Advanced Boolean search in filters?

Nathan,

in iTunes you could create nested Rules by holding down the options-key when defining your smart rule, but that option seems to be missing in Aperture.

In Aperture only the keywords-rule allows a nested, boolean operator different from the operator set at the outer level.

You can combine the rules at the outermost level using "all" and at the keywords level "any". So my suggestion is to tag the images in question with custom keywords that carry the information you want to combine using "any" (or vice versa);

Unfortunately that is not an adaptive solution, you would have to do the tagging over and over again 😟, but the best I can suggest....

Cheers

Léonie

"'Date is in last 18 months' and ('Rating is greater than or equal to 4 stars' or 'Keywords include any of the following')"

P.S. I'd map the rating >= **** to a keywords, e.g.Favorite, that seems to be the most stable tag. So your rule could be:

All :

• "'Date is in last 18 months'
• Any Keyword : Favorite or 'Keywords1 or Keywords2 or ...

As Léonie wrote there is no way to do these types of searches in Aperture easily.

Another way to go about it would be to make a regular album of of all A's and then filter B or C on it. The drawback here is that the album with the A images won;t update dynamically as a smart album would. So if you added more A images to the library you would need to manually put them in the A album. But once you did that the B or C smart album would update.

Of course for the truly adventurous this is a perfect use of the hidden filter! (not for the faint of heart) 😝

Of course for the truly adventurous this is a perfect use of the hidden filter! (not for the faint of heart) 😝

I really was longing to add that recommendation to my post, but couldn't think of a polite way to say "but be careful", so I was hoping for you to post it...😀

Nathan -- I think this is easily doable. If I'm wrong -- apologies to you and Frank and Léonie -- I've just returned from traveling and may not be understanding this correctly.

There are two filter settings HUDs in Aperture: the Smart Settings HUD (used in the creation of Smart Albums) and the Filter HUD (used to filter the Images in the currently selected container). These can be used in concert (in effect, "nested") to create the dynamically updated search you want. (And, I'd guess, other types of Boolean searches. Anyone want to tackle the general case?)

In your case, simply create a Smart Album for the superset you want ("Condition A" = "Date is in last 18 months"), and then add a Filter set to "Any" with the additional conditions ("Condition B" = "Rating is greater than or equal to 4 stars"; "Condition C" = "Keywords include any of the following"). This should show in the Browser all Images that meet the conditions "A and (B or C)". You could just as easily -- and perhaps with greater utility -- create the filtered Smart Album with (B or C) as the Smart Album and "(A)" as the Filter.

I suggest naming this filtered Smart Album something like "Last 18 months: 4-star, 5-star, and 'Family' Images".

This method is mentioned in the User Manual here. Note the direction to "specify secondary search criteria to show specific images within the Smart Album". I have added the emphasis.

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger -- removed some clutter.

Welcome back, Kirby, and no need to apologize!

As usual, you have a smart on suggestion for how to solve a given problem, while I have tried to answer the literal question - all criteria defined in one smart album.

I am trying to make a smart album with both "And" as well as "or" conditions,

I am really vexed with this being possible in iTunes but not in Aperture 😠 - for the additional filter cannot be saved for later uses - or can it (I mean visibly)?

Regards

Léonie

Well ... does filtering a Smart Album make it not a Smart Album?

I do understand what you're saying 😀 .

Afaik, Filters cannot be saved, re-used, or re-assigned. I imagine some kind of pivot-table could be implemented, and you and I would think this great. And while pivot-tables were a big NeXT thing, they just never made it to being the next big thing. Too bad -- I would _love_ to be able to graphically re-arrange the conditions determining the contents on view. (Of course, Aperture would have to robustly implement nested keywords.)

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger -- link added. Fwiw, some kind of elastic Filter View, with flocks of hang-nails (smaller than thumbnails, and not bound to flat-land) that regrouped dynamically and could be zoomed in to thumbnail and Preview and Viewer size would be elegant, useful, and impressive enough to use for a Cupertino keynote.

Welcome back, how was the trip?

As we've all said in the past any advanced search like this in Aperture will always be a kludge. Filtering filters is at best a stop gap.

Hopefully someday the whole library will just be placed into a mysql database and then all this (and pivot tables to) will be possible.

Hopefully someday the whole library will just be placed into a mysql database and then all this (and pivot tables to) will be possible.

1+

leonieDF wrote, quoting Frank:

Hopefully someday the whole library will just be placed into a mysql database and then all this (and pivot tables to) will be possible.

1+

+1

Leonie -- congrats on 6,000. You've contributed much more than that -- and I suspect that number won't be visible in your rear-view mirror for long. 🙂 .

thanks, Kirby 😊 🙂 I enjoy this community!