Ap3 - iPhoto: Metadata + Organizational issues

Question

I was hoping for improved cross-app integration with the advent of Aperture 3, but apparently not. Nevertheless, I'm still curious if SOMEONE who uses both programs has figured out a way to do the following:
I want to be able to drag MULTIPLE Aperture Projects from an Aperture 3 Library (via iPhoto's "Show Aperture Library" browser window) into iPhoto, and have them then appear in iPhoto as SEPARATE Events, rather than being all lumped together into a single iPhoto Event.
ALSO, would like the name of each project to automatically become the name of each respective iPhoto Event, rather than those Events all suddenly becoming "Untitled".
AND -- in an ideal world -- would love to have the Caption information I'd entered for each image in Aperture appear in the relevant Description field in iPhoto.
Is there ANY way to do this? For now, I'm limited to dragging in one Aperture Project at a time (in order to keep each one as a separate Event in iPhoto). And if I'm lucky, SOME of the Aperture Keywords I've assigned transfer over (though curiously, some don't), but I'm out of luck as far as Project->Event names, as well as Caption->Description info for each image.
Other than my sending in more feature requests to both apps, can anyone suggest any paths to better metadata integration between Aperture 3 and IPhoto '09?
(BTW, the reason I'm having to do this is so my wife can use iPhoto -- whose interface she prefers -- to view our domestic image library. To do this, I maintain a backup copy of my full Aperture Library on her iMac, and then import the previews it contains into her iPhoto Library, with iPhoto's "copy" option turned off. This in effect allows her to use iPhoto simply as an image viewer, which is all she wants to do.)
Thanks,
John Bertram,
Toronto
(If this question would be more appropriate for the iPhoto forum, please let me know and I'll switch it over.)

Answer 1

Alan Williams wrote:
IPhoto lacks the more comprehensive Metadata options that are present in Aperture. Presumably iPhoto is aimed at family use rather than as an outright professional toolbox. This is what I think limits your metadata from carrying over. Where it does carry over, could that be because the Keyword is present in both metadata dictionaries? Just a thought.
You could be right on the Keyword question -- I'll check that one later.
Part of my Ap3<->iPhoto frustration is that the kind of metadata I'm talking about -- things like Project/Event names and Caption/Description text -- is stuff I've entered using the Apple interface, as opposed to the very detailed kind of camera metadata which Aperture ingests when importing.
It seems like this kind of user-defined, user-entered, and user-editable info -- what I'll call "soft" metadata -- should be tranferrable from one Apple image program to another Apple image program, their different (though certainly overlapping) target audiences notwithstanding.
And I seem to recall that when I first set up my Aperture Library in the Fall of 2008, I had the same issue going the other way -- Aperture, for all its sophistication, seemed incapable of automatically naming Projects the same as the Event names it was importing, and couldn't seem to transfer the iPhoto Description info I'd entered for specific images (some of it fairly detailed) into the appropriate Caption field in Aperture.
Automator might have offered you a solution to Event building if you had used albums in your Aperture Projects. Since you use folders I cannot see an option that will import those into iPhoto. The drawback with using such a method is the export processing time involved.
Another hitch with my particular situation is that my Aperture Library is referenced to a Master Images folder on my Mac, whereas my wife's machine has a backup copy of the Ap Library only. So while the image Previews which that copy offers are plenty big enough for her viewing purposes, the Library itself doesn't have access to the Master Images folder, and therefore cannot do its own Exporting.
Since your good lady is only intending to view, I would be inclined to create desktop folders to match your Project contents and drag out the previews into those (Browser/Select All.) Then manually drop the folders into iPhoto thus automatically creating an Event named the same as the desktop folder. This means just a few moments work on each folder.
And the problem here is my very narrowly-focussed, chronological Project structure (with folders for each year, sub-folders for each month, and then individual Projects by date) makes for a Library with over 1200 Projects -- each of which needs to be seen in iPhoto as a separate Event.
Also, I can't seem to find a way to export and/or drag previews from Aperture's Browser (either in groups of Projects or even just one Project at a time) into the Finder in such a way that folders are automatically created whose names match those of the Projects. And if I would have to manually create -- and name -- each of those Finder folders before dragging previews into them from Aperture, and THEN drop those folders into iPhoto, I'm not sure what's been gained vs. manually renaming "Untitled" Events inside iPhoto itself.
But maybe I'm not completely understanding the workflow you were suggesting.
In any case, thanks for taking the time to write.
I cant think of a faster method.
Needless to say -- if you do, don't keep it a secret!
Cheers,
jb