Auto-stack on import in Aperture 3?

My recollection of the Aperture 2 trial was that I could choose to auto-stack, based on times, while importing images. I can't seem to find the option to do that in Aperture 3. Once the images have been imported into a project, I can then have them auto-stacked, but they don't seem to come in that way.
Am I missing something obvious in Aperture 3? Did I hallucinate this feature in Aperture 2?

I've found a way to do it, but it's not as intuitive as it was in Ap2.
The box that shows which images will be imported now as a little check-box by it, and they all start ticked, by default. You have buttons, up top, to check all, or uncheck all. And the button down in the lower right is now labelled "Import Checked," when I think on used to have the option to "Import All" or "Import Selected" (after you'd done normal style multiple selection on the files).
There's an auto-stack dialogue, that you can access at any time from the stacks menu, but you can't actually move the slider unless images are selected. So, on import, do a command-A to select all (as opposed to the check all that's done by default), and then open the auto-stack dialogue and set your time, and you can see how things will stack. Then, press "Import Checked" (assuming they're all still checked), and the images will come in, and already be stacked as they were at the source. So, it's available, but nowhere near as friendly to use as it was.

Similar Messages

Importing from camera, auto-stack doesn't work

Hi all,
I've been using aperture for a while now. According to the manual Aperture should be able to do an auto-stack to the imported pictures and I can see the interval seconds slider on the import page. My camera is Canon 5d and I'm importing raw pictures.
My problem is that if I touch the slider, it creates one huge stack of all the images on the camera memory card. So if it does an autostack, it treats all images as if they'd been shot at the exact same second. This is illustrated also if I tell aperture to sort the not yet imported pictures according to shooting time. They just appear in a random order after that.
When the pictures have been imported, there is a correct shooting time/date in the EXIF information of the pictures. I'm not even sure if this is an aperture problem or a camera setting problem. When I look at the pictures on the camera screen, I can see the correct shooting time even in there.
Any ideas?
/hv

Not sure if this would make a difference, but are you importing the photos directly from the camera or are you using a card reader with your memory card?

Auto Stacking by URL on import with script?

There is a constant other than date/time in my imagery which I would like to Stack by, that is automatically. However the auto-Stacking feature is hard coded for date/time only, where as I may stack any imagery I please, manually, there is no flexibility on the automation of it, as I understand.
So, I was wondering if a combination of script action on import might be a way around this? Is there a way to stack by the IPTC:Source field so that any imagery with the same URL will be stacked, in order of date.

Thanks, but I definitely need it this way. You see I download stories into imagery, for example an article on Gizmag may take my eye and so I download the image, then embed the story into the metadata and the title etc... often there is more than one image to this story, its relevant and I like it also, so that gets downloaded. Once in my Library I stack them to keep them together, this is something I do quite regularly.
You'll agree I'm sure that stories and articles, blogs and the like all start with an image or at least feature one, its how we consume information these days, so the image is the story for me, I'm a very visual person.
I keep the trackback URL of the story for reference, this is a constant among imagery from a particular story and so I could stack with this data. The idea of Stacks at present I think then must be for traditional professional DSLR types, well, I'm more versatile with what I'd like to use Aperture for, I think its taking on that role with the third release accepting video and audio also.
If I can't script it behind the scenes then I guess it can't be done... perhaps there is a way to automate filtering by URL and then Stacking the results? But would I have to watch that or would it be a background job?
Thanks.

Completely auto import into Aperture

hi,
i'm looking to completely automate the import into aperture...whether i connect my iphone or the sd-card from my nikon, i would
like aperture to open, import the photos into the pre-defined project and then delete the photos, without answering any questions
from aperture.
currently, i have it set so that aperture opens when things are connected, but the import process doesn't start by itself, etc.
does anyone know if this is possible?
thanks,
pete

Aperture has no built-in automatic import. You would have to program an Automator script.
import the photos into the pre-defined project and then delete the photos, without answering any questions
from aperture.
This is risky - I'd reconsider, Pete. We have seen many cases here, where the import went wrong, and if you delete the originals from the card, before you check them after importing, you may be deleting your only copies. The recommended way is to wait until the first backup of your photos has been completed, before you delete photos from your card.

Auto Stack Freezes Program

I have a Dual 2.5Ghz G5 with 7GB ram and a Nvidia 6800 Ultra video card - well over the recommended specs in everyway. I am having issues with Autostack being slow (hours) and/or hanging the program. I have tried importing 6900 medium sized jpegs (shot with a Nikon D2h) from a folder containing a older projects I am doing, which seems like it should be with within the capablities of the program with the hardware I am using. I will then select auto stack, and can move the slider slightly to adjust the time interval before the program gives me the spinning beachball, which it will then spend hours trying to process or will then freeze the program indefinitely (I let it go for 11 hours once) at which time I have to force quit it.
I then tried it with a ancient project with jpegs from a Nikon Coolpix 950 which produced a averagew file size of less than a 1 Mb. I Auto-stacked 650 photos but still had the beach ball and it took about 10 minutes to complete- much longer than I expected with such small files.
I have not tried RAW files yet.
I hope somene has a answer on how I can possibly alleviate the problem, the auto stack is one of my favorite features so far when I can get it to work.
Even with this problem I can say this program is awesome. It's very power hungry, but truly unlike anything I have used and a excellent 1.0 effort.
Dual 2.5ghz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Maybe this is why in the training DVD supplied with Aperture Apple recommends using the auto stack feature at the time of import from memory card or camera. There's a slider at the bottom of the import page which, if memory serves me correctly, does the auto stack command. This way you'll be stacking only say 100 raw images from a 1gb card and the numbers won't get too taxing.
Still, this should be a fairly simple fix for Apple to sort out so here's hoping they get on the case sharpish! I think the auto stack HUD is loading each individual image instead of just working with the attached data.
Power Mac G5 dual 2ghz Mac OS X (10.4.3) 2.5GB RAM, 9800 Pro graphics

Auto Stack JPG's in Front of Raw

Hi,
I shoot everything JPG plus Raw. I have a number of reasons why, but would rather not make this post any longer..... I would like to be able to view everything in my library with all JPG's stacked in front of the RAW with the same file name. I have been able to Auto-Stack by time (setting time to Zero Seconds) does this. The Problem is that the NEF's appear first in the stack. I want the JPG's first, always. I can figure out any way to do this automatically. It looks like I would have to manually change which file is first. I shoot thousands and thousands of files, I need to automate this. How can I do this?
Secondarily, does anyone know how I could apply a star rating to just the jpg and have it also apply to the raw file?
Thanks

impactsystemsDT wrote:
Thanks for the question. Here is an example of why
Yesterday - Easter Egg Hunt at my House. I shot about 300 pictures. Raw plus Jpg. I want to go through them and I'll choose about 25-35 shots to document the event and perhaps make a photo book that I can keep for us and send to a few friends. I want the JPG's for this purpose. My JPG's generally look quite good. I do pretty good job with my in camera capture and settings. So, I want to be able to either spend zero time on these 25-35 shots or perhaps just 30 seconds to 1 minute on some or all to crop, vignette or some very quick adjustments, make my book and I'm done. My wife is happy, my friends are happy and I have somehting to remeber the event.
Then I will then have 2-5 really nice shots that I'll want to really work on. I might spend 10-20 minutes on each of these. I will generally process the raw file for the purpose. Occassionally the JPG's are just fine, so I'll just process those a bit further. I'll end of with a 2-5 "Hero" shots of the event. I might use these to add to the photo book or to print or add to my portfolio. Often I might just tag them to work tomorrow or next week or even next month when I have more time.
So I want to go select my 25-35 shots from the 300 with a simple pick off the JPG's, then the one's I really want the very best quality and versatility I.d like to be able to click on the stack (JPG in Front, Raw behind total of just 2 shots) and work the Raw file (the Negative). I don't ever have time to process more than a handful of Raw shots from any one shoot and frankly 95% of the time the JPG's look as good as the Raw files even after a fair amount of processing, so I really only need to process the Raw file on certain types of files. Having said that I am a very competent at processing and use combination of lightroom, photoshop, NIK, OnOne and Topaz. I just don.t need to do post capture and pre-out sharpening, cloning, healing, content aware fill, gradient filters, advanced color processing etc... on 98% of my files. The JPG's I create are good enough most all the time.
It seems that many people would want to work this way. I don't to rate all of the JPG's and the Raw's. I just want the Raw's (negatives) behind the JPG's so I can dive into them if I need to for the 5% or so of the files that I really want to spend time on. That doesn't mean I won't use the the other 95% (well more like 10%), it just meanst that the jpg's are just fine to email to friends or make photo books. Not every file that comes out of Lightroom is supposed to be the cover of Sports Illustrated. Raw and the JPG that I captured are the same file and it should be treated as such. Importing as the same file doesn't give you any access to the JPG so I don't see the purpose.
agree with your workflow and raw+jpg should be linked as same file (as in aperture)

Auto-stack doesn't work

I am new to Aperture and am exploring all of it's features. Unfortunately I cannot get auto-stack to work. I have a project with 900 pictures. When I slide the auto-stack slider to the right, I get a spinning ball. After a minute it looks like the images have been stacked. When I close the auto-stack HUD, all the stacking disappears again. Am I doing something wrong here? I do not think it has to to wit my MBP. It has to be fast enough.

Not sure if this would make a difference, but are you importing the photos directly from the camera or are you using a card reader with your memory card?

Auto-stack hanging up machine?

Hello,
I'm trying to use the 'auto-stack' feature. Unfortunately, every time I try to use it, it seems to hang Aperture for a very long time. I'm wondering why this is, as I'm using a Quad G5 with a 7800GT graphics card & 4Gb ECC memory. (The project I'm trying to stack has only 1100 images.)

I started over. I deleted all 20,000 photos, and began importing folders one at a time, working from 2005 backwards. This time, rather than having top level folders = projects and subfolder = albums, I made every subfolder its own project. This kept every project under a few hundred photos.
Autostacking both in the import tool and after import remained lightning fast.
Around mid 2002, I had a single folder with 600 images. I carelessly imported it, and ...
Ooops!
Autostacking anywhere including projects that had worked moments before now gives the spinning beachball. Projects with ~30 photos which I've been restacking every so often during this process to see what happens, suddenly take 120 seconds to restack.
On startup, Aperture says 64 projects, 7,269 items not stored in vault. In the library, I find 5,796 images if I open all stacks, 2,246 if stacks are closed.
Have I crossed a total image threshhold? Or was it having a single project with 679 images?
I dunno, but it's not the Quad G5, since from the delete-all until this latest folder was imported, everything was screaming.
G5 Quad Mac OS X (10.4.3) 6.5 GB RAM / CD 30" / Aperture

Auto-Stack stacks erractically

I have problems with auto-stack -- the stacks are more-or-less random. Unrelated photos are grouped, yet ones take only a few seconds apart are not stacked. This seems consistent every time I've tried it. Adjusting the time slider just ends up with a very slow response. The latest project I'm trying it with has 1600 pictures from 3 different cameras, but even continuous sequences from the same one are messed up. I've tried it on reduced selections -- same problems.
I've given up with it and do it all manually now.
Anybody got it working properly?
G5 dual 1.8 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.4) Olympus E-1, E-300 (+ Canon Digital Ixus V2)

I noticed with my Canon XT that there is a bug in Aperture stacking when you first connect the camera up. Perhaps this is causing your problems as well. In my case when the camera is hooked up, and aperture automatically goes to the import mode, all photos on the camera have the same date and time, so the stacking doesn't work properly. What I do to work around it is cancel the import mode, and then turn the import mode on again (click on that arrow in top left corner). This causes all the images to have the correct time in the import window, and stacking works correctly.

Auto levels on import preset

I tried a search to see how you can get AP3 to do an "auto levels" adjustment during import, but I am not sure how to do it. If I do an "auto" adjust on an image and then create a preset, does AP3 apply the levels based on that particular file used, or will it actually look at each file individually and make the correct adjustment for each file during the import? Or is there a different way to correctly apply auto levels during import?
Thanks in advance.

this is fairly easy. the only thing you have to do is create an adjustment preset to do just that.
steps:
1-click on an image and go to the Adjustments tab
2-apply auto-levels on that image (and nothing else)
3-in the Presets drop box, choose Save as Preset (Aperture is intelligent enough to remember you've applied the Auto-levels)
4-in the preset management box, give it some name
5-on following imports, just apply this preset to your images on import and voilà.
j

Auto-stacking by millisecond intervals

This has probably been requested already, but I can't find it.
Can we add support for auto-stacking by intervals of less than a second? I think milliseconds would be fine but microseconds would certainly cover all sins.
I'm thinking that this would be a trivial feature to add and great for stacking rapid (handheld) HDR captures.

Thanks, but I definitely need it this way. You see I download stories into imagery, for example an article on Gizmag may take my eye and so I download the image, then embed the story into the metadata and the title etc... often there is more than one image to this story, its relevant and I like it also, so that gets downloaded. Once in my Library I stack them to keep them together, this is something I do quite regularly.
You'll agree I'm sure that stories and articles, blogs and the like all start with an image or at least feature one, its how we consume information these days, so the image is the story for me, I'm a very visual person.
I keep the trackback URL of the story for reference, this is a constant among imagery from a particular story and so I could stack with this data. The idea of Stacks at present I think then must be for traditional professional DSLR types, well, I'm more versatile with what I'd like to use Aperture for, I think its taking on that role with the third release accepting video and audio also.
If I can't script it behind the scenes then I guess it can't be done... perhaps there is a way to automate filtering by URL and then Stacking the results? But would I have to watch that or would it be a background job?
Thanks.

Auto-Stacking, please

Like in Lightroom, we should have an auto-stacking function. Two options would be highly useful: stack by creation date like in LR but please allow intervals in tenths of seconds, and stack by file name which woulds tack all files with different extensions to a base filename.
BTW, the Bridge CS3 2.1 update really sped things up - thanks!
DJ

Thanks, but I definitely need it this way. You see I download stories into imagery, for example an article on Gizmag may take my eye and so I download the image, then embed the story into the metadata and the title etc... often there is more than one image to this story, its relevant and I like it also, so that gets downloaded. Once in my Library I stack them to keep them together, this is something I do quite regularly.
You'll agree I'm sure that stories and articles, blogs and the like all start with an image or at least feature one, its how we consume information these days, so the image is the story for me, I'm a very visual person.
I keep the trackback URL of the story for reference, this is a constant among imagery from a particular story and so I could stack with this data. The idea of Stacks at present I think then must be for traditional professional DSLR types, well, I'm more versatile with what I'd like to use Aperture for, I think its taking on that role with the third release accepting video and audio also.
If I can't script it behind the scenes then I guess it can't be done... perhaps there is a way to automate filtering by URL and then Stacking the results? But would I have to watch that or would it be a background job?
Thanks.

Improve Auto-Stack and Process Collections with user settings

I have read through all of the Bridge request discussions, and encountered a few comments on the stacking process but nothing to explain my critique and feature request. My apologies for any redundancy.
Bridge CS4 includes two features that would (virtually) streamline my entire photo-organization workflow. Brilliant! Except that they offer zero configuration and my default scenario is very different from Adobe's, so these two would-be-wonderful features are pretty much useless to me, and to anybody else who doesn't happen to shoot in the way the presets are configured.
The first feature is to automatically group images into stacks, based on their similarity, exposure settings, and timestamps. Unfortunately Bridge considers no minimum or maximum amount of photos per stack, and has a fixed timestamp window of 18 seconds. I shoot everything in three-exposure bursts and sometimes multiple shots in less than 18 seconds, so being able to say "process collections in 3-item stacks only" would be absolutely perfect. For other people, being able to limit the timestamp range or other min/max exposure options would work great.
The second feature, which could save me hours every week but is equally useless, is to automatically process collections in Photoshop. My biggest ire about this function is that it completely ignores stacks that I have manually created AND stacks that were previously created using the auto-stack feature. Every time this function is run, it re-runs the auto-stack process from scratch and then delivers the collections to Photoshop. Not only is this made useless by the previously mentioned inflexibility of the auto-stack process, but even if auto-stack worked perfectly, this would waste time by doing the entire thing again and denying the user the option to review the stacks before committing to the Photoshop processing. The process collections feature would also be much improved if the option were given to process ONLY panoramas or HDR photos, or auto-detect. I have never shot a panorama in my life and I'm sure plenty of people have never shot HDR, but Photoshop isn't capable of knowing our intentions and there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to instruct it.

Agree. It is an interesting capability that falls short of being really useful. I feel like an ingrate to complain, but ...
I'd also like to see the capability to specify something than "Auto" for the panorama option. My experience is that most of my panos work best with "Cylindrical + Geometric Correction".
My experience is that once you get past 5+ images in a pano, it becomes very tedious ... and then 20+ images in rows is painful. Unlike a single image that you can quickly evaluate, with panos I find I need to make the pano to tell if it going to turn out. I have been generating smaller 1800x1200 or 1200x1800 files to speed up the evaluation process, but it is still very manual and tedious.
The Auto-Stack generates a AutoCollectionCache.xml, but I haven't found it workable to edit this. I'd like to be able to modify it to "force" my knowledge of what is in a group. It seems to check the time-stamp, and re-do the Auto-Stack, thus ignoring my changes. Sigh.

Should i delete my photos from iPhoto after I import to aperture

should i delete my photos from iPhoto after I import to aperture? What is the easiest way to do this?

Depends.
Did you copy the files into the Aperture Library on Import?
If so, it's safe to do so. My tip: wait a few weeks until you're happy that you're committed to Aperture.
Drag the iPhoto Library from the Pictures Folder to the trash.
Regards
TD

HELP PLEASE! Export Aperture 1 Library and Import to Aperture 3? Or another way to transfer files WITH changes into new MacBook Pro?

Hi everyone,
I recently purchased a new MacBook pro with Retina display, to better manage Aperture and Photoshop. I took the advice of the genius (and after spending all night messing with permissions, etc.), opted out of using Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant and decided to transfer my files manually (as the two systems weren't merging properly the first time -- it was a giant mess). Long story short, I tried to transfer everything from my previous MacBook (operating on 10.5.8 with Aperture 1), and Aperture 3 couldn't handle it. It was crashing, and crashing so badly that NO button could be activated in the program (I FINALLY got Aperture working by disabling previews, and by moving from a managed library to a referenced library).
I initially dragged and dropped all photos from my previous MacBook to my external, and imported. I obviously lost folders, edit history and any other information that I needed to know what edits had been done on the file. Additionally, any movie that had been imported into Aperture was corrupt (the file was not transferring over correctly). I searched and searched for different methods, and finally found that I could export each project from my original MacBook as a "Library" and consolidate masters, or not, etc. I took the time and did this for each project. When I went to import these into Aperture 3, it said I was not able to because the libraries were from a previous version of Aperture.
Is there any way to bypass this? Or another way to transfer my projects? I understand I won't be able to do this for my entire library... but I'm wondering if there's any way to transfer my changes made, projects and details from Aperture 1 to Aperture 3? (and for those who might pose upgrading my original MacBook as an option, I cannot. It's too old. I think the best I could uprade to is Aperture 2, IF i can update the OS. Though, I definitely don't think I should be forced to do that since I've aleady re-invested in a new computer, AND had to re-buy Aperture for the new one.
Any/all advice is VERY much appreciated, as I really want to move forward and FINALLY start appreciating this program and computer (i.e. my investment) and move forward business wise. Thank you!

Hi Jack,
Thanks for responding (as it seems as though no one else has been able to provide any insight as of yet)! Not sure if you saw my recent post, but the version of Aperture on the 2008 MacBook has been upgraded to 3.1.2 (not sure how; I bought it in 2009, but only have OS X 10.5.8... which apparently can't house 3.1.2 of Aperture, but hey, like many other anomalies i'm encountering, I'm no longer surprised!). I am unable to upgrade it any further, as it warns me that my OS X does not fit the requirements. I exported the projects as libraries; however, like I posted before, apparently these are from too old of a version for the new Aperture (3.3.1) to handle and import.
It's getting to the point where I'd almost pay to upgrade the OS X on my previous MacBook (10.5.8) to something newer in order to THEN update Aperture to a newer version; however, my previous MacBook simply cannot handle this (the specs are awful -- hence my decision to save up and upgrade to the newest MBP with Retina).
I've spent hours upon hours transferring files, libraries as projects, previews, versions, even masters (though, apparently some of them aren't accessible?) with no luck. I've rebuilt the library and reprocessed everything. And this is all after having to return one MBP already since Aperture 3.3.1 is glitch-y as it is, and froze everything for having a "managed library". So, now that I know that I have to deal with a referenced library in Aperture... I just need to actually transfer my previous library to my new one (hopefully WITH adjustments since these are years worth of photos and work).
Again, any help is appreciated. I've lost enough sleep, time, and vision health over this at this point.
Also, I know Migration Assistant is an option, I was told that it wouldn't work properly anyway because of the different operating systems, and the potential for problems.

Auto-stack on import in Aperture 3?

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