Exporting Metadata

Question

I've created custom metadata views and presets for cataloging my images. Is it possible to export this metadata into an Excel spreadsheet as a CSV or TSV file? File/Export/Metadata exports standard metadata, but not my custom fields and entries. Or, is it possible to export XMP sidecar files and somehow import those into Excel? All that data is there somewhere within Aperture - please help me get it out and into a spreadsheet! Thanks.

Answer 1

You have to use some Applescript, but it's a relatively simple script.
tell application "Aperture"
set tSelection to the selection -- this gets all the Versions currently selected
set tValues to ""
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in tSelection -- now loop through selection
set tImg to item i of tSelection
set tValues to tValues & "Version Name: " & name of tImg -- add the name
try
set tValues to tValues & "Aperture: " & value of EXIF tag "ApertureValue" of tImg -- add the aperture
set tValues to tValues & tab -- replace with "," for comma-delimted values
end try
try
set tValues to tValues & "Shutter: " & value of EXIF tag "ShutterSpeed" of tImg
end try
set tValues to tValues & return -- make a new line for each image
end repeat
end tell
Copy and paste into Script Editor (in Applications/AppleScript) and hit the Run button, in the bottom pane you'll get the results. Note that you'll have to change 'EXIF tag' to 'custom tag' for your custom tags, and to 'IPTC tag' for IPTC data.
The 'try/end try' bits are in there so that the script doesn't fail if it comes up against an empty tag.
Ian