organizational structure compared to iView?

[arossphoto]

I decided to have a look at the new Aperture 2 and am I ever confused. I'm using iView now and I immediately see some important features that are either missing or hidden in Aperture. For example, when I import images into iView it automatically begins organizing and categorizing everything by date, file type and keywords. So without doing any data entry myself I can easily start filtering images by year, month, day, raw, psd, tif, jpeg, keywords, etc, etc.

Maybe I'm missing it, but I don't see anything remotely similar to this in Aperture. I've been reading the manual and tried using the find feature, but it seems much more complicated then clicking on a simple dot beside a term in iView. I can't even imagine how to create something like Catalog Sets. I guess Smart Folders seem to be the way to do it, but again it seems unnecessarily complicated and you can't just drag an image into a smart folder.

Am I missing something? 

Thanks,

Andrew

[johnbeardy]

Andrew

The Library area used to contain something similar, but they hard-coded the years but only up to 2007 - then released v2 so late that we were already in 2008.... But you need to look at smart albums. Click on All Images in the Library area, then create a new Smart Album.

You also need to understand the overall concept of Aperture. One way to think of it is as iView's Catalog Sets gone mad, so you import files into "Projects" - the equivalent of Catalog Sets. You don't see your real Finder folders at all, projects are what it's all about. Scary, huh? But it's OK if you believe hard enough. Each project then contains groupings - these can be albums (sets) to which you do drag and drop, or smart albums which are like iView's Saved Finds or Finder's smart folders - ie you build a search query. Smart albums are one of the better features - if you start one off from All Images, the filter is applied to all images, but if you start it off from one project, it only shows items from that project.

Make sure you look at the new video tutorials, import the sample projects, and there's a great blog by Bagelturf who is apparently "Shining out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark". Some of his early posts explain the concept.

Clear as mud?

John

[arossphoto]

Thanks John. I am starting to get the hang of things, and have since discovered the "Query HUD" which makes searches and filtering pretty easy. I have to admit I'm liking a lot of what I've seen so far, even if the terminology they use is a bit obscure.

However, I can't believe they still don't include keyboard shortcuts for the most common raw file adjustments like exposure, contrast, white balance, etc. I've been using Capture One Pro for years now and they have included this feature since day one. It is so intuitive and easy I can't imagine reaching for the mouse any more. With C1 (especially in Windows) I can navigate through hundreds of images and make all my adjustments without ever touching the mouse. It seems like such an obviously useful tool I can't understand why Lightroom, ACR and Aperture all omit this feature.

Cheers,

Andrew