Aperture rename them from their original camera-generated filenames to Pickle Circus with a sequential number. However, because we have big plans to develop a long-term relationship with this client, we'd like the images to have a more descriptive name, so we'd like to rename the images Pickle Circus 2005. After the images are imported, you can use the Batch Change command to rename the images and edit other metadata.

1.	Choose Edit > Select All or press Command-A to select all images in the project in the Browser.
2.	Choose Metadata > Batch Change, or press Command-Shift-B.
3.	Choose Version Name Format > Custom Name with Index.
4.	In the Custom Name field, type Pickle Circus 2005. The Example File Name field shows what your final filenames will look like. Aperture is going to rename your files using the words Pickle Circus 2005 with a sequential counter as a suffix. The Batch Change dialog also lets you change the keywords (or any other metadata) of an image. Note that by choosing Append or Replace when changing metadata, you can choose to replace your current metadata or simply append it with any new values that you enter. Let's make a metadata change in addition to our renaming.
5.	Choose IPTC Expanded from the Add Metadata From pop-up menu.
6.	In the Category field, type Event.
7.	Click OK. Aperture will take a few moments to rename your files. Let's take a look at our new metadata.
8.	At the top of the Metadata Inspector, change Metadata View to IPTC Expanded. In the Category field, you should now see Event. Now that we've applied all of our keywords exactly as we want, we can use them to filter images in the Browser and to search for images using the Query HUD. Before we do that, however, let's go back to our stacks and choose picks.