Changing the drop down options in the ready-made filter?

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Level 1

21 points

Changing the drop down options in the ready-made filter?

This refers to the built in options availble in the spotlight+filter that exists on the top RHS of Aperture (the one that drops down to 'Unrated or Better', 'Show All', etc).

Is it possible to reconfigure the existing options that are available in that drop down? The ones that I'd like to primarily change are the star ratings which say * or Better, ** or Better. In most cases, I like to sort images for a specific star rating, and not for images at & above a star rating. (I know there is a filter here with lots of detailed options, but for something as simple as viewing rated files, it involves multiple steps that I'd like to avoid).

Thanks in advance. cheers, Bhaven

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1), Intel Core i7, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD

Posted on Nov 24, 2012 8:51 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Frank Caggiano

Level 7

25,969 points

Nov 24, 2012 9:08 AM in response to hibhaven

No sorry that is not user configurable.

Have you thought of making smart albums for the searches you do often? I do that and place thme in a folder called _Local Albums (The _ at the front of the name force the folder to sort to the top of the list).

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Answer 2

hibhaven Author

Level 1

21 points

Nov 24, 2012 9:11 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

Thanks Frank. I thought of smart albums, but was hoping it would be possible to configure it in the drop down menu itself. And thanks for tip on the underscore:)

Just an observation: I have created several smart folders and get a feeling that Aperture takes a tad longer to display images in smart folders as it has to first implement the logic criteria. Do others notice this lag too?

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Answer 3

Nov 24, 2012 9:33 AM in response to hibhaven

While an Album is just a static list of pointers back the images they contain, as you noted a smart album actually has to run some code in order to find the images.

So depending on the size of the container the smart album is searching or the complexity of the search, there can be a slight delay though I guess I have never searched through a large enough group of images to notice much if an effect.

regards

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Answer 4

Nov 24, 2012 4:03 PM in response to hibhaven

hibhaven wrote:

Just an observation: I have created several smart folders [albums] and get a feeling that Aperture takes a tad longer to display images in smart folders [albums] as it has to first implement the logic criteria. Do others notice this lag too?

It depends on what the Source is set to in the Smart Album. (Look at the dark line near the top of the Filter HUD.) Often it is set to "Library", in which case it takes (afaict) the same amount of time to filter as does selecting one of the drop-down filters when "Photos" is selected on the Library tab of the Inspector. But note that one very often uses the drop-down Browser filter on a very small subset of the Library contents: the currently selected container. Smart Albums set to a small Source container should load very quickly.

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