I came looking to solve the same problem we're all
having . . . but I actually want to be able to alter
the crop after Aperture would (ideally) select the
correct vertical or horizontal crop (centered) based
on my size selection.
Hmm... the orginal problem has thankfully been resolved in Aperture 1.1, it remembers the previous crop you used and starts with that. So it's a lot quicker to do many crops in a row now (because the "keep aspect ratio will stay checked between images) even at custom aspect ratios (because it no longer defaults to the aspect ratio of the current image).
As for the last part, is what you are wanting to have basically a custom window (say 5" x 7" @ 300 DPI) that you could float around the screen? Aperture's current approach to this is to let you define whatever crop you like in an image, then have an export option that is 5x7" @300 DPI that the images will be made to fit into regardless of if that means up or downsampling. This gives you more flexibility while cropping at the risk that you may define a crop that is really too few pixels for the eventual output size. Some components of Aperture try to warn you about this (books present a little warning stmbol if the final resolution will be too low) but I don't think export does.
Anyway, in my investigations, it occurred to me that
it might be possible to export a set of images with a
defined, custom resolution constraint. (ie,
Aperture>Export Version>Export Preset>(Custom, size
set)). Wouldn't this crop automatically (centered)
if all of the original file resolutions matched, (and
the desired pixel dimensions were identified
according to the standard sizes)??
I don't think this would do what you are thinking because Aperure will always use those custom resolution settings to size the image to fit into. If you use odd sizes that do not conform to the image aspect ratio, then Aperture will have the longest edge of the image match the longest edge of the custom size (I hope I said that right, I suspect I got something wrong in the description - basically it shrinks to fit wholly inside any shape and just drops the excess).
Books actually kind of behave like what you are saying, in that a picture window in a book can be any shape and an image you drag in is kind of viewed through that picture window, instead of having the picture itself automatically sized to fit. So a custom book template might be a olution for your needs.
(fingers crossed for Aperture 1.X fixing this . . .
does Adobe's new competitive app handle this
issue??)
Since it has no concept of DPI at all yet, and the cropping has slightly less ability than Aperture's crp (can't view at 100% while defining crop edges), no.
