EXIF "Flash" Search/Smart Album Broken?

It appears that, in Aperture 3.1.1, trying to search the EXIF Flash value using a Search or a Smart Album is broken. My Nikon puts the values "Flash did not fire" and "Flash fired" in the Flash field, however, trying to search for EXIF includes "fired", or anything else for that matter, returns an empty set. (I did get a set of about 6 photos in a project with 228 photos when I entered includes 0. Everything else fails.)
Is anyone else having this issue? Any work-arounds? I'm trying to select all of the "flash" photos and the "non-flash" photos to be able to adjust the white balance appropriately. Any better ideas on how to do that?

Works here with AP 3.1.1 and Nikon D80 images as follows:
Select 'Photos' in Library Inspector > New Smart Album
Add Rule > EXIF > Flash; Includes; Flash fired (or Flash did not fire) > 'Return' (Enter) key to apply.
Works as expected, but I had to use the correct wording and spacing used by the Metadata EXIF field.
If it still doesn't work for you, I can only think you might want to try the Troubleshooting Basics:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3805
Good luck.

Similar Messages

Smart Albums and Search ignoring tags / keywords

Why is it that once images are imported into PE7, and if their keywords and tags are edited in an external editor (eg. Picasa, Photoshop), PE7 doesn't seem to recognize these new keywords/tags in Search or Smart Albums?!
The weird thing is, if I open/activate these newly edited files, I can see in thier properties that the new keywords/tags can be read by PE7, but these descriptions don't show up as matching results when we do a search box or smart albums.
What is going on?
On the other hand, Picasa will read, update and pick up any tags and keywords that have been entered in PS7, almost instantly. Why can't PE7 do this???

It's a design limitation of PSE. When you first import an image into PSE, it will read the metadata from the image's file (keyword tags, date/time, caption, notes, star rating) and store it in your catalog (the database where PSE stores all of its information about your images). Once the image is imported into your catalog, PSE will never read that metadata again, so if you change it with an external tool, PSE won't see those changes.
As you've observed, a number of other programs will track changes made to a file's metadata, including Windows Live Photo Gallery and Adobe Lightroom.

Smart Album search of a specific album?

Is it possible to limit the query of a smart album to a particular album. The "find" command seems to limit a search to a specific album while smart albums seem to query the entire project. I would like to have a smart album limit its search to a particular album (or possibly several particular albums).
I am using Aperture 1.5.3

Smart Albums can search within a Project, the entire Library or a all the Projects within a Blue Folder, depending on where you made the Smart Album. In other words, only 'containers' that images actually live in - remember that Albums only contain references back to Projects.
Ian

Smart Album & search filter logic

Has anybody found a way to do more sophisticated Smart Album creation or search filters within Aperture other than the very simplistic methodology we appear to be limited to of for example keyword search with only two choices of "containing one or more", or "contains all"? I have tried hard to find a better way and am concluding it is a limitation in the current release.
I'm thinking hear of some of the multiple criteria smart folder/album/search options that even an relatively modest product like iPhoto offers, for example keyword "contains xxx", "does not contain yyy", "begins with aaa" etc.
Thanks
Dave
G5 Dual 2.3Ghz, 6Mb RAM, NV6800 Ultra Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Has anybody found a way to do more sophisticated
Smart Album creation or search filters within
Aperture other than the very simplistic methodology
we appear to be limited to of for example keyword
search with only two choices of "containing one or
more", or "contains all"? I have tried hard to find
a better way and am concluding it is a limitation in
the current release.
Yes - what you do is add a new "CUstom Metadata" criteria (I forget the exact name but it's something like that). You then change the dropdown for the metadata type to "IPTC"...
You can then use keywords in searches with much more complex logic around them, like the "contains" and "begins with" you are looking for. It does not fill in keywords for you but it offers a lot more options for criteria.

Smart Albums are broken!

I upgraded to 3.3, and Smart Albums are now broken!
For example, I have a recent event broken down into 3 Smart Albums for my 3 star, 4 star, and 5 star images.
The 3 and 4 star albums display the photos correctly. But the 5 star album doesn't display anything!
On another event from a few years ago, I have the something similar. I have 3 smart albums from one event corresponding to 3 different "Image Country" tags. Two of them display fine, the third doesn't display at all. On the one that doesn't display, if I change the star rating from 3 to 2, the images all show up (including the 3 star images.) If I put it on 3, nothing shows up.
What's going on?

That's a pretty obnoxious, blame-the-victim comment.
I am not blaming you - sorry if it sounded like that. Really, I only discovered the information accidentally down at the bottom of the page I pointed to. You are right, usually you do not expect major changes between updates, if only the number behind the decimal point changes.
But it is really not safe to update any software without reading the release notes - with some updates you may lose functionality you may need.

AVI files - Search results different from Smart Album

I've noticed that when I use the iPhoto Search to filter all movies (.AVI files) that all my clips come up (eg. 700 clips in 2007). However, with a Smart Album I have set up to display the .AVI files, the last several weeks of clips seem to be missing (eg. 630 clips from the 2007 album). I've checked all the Smart Album criteria and they are correct. Is this a glitch in iPhoto or is there some other explanation?

macblueduck
Two possibilities:
1. There's something different in the later files that don't match the criteria of the search
or
2. Spotlight (as it is this that indexes the Library) is not working correctly. Try opening the Spotlight Preference Pane and go to the Privacy section. Drag the Pictures Folder in there, leave it a few moments and then drag it out again. This should force Spotlight to re-index the Folder.
Regards
TD

I am trying, unsuccessfully, to export an iphoto smart album- 12,000 photos, no movies- (information is saying 31GB) to a brand new 32GB scandisk flash stick. A caution msg keeps saying "there is not enough space to complete this" Help!

I am trying, unsuccessfully, to export an iphoto smart album- 12,000 photos, no movies- (information is showing 31GB total) to a brand new 32GB scandisk flash stick. A caution msg keeps saying "there is not enough space to complete this" Help!

You need a larger drive or an external drive - they OS needs a minimum of 10GB just for normal operation so you are already experiancing degraded preformance - if yo do not get more space you will start losing data
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

More advanced smart album searches

Nothing special, but there should be a way to filter a search to only include pictures with faces in them. For example, I wanted to a do a search for pictures in Des Moines, IA that contained at least one face. Or have the ability to do a search that contains no faces. You get the idea.
Also, I'd like to be able to do radius searches for photos based on their location. e.g. 10 miles around my house.
Why can't we reference a smart album in another smart album? The list is restricted to dumb albums

there is it is called "name"
here is an example of how to find all faces that are not named currently
make a smart albumn
choose "Name" in first field
Then "contains"
The leave it blank
anywhere that it finds a name that is empty it sorts it to the smart folder and you then can go thru them that way
Please note that some photos have more than one face and even if one face is named and the others are not it still finds it and sorts it to the smart album

Smart album date range broken?

With earlier versions of iPhoto I've set up smart albums for date ranges, and then exported everything in the smart albums for archiving. When I upgraded to Mavericks and iPhoto 9.5.1, several (but not all) of these appeared as empty. I didn't worry about past albums too much since they've already been archived, and set up a new one from 1.1.2013 to 25.12.2013. It worked OK at the time, but looking at it again today, it is also empty. If I right-click, the "Edit Smart Album" option is greyed out. But under "View | Smart Album Info", I see that the starting date is 1.1.0013. I tried changing it to 2013, but the album remains empty, and when I look at info again, it has reverted to 1.1.0013.
Anyone else seeing something like this? Any ideas what might be going on?
Thanks for any help.

Option 1
Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.
If that fails:
Option 2
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)
This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.
Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.
Regards
TD

Trouble making a smart album with multiple search criteria

Hello,
I've been using Aperture 3 for a while now but never really created smart albums. Thought I'd give it a go this time around. My filter criteria are:
a) Select all images that have a rating of 1 star AND
b) Have a red colour label assigned to them.
The Filter HUD has the following settings:
a) Any/All pop up menu = All
b) Source: Project
c) Rating IS 1 star
d) Colour Label IS Red
The smart album adds images from the project that match the rating criteria even if they're not labelled "red". On the contrary, if unrated images that have a red label do not end up in the smart album (and correctly so, I must say).
My ultimate objective is to create 2 smart albums based on rating AND label color - 1 star & red goes to the client as proprietary, whereas 1 star & green goes up on Flickr as public.
Am I missing something? Please assist.
I look forward to a quick response.
Warm regards,
Faizan

The color label rule is puzzling, and does behave exactly opposite to what you'd expect: It shows the set of labels that are allowed.
You have to uncheck all labels you do not want ansd only keep the red label.
The active labels have a grey border, the others none.
Here is an example of an album with labelled images "red": Notice the grey border around the red button, and borders around the deselected buttons.
Was that quick enough?
Cheers
Léonie

Aperture ... Bug .... timezones and smart albums

Hello everyone,
i've just jumped into the mac world a week ago, just bought my first macbook ! Yeah !
I decided to give Aperture a try, and given i've played with it now for 2 days, if this bug I found is really there, NO WAY am I going to pay for such software !
I've been using Picasa on PC for the past couple years now.
Its handling my photo library extremely well: over 50gb of photos, 10 years worth of photos.
So after looking at all the Aperture videos on the apple site, I decided to give it a try to replace my picasa, since there is no picasa for my new mac.
The bug I found (and I'm a newbie !, 2 days of playing, struggling to import my pictures, and bam ... bug .... hummmm).
I tried importing only 1 folder in my library.
I'm french and this summer, went to USA for holiday. Western deserts and all.
So, I took my folder:
2008 08 09 - USA Grand West
And tried importing it.
It contains around 100 photos of the 1st 3 days of the trip.
My camera was set to French time, so at import I appreciated the "Change time thingy" and set it to Los Angeles time.
Did the import in a new project.
Great.
All pictures in the project. Exif Date updated to los angeles time. GREAT !
Now.
I want to have them show up on a day to day basis.
So, I created smart albums giving the date I wanted.
August 9 2008, August 10 2008 and August 11 2008.
It DOES NOT WORK ! BUGGGGGGGG
photos taken on the 3rd day, having correct EXIF date metadata, show 11/08/2008 for the date (correct), however they are not shown in the August 11 2008 album !
They are shown in the August 12 2008 album !
Reason !
The smart album is using the wrond date. The French one.
Since there is 11 hours difference.
Some late August 11 (Los Angeles time) pictures are pushed to August 12 (early morning French time).
Am I the only one with this bug ?
The only fix I found for now that works, is adding 3 rules to the smart albums:
- exif: day of the month = 11
- exif: month of the yar = 08
- exif: year = 2008
That works.
However there is NO WAY, i'm setting up 50gb worth of smart albums having to apply 3 specific rules to compensate for a bugged out calendar rule that does not work.
Any ideas ? fixes ?
Thanks
Regards
Tim

Hum, i'm not sure I understand what is going on, or what you are describing.
you say: "... Aperture is correct in it's assertion the image was taken on 12th"
I dont understand.
When i've done the import, and look at that pictures metadata, the date/time is corrected. It shows up as 15:42 20080811 (youre writting).
So if the metadata is correct, I really dont understand how the computers time and timezone has any effect on the smart albums ... could you explain ?
Unless what you are suggesting, is that the smart album date is applied to the computers time zone, and thus when searching for the files, it automatically does a conversion of the time of the picture to fit the computers timezone => thus my 15:42 20080811 set to Los Angeles time zone, is researched using a French timezone and thus found on 00:42 20080812 ?
Wow, if so, this would be a stretch !
And if this is the answer, I do not understand the "feature" to import using a different time zone, and not be able to search according to it ?
There is effectively no point?
In respect to the workaround you describe. Its effectively what I did, I sorted using 3 criterias: exif day of the month = 11, month of the year = 08, year = 2008. And for some reason that works !
Would there be another workaround? Instead of using the TimeZone panel, import them untouched, and doing a batch Time change on the pictures once imported and leaving them at the same Paris timezone, but compensating for 9 hours, effectively, bringing them to 15:42 Paris time, instead of Los Angeles time ?
If my memory is correct when having played with this, the batch time modification, did not compensate the days: Effectively, clicking 9 times on the down arrow when showing 00:42 12th did not change the 12th into an 11th ...

Aperture tip for duplicating smart albums structure?

I have folders setup for each year 1996...2012. In the last couple of years I've created smart albums w/i each folder: 01 Jan 2012; 02 Feb 2012; etc.
It's a simple smart album based on date. I want to copy these smart albums to each year. But I hate going in and renaming each album and resetting each date. And on SOME of my duplicated albums the source stays as the year I copied it from, altho this doesn't happen all the time, don't know why.
Anyone have an easier way to create this structure? Thanks!

Hum, i'm not sure I understand what is going on, or what you are describing.
you say: "... Aperture is correct in it's assertion the image was taken on 12th"
I dont understand.
When i've done the import, and look at that pictures metadata, the date/time is corrected. It shows up as 15:42 20080811 (youre writting).
So if the metadata is correct, I really dont understand how the computers time and timezone has any effect on the smart albums ... could you explain ?
Unless what you are suggesting, is that the smart album date is applied to the computers time zone, and thus when searching for the files, it automatically does a conversion of the time of the picture to fit the computers timezone => thus my 15:42 20080811 set to Los Angeles time zone, is researched using a French timezone and thus found on 00:42 20080812 ?
Wow, if so, this would be a stretch !
And if this is the answer, I do not understand the "feature" to import using a different time zone, and not be able to search according to it ?
There is effectively no point?
In respect to the workaround you describe. Its effectively what I did, I sorted using 3 criterias: exif day of the month = 11, month of the year = 08, year = 2008. And for some reason that works !
Would there be another workaround? Instead of using the TimeZone panel, import them untouched, and doing a batch Time change on the pictures once imported and leaving them at the same Paris timezone, but compensating for 9 hours, effectively, bringing them to 15:42 Paris time, instead of Los Angeles time ?
If my memory is correct when having played with this, the batch time modification, did not compensate the days: Effectively, clicking 9 times on the down arrow when showing 00:42 12th did not change the 12th into an 11th ...

Smart Album based on metadata

How do I create a smart album based on metadata content. I want to have one that has all my geo-tagged (latitude/longitude not blank) photos in it.
Dual G5/Dual G4/MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.10) Extreme N/Apple TV/iPhone

You can't. Smart albums can only search by album, any text, comments, date, filename, keyword, rating, roll, title, aperture, camera model, flash, focal length ,iso and shutter speed. You'll need to use another way to group them together.
However, you can use the demo version of iView MediaPro to catalog your library, find all photos with or without a GPS location, add a keyword to it and then write that keyword to the original file. Then you can copy those files, from the iView catalog window to a folder on the desktop for imorting into iPhoto as new fileswhich will then recognize the new keyword. (While you're at it, you should sync all the metadata to the original files with iVMP as described in Tutorial #1. This will preserve the keywords in case the library gets damaged and you have to create a new one and import the original files from the old library. Then you can delete the un-keyworded files from the library with a smart album: keyword is not xxxx.
Do you Twango?
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've written an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.
MBP 2.16Ghz; G5 Dual Core 2GHz, 2G RAM ea, 250G HD; G4 Dual 1Ghz, 1.5G RAM; Mac OS X (10.4.10) 22" LCD, 710G FW HDs, Canon: SD700IS/i850/LIDE 50, Epson R200, 30G iPod, 2G Nano

Is there a way to burn multiple smart albums to DVD?

I just finished shooting a wedding. I have made a number of smart albums for Reception, Dance, Ceremony, etc...
Now I would like to burn all of these albums onto one DVD to send to the client. But I would like each album to be in its own folder on the DVD. I could go the long way and export each album into a folder on the desktop and then put them all in a burn folder.
Is there a more automated way of doing this, such as a plugin maybe? After a little searching I found BurnToDisc from Blue Room software but it looks like you can only select one album at a time to burn to DVD. I would like to be able to select all 8 or 9 albums and have them burned in one operation.
Thank you for any help
Bo

As I wrote:
There's only one problem, I'm not sure if this will work for smart albums in folders.
so unfortunately I was right. Smart Albums behave differently then regular Albums one of the biggest differences is the way Folders and Smart Albums interact.
With a regular album if it is in a folder clicking on the folder shows the images in the album. With smart albums this doesn't happen, the folder doesn't show the images in the smart albums it contains.
A few work arounds off the top of my head:
convert the smart albums into regular albums. With the smart album selected and in browser mode click on the magnifying glass icon at the top right to open the browser filter HUD. At the bottom of the filter HUD is a button New Album with Current Images click it and a regular album with the images from the smart album will be created. Once you've done this to the smart albums the procedure I wrote should work.
You could manually create the folders in the Finder and export each smart album individually to the corresponding folder you created.
Let us know if either of those work for you,
regards

New Album from Smart Album makes NEW VERSIONS of all files? Bug?

Got what I think is an oddball bug here, but see if any of you have experienced it.
Making a new album of the contents of a Smart Album with about 600 images resulted in the SBOD, a lot of time and disk activity and the creation of NEW VERSIONS of all the files populating the new album. This, of course, also doubled the number of files in the original Smart Album, since the keywords used are a match. First thinking it might be something I had not read in the manual, I grabbed the book and could not find this behavior listed…..so….my expected result is a new album with the identical contents of the Smart Album selected as the source.
I am creating a presentation for a client whose work is in multiple projects in a ~150GB library. All images are heavily keyworded, so making Smart Albums of specific elements of the work was easy. My intended workflow to get through this mountain of pix was to make Smart Albums of specific elements, then make New Albums from each, manually edit and reorg these albums individually, then combine my edits into a single book file.
Now the structure leading to this problem is as follows:
1) I created a single “main” folder to store all projects and other elements and hierarchy for this client. Clicking on this folder returns some 8500 images spanning multiple projects…all as expected.
2) At the top level of this “main” folder, I made about 20 Smart Albums to presort the main elements I wanted to include. I made the first Smart Album by clicking the icon in the top bar. The rest of the smart albums I made by duplicating the previous Smart Album, then changing keyword selection. I would select the new keywords I wanted, then de-select the ones that were from the album I had duplicated. The reason I did it that was for speed, there is little delay in displaying the items that were already searched for, and a significant delay in going from new. Anyway, somewhere in this process, I decided to organize my workflow further, so I created a new folder (calling it Smart Album Selects) at the same level as the Smart Albums, and then dragged the Smart Albums into the new Smart Album Selects folder. Still, no problem.
3) Later in my session, I went to create another new Smart Album, and this time I did so already in the Smart Album Selects folder. When I opened the HUD to select the keywords, the Keyword area and check box were greyed out!!! Weird, I though….so I simply duplicated an existing Smart Album from my Smart Album Selects folder, opened the HUD, and sure enough, all my keywords were there. I changed the keyword selection, and went on with work. During the day I did this same operation 3 more times, making 4 Smart Albums created the same way.
4) OK…here is the strange behavior. To make my new custom album from the Smart Album selects, I selected one of the Smart Albums, and clicked on the New Album icon. Got the expected dialog, make with 1 image or all images, selected all images, and instead of a new album popping up moments later, I got the SBOD, and the Activity Monitor said Aperture and my hard disk was cranking away. About 4-5 minutes later, Aperture became responsive again, and had created a new album. However, upon inspection, the album contained NEW VERSIONS of all the images that were in the Smart Album, about 600 files.
5) I went back and clicked on a different Smart Album in the same spot in the hierarchy…but it was one of the first ones I had created (meaning I built this BEFORE reorganizing into the Smart Album Selects folder). Tried making a new album again, with 1 image, worked fine, popped up instantly. Tried selecting 4 images, same thing, worked fine. Selected All, made album, worked fine.
6) Went back to the Smart Album I had the problem with, this time selected 4 images, make New Album, and sure enough the New Album had NEW VERSIONS of the pix again…OK, I went back to the top of my folder hierarchy, my “main” folder and made a brand new Smart Album by clicking the icon, and selecting keywords. Made a new album from that, no problem, popped up instantly, no new versions.
7) I then re-made all my Smart Albums at the top of the folder hierarchy, and they all work fine creating new albums. I got back to the task at hand…hopefully there is enough data here to let the Aperture engineers find this problem…Assuming, that is it is not just me misunderstanding some element in the program.
Sorry for the length, but has anyone else run into this??
PowerBook G4 1.67 2GB RAM 128MB ATI Video, External FW Drives for library Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Nope, all the images at this point in my workflow have been unstacked, with the non-picked members of the original stacks discarded.
Now that it seems I am not the only one who has witnessed this behavior, what I am really trying to find out, is what is the definitive proper operation of this according to the Aperture group at Apple.
Assuming I have opened a Smart Album with images displayed, and no images are selected.
Is the correct behavior:
1) Selecting New Album makes a new Untitled Album (very quickly) with the identical contents of the Smart Album....OR...
2) Selecting New Album makes a new Untitled Album (slowly) with NEW VERSIONS of the contents of the Smart Album. (Also, depending upon the number of images, typically brings up SBOD and makes Aperture unresponsive until it is complete.)
Now what I expected to happen was #1, as it is what happens when I select New Album when a project is selected. Given Apple's human interface creedo for intuitive operation, I think this is the most intuitive choice, because I can't think of a good reason I would want to double the number of versions of all files in an album, unless I expressly told the app to do this.
Could an Apple guy provide the definitive answer, please...
Thanks in advance for your help.
PowerBook G4 1.67 2GB RAM 128MB ATI Video, External FW Drives for library Mac OS X (10.4.7)

EXIF "Flash" Search/Smart Album Broken?

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