Aperture 2, Stacks and Web Gallery

Question

I have had so many issues with this lately. I shot photos today, picked my favorites and created a web gallery. I then ordered my 40 photos in the web gallery in a very specific order to tell a story.
1st I noticed that the order sorted some how and I lost my custom sort. So I reordered it into a specific order.
Then I was working with stacks. I wanted to organize the rest of the photos in the project to find others that I missed before and to promote images to find better picks.
Then I noticed the Web Gallery would then automatically add all images in the stack next to the single photo in the Web Gallery.
2nd. My web gallery has hundreds of photos, mostly ones that I did not want displayed. Also my custom order was lost and I once again had to try to reorganize.
To make what could be a longer story short, I had to break all the stacks that I spent time on in order to remove the unwanted photos from the web gallery.
Are we forced to make a choice between using Stacks and Web Galleries? Can they NEVER be used together?

Answer 1

After much frustration and time looking at this issue, and reading this topic in forums, discussions and the Aperture User Manual (pg. 562 - 567) - for which there is no clear explanation of this - You can only use the stack pick in the Web Gallery.
Exactly!
Which means : If you want maximum flexibility in creating Web Galleries, DO NOT use stacks.
I suppose this depends on what you are using stacks for. If you are grouping images in stacks that you want to use, you can certainly do that, but that will be problematic in Aperture in places other than gallery, because that is simply not what stacks are designed to do. If you have several shots so similar you will only use one, but don't want to throw the rest away (you might change your mind later) put them in a stack. Makes it easy to compare and "pick" which one to output. If you have a number of photos that are roughly similar, but you will be using more than one - you can initially stack them, but will probably be better off splitting the stack later. Say I am shooting sports and get a high-speed sequence of a breakaway. I could put the whole sequence in a stack initially, but some of those images are different enough that I might want to publish two or three (out of, say, 15 shots). I might get them all in one stack through auto stack, or even manually stack them initially, but I will probably set one pick and extract a few others. The alternates will be there in case I find a use for them later. Same thing with portraiture. When shooting portraits, I can get a lot of almost identical images - with small nuances in facial expression being the only difference. Another kind of stacking I often do is when I create new versions from the master and make color and exposure adjustments.
What happens to the thousands of stacks that people have already created in Aperture and would like to simply get photographs online? You must rework your entire organization (if you use stacks) to accommodate this inconsistency.
I think Aperture is actually pretty consistent regarding stacks and alternates. Alternates are ignored if you try to create a web journal, web gallery, web page, or a book. I see no problem getting them online - the picks will display, extract alternates if you want them to display also.
And to further complicate a situation, when you select one photograph in a stack, and create a 'Web Gallery', once created, every photograph in that stack is put into the 'Web Gallery'
In other words, there is no 'Ignore Stack Groupings' option in Web Galleries and since Picks can be anywhere in the stack - this creates an organizational nightmare.
Yes, if you try to drag a single image to another project or album, the rest of the stack comes along for the ride. I know this bugs you, but I actually like the way it works. Where you see this as inconsistent - I see it being very consistent. If I create a stack - that stack is identical in all locations. I can change the pick for different albums, but if i alter a stack in any other way - it is changed everywhere. This doesn't take up an real space on your computer - it is all just referencing back to the master images anyway. If seeing all those alternates in the stack bother you, just close the stack By the way, your pick cannot be "anywhere in a stack" - the pick is always on top. Your "album pick" can be anywhere in a stack, but close the stack and the album pick is what you will see.
Maybe you would do better using albums for the kind of organization you are doing - it sounds to me like you are using stacks kind of like albums anyway. Just select a stack and "create album from selection." Then you can unstack your stacks and work with albums instead. Then when you drag an image to a web gallery you won't get alternates.
But leave the stacks the way they are please - I love them just the way they are
Scott