Aperture 2 Quick Tip – Custom Image Sequence

RB | 28 October 2008 | Apple Aperture, Articles | Aperture, Aperture 2, Organization, stacks, work-flow, Workflow | 4 Comments

This entry is part 7 of 27 in the series Aperture Work-flow

Aperture Work-flow

This tip is really quick and I assume obvious but I still get dozens of questions that somehow are connected to the sequence or order that Aperture displays in the image browser. I mention in the PDF Aperture Organization Guide that it’s easy to use any order that you want for images in the browser, not just the preset orders provided in the drop down list but literally any order that you want. If you have ever used the sort order drop down in the upper left corner of the image browser you may have noticed that at the very bottom there is the “custom” option that is grayed out. The way to make it active is as simple as dragging any image in the browser to a new location. After doing that the “custom” sort order will now be active. Not only is the order that you put your images in sticky – meaning that Aperture remembers it but if you use the drop down to sort by date, rating, etc. you can always go back to your custom sort by choosing the custom option.

The real power of custom sort orders in the browser is that you can have as may as you want for whatever purpose you need. Yet another thing in Aperture that is great but not well documented, each album that you create can keep track of it’s own custom sort order, sort of like an “album pick” in each stack being specific to each and every album. Since albums are almost free in terms of performance and storage space I create albums for the specific purpose of just another sort order. A couple of ways that I use this capability constantly is for Aperture slide shows. In fact I have short slide shows, long slide shows. slide shows with just portrait oriented images, slide shows with only landscape oriented images. I most cases I use a sort order thatÂ makes more logical sense, more aesthetic sense, or both. If you ever used the “three up” type slide show o an HD display for portrait images you probably know that the order of images is critical. If you haven’t used it you may want to try it.

Another thing that I use custom sort orders for is for image naming and export. I create an album anytime that I need to export a set of specific images, the really cool thing is that when you use a custom sort order for that album in combination with a custom export naming template you can achieve just about any image order that you want built right into the file naming scheme.

Hope this helps those of you who haven’t stumbled on to this Aperture feature save some time in your photographic endeavors. As usual comments on how you use this or will and questions are always welcome.

4 Comments

bboy says

01 December 08 at 12:36am

aloha from maui…..can anyone help me with renaming a file so that after i reaarange all of my images in a folder i can rename them thus giving them new image numbers according to the new placement of the files?
RB says

01 December 08 at 7:12am

If you select all the custom sequenced images and export them you should be able to give them a custom file name. See the article on naming exported images. If you want to rename the actual version names in Aperture you may want to try the same thing but instead of exporting them try using metadata->batch change.

RB
Jason says

21 July 09 at 10:25pm

Thank you very much for the tip on how to get the custom viewing in the lower photo tray in Aperture. I must have done this by accident once, and really liked not having to search for a newly added photo, I liked it being at the end of the line waiting, but could never figure out how to do it again. Now I know.
Patrick says

17 February 10 at 6:02am

Thanks for the tip. Just wanted to add another way to sort and have it be “sticky” (not relying on Custom sort order). This method uses Metadata/Batch change in order to change filenames inside Aperture’s library. Here’s how it works:

Once you have your desired sort order, select the desired images. Go to the Metadata/Batch change menu. Under Version Name Format, select “Custom Name with Index”. (If you don’t see this, select Edit, click the + button to add a Preset Name, call it “Custom Name with Index”, then drag “Custom Name” and “Index #” to the Format box.)

Type in your desired name, such as “2010 Vacation Pics “. Click OK. Back in the Metadata/Batch change menu, if you want to permanently change the master filename, check “Apply to Master Files”. I do this because I don’t care about the original image filename; IMG_1234 is meaningless to me.

Also, uncheck the five metadata boxes. (There is a bug and if you leave the boxes checked, you will delete some or all of these metadata.)

When you click “OK”, all of your selected images will be renamed, in order, with an increasing index number. For example: “2010 Vacation Pics 01″, “2010 Vacation Pics 02″ etc. Then, in the future when you sort, select “Version Name” to get this sorting order.

The reason this can be helpful is if you make a web page or contact sheet or Smart Album with pictures from a number of different albums, and you want to keep each album’s pictures grouped together.