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Is a search like this possible? #1
Robert DeLaurentis's picture
by Robert DeLaurentis
September 19, 2010 - 5:21pm

Since Aperture reports aspect ratios based on the images orientation, it appears impossible to create a smart album that contains images that meet the following criteria – Aspect Ratio 4:5 or 5:4 and cropped yes.

Anyone see a solution to this, other than two different smart albums, one for each orientation?

Thanks!
Bob

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
September 20, 2010 - 12:30am

Robert,

I love a good challenge :-)

As powerful as Aperture’s searches are, the lack of boolean language can be frustrating at times. I tried a few things before coming up with a reasonable solution. Not perfect, but reasonable.

First, I tried creating two Smart Albums matching the 4:5 AND Crop and 5:4 AND Crop then creating a third Smart Album with the Album Name criteria, pointing at the first two, but that Album Name criteria only applies to regular Albums, not Smart Albums (or Folders). Bummer.

Then I tried just putting those two Smart Albums into a Folder and selecting the Folder to see the combined results, but that doesn’t work either. Again a Folder will only show actual contents, not Smart contents.

So here’s my “solution”—double the search.

Create a Smart Album that shows Aspect Ratio 4:5 OR 5:4. That will show ALL images with either of those aspect ratios.

Then use the regular search in the result window to show all Cropped images. As long as you don’t reset that search criteria, you’ll always have the (4:5 OR 5:4) AND Cropped result that you’re looking for. Since this is a dedicated Smart Album, you shouldn’t need to reset that search.

If you do need to filter these results any more, of course you can add more criteria to that search dialog. You’re a little limited in that you can’t do OR searches in there anymore, but hopefully your further searches aren’t so precise that this won’t at least help out a bit.

@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?

Robert DeLaurentis's picture
by Robert DeLaurentis
September 21, 2010 - 1:25pm

Joseph,

THANK YOU!

Not only is your reasonable “solution” reasonable, its darn near perfect for my needs _and_ it taught me to a look a little deeper at how the various search methods inside Aperture can be combined. I also appreciate learning that I wasn’t missing something in the search syntax (the manual does suggest that text searches can have implied ANDs but it clearly doesn’t work.)

Thank you.

Bob

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