Aperture 3: search child keywords only ?

Question

Hi all,
Since a few days I am using Aperture on my iPhoto11 library. That library already had a lot of keywords, which I now have organized in Aperture using the hierarchical keyword feature. Now I would like to remove the keywords that have become parent keywords from the images (they were put there by an iPhoto plug-in) in order to keep only the lowest level keywords physically assigned to the photo's.
My idea was to do a keyword search on any of the parent keywords and then remove these keywords from the selected photo's. Unfortunately searching on a parent keyword also selects photos that do not physically have that keyword assigned to them but have it assigned implicitely because of the hierarchical structure.
Suppose I would have the following keyword hierachy:
Nature
     Fauna
          Bird
               Duck
I would like "Duck" to be the only keyword actually assigned to a photo. Because of my legacy iPhoto library many "Duck" pictures have the other keywords assigned to them as well. To remove them, I did a keyword search for "Nature", the idea being to then remove "Nature" from the selected photos. Unfortunately when I do this keyword search, it will also show pictures that do not actually hold the Nature keyword but have it implicitely assigned because it holds one or more of the child keywords.
What I would like is to show ONLY the images having the Nature keyword actually assigned to them. This option seems to be missing from the keywrod search dialogue, although the user manual suggests it would be possible, but in my opninion the user manual is wrong here. Under "Searching by Keyword" it states that the option "are applied" would show all images that have THE SELECTED keywords. This is not true: it will show all images that have ANY keyword applied. It is not even possible to select a keyword if you chose this option. All other options show the behaviour as described above.
So, does anybody know how I can select only images holding a particular keyword that is actually assigned to those images and ignore the hierachy ?

Answer 1

First, back-up your Library.
Second, repair your Library -- instructions are on the Apple Aperture Trouble-shooting page.  You should, imho, _always_ repair your Library after every crash.  (Force-quitting is a user-initiated crash.)
You should be able to batch assign and delete keywords without hanging your system.  Changing keywords for ten-thousand Images may take several minutes, but it should never crash Aperture or your system.  That problem should be addressed before you attempt to pare and clean your keyword tree.
What is your set-up?  Aperture & OS versions, RAM, free space on system disk, location and size of Aperture Library, location and number of Referenced Originals, etc.  Has it been stable in the past?  Made any recent changes?
Third, confirm that your system runs Aperture well, and specifically that it runs your Library well.
Fourth -- strictly my personal suggestion -- adopt a keywording system that rigorously differentiates between "keywords as groups" and "keywords as tags".  So instead of "Nature; Fauna; Bird; Duck" use something like "=Nature=; a.Fauna; a.Bird; DuckMallard" where keywords bracketed by "=" are top-level groups, keywords prefixed with "a." are _groups_ and -- this is the rigorous part -- don't ever assign any top-level or grouping keyword to an Image.  Assign only "bottom-level" identifying keywords.
With such a system, "DuckMallard" and "DuckPinTailed" and "DuckCanvasBack" are assigned to Images as appropriate, and each Image so tagged will be included whenever you search for any of "=Nature=", "a.Fauna", or "a.Bird".
In this example, I suggest using the prefix "Duck" before all ducks so that when you sort an alpha list of keywords all your ducks are in a row.  If, instead, you preferred to group your ducks, make a group called "a.Ducks" and then you wouldn't need the "Duck" before "Mallard", "Teal" etc.  I found it helpful to include keywords such as "DuckUnknown" and "DuckGeneric" and "ID_Me"
Converting your current system to this system shouldn't be much work once you have your Library working well.
There are some refinements hidden in plain sight in Aperture's use of keywords, but let's make sure your Library is working first.  On my machine, I can filter for, say, "Fauna".  As you see, this will include both Images with "Fauna" assigned, and any Images with keywords that are children of "Fauna".  I can still select all and remove "Fauna".  The result is that none of the selected Images have "Fauna" assigned -- even though, if I filter for "Fauna" I will still be shown all the Images that have keywords that are children of "Fauna".
HTH,
--Kirby.