Filtering by time, Smart albums

Hi all,
I've been taking pictures at an equestrian event today. The event is divided up into different classes for the size of pony/horse and the experience of the rider etc. I took notes of when each class started and ended and I'd like to create smart albums based on the time of day to automatically filter them into the different classes.
I've created a smart album with an exif filter, chosen "capture hour" then "is in the range" and tried to enter 09:45 to 11:40 for the first class but when I press return these values are truncated to "09 to 11" which excluded pictures taken in the last 40 minutes of the first class.
Before I waste a lot of time messing around can anyone tell me the best way to filter the pictures between two times in hours and minutes?
Thanks,
Dave.

I hate explaining things like this but here goes:
Use the EXIF date field instead - Aperture is easy just type in the time naturally like "2:40 pm" and it will work fine. With Apple it is usually something fairly simple vs complicated. With the date field you can pretty much use any combination of anything in the date or part of it. Just in case you didn't look use the criteria "in the range of" no need to use multiple expressions in the hud.
RB

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Time zone adjustments and smart album filters

I just returned from a photo safari in Southeast Asia and while there I had my cameras set to the correct local time (GMT+7). Upon importing to Aperture I set both Camera Time and Actual TIme to the right place and chugged ahead. Now when I look at an actual image file's info the time is 'adjusted' for MST (my home time zone) but in Aperture the Meta Tooltips and Metadata show the GMT+7 time.
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Neil,
I've been struggling with similar issues to varying degrees for some time now. I have found it extremely frustrating in my attempts to adjust the date to reflect proper time zones and local times. The only time it seems to "get it right" is when I have my camera set to my local time zone, shoot in my local time zone and upload to my computer in my local time zone.
This is all fine and dandy for when I am shooting locally, but the reality for any photographer is that you never shoot just locally. That said, I have sought help on this issue myself and wrung my head to try to find an answer.
Thus far, I have come to one possible conclusion. It may have something to do with the way the computer's time zone is set in the system preferences. If you have the time zone set to "set time zone automatically using current location" this could throw things off. I am not certain about this, but I think it may have something to do with what is going on.
In your case, you had set the camera to the proper time zone, and when you imported the images, you set the camera and actual time zones to the proper time. However, if you have the time zone setting to set automatically based on location and you didn't import (or upload) the images in that time zone, it may throw things off.
For example, you set your camera for Cambodia time. You then import your images in New York. you set the camera time and the actual time to Cambodia time, but the computer time zone is set to New York EST. I think if you turn off (if you have it on in the first place) the automatic time zone setting, it may solve your problem. You may even have to set the time zone on your computer to the local time zone that you took the pictures in.
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after reading the iPhoto Help files descriptions of Standard and Smart - Im after Semi - Smart.
Standard: You can also create an album by dragging a folder of photos from the Finder into an empty part of iPhoto's Source list. iPhoto creates an album with the folder's name and imports all photos contained in the folder.
- but what iPhoto 6 wont do is automatically update itself every time I add a new pic into the source folder.
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will try that out, thanks for the tip.
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to add a rule to read time zone information.
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http://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/

Help with filtering smart album

Hi
Wonder if any of you clever bods can figure this out, as I am unable to.
I have a project that contains files of .NEF, .jpg (750px web proofs) and .jpg's (hires retouched) between 2-8mb in size.
I am trying to create a smart album that will show only '.jpg' that are over 750 pixels in size (ie. just the hires retouched), however I cannot figure how to setup the filtration on a smart album.
I can start the first sequence, for example 'Show only files which end with .jpg' (which gets rid of the NEFs). However if I put the next filter line in to show files over 1mb, the NEFs show up again.
Very confused, any help very welcome.
Kindest
Kiran

Gary
U R A Genius!!
Thanks
Kiran

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cond 1 and (cond 2 or cond 3) type searches can be done as a two step process but unfortunately won't be totally dynamic.
Here's want you can do
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Hi. A few months ago I upgraded from iPhoto to aperture. It's all rather confusing but I've been willing to overlook it because of the usefulness of aperture as an advanced photo editor.
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This is particularly annoying because it also seems to have messed up the way photos are synced with my iPhone which (much to my surprise) is one of my favorite things to do on the iPhone: display my photos. Albums on the iPhone contain images often repeated 75 times or other such bizarre problems.
I assume something is corrupt somewhere but I don't know how to “reboot” my libraries without losing precious information.
Can anyone tell me what is wrong with my smart albums and what is wrong with the syncing.
Many thanks…

As a new Aperture user myself, I had a similar issue. Maybe it's related to yours.
Smart Albums have many options to choose from, and I was a bit confused at the beginning. While setting the Smart Album, you need to be sure you're marking the options you really want/need, and nothing else. For example, my "In the last month" Smart Album showed only one photo, and that wasn't correct.
But the reason was simple: I had written some text in the Search/Filter field (upper right), and obviously that was filtering the not-so-smart results in my folder.
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Smart album bug?

Hi....
I seem to have a reccuring bug in aperture.
lets say I take 20 photos right now, and import them into aperture.
If i create a smart album that filters on photos in the last week, these these photos exist in this smart album-
No problem
If I change the logic so it picks up photos taken in the last 2 days, then nothing appears.
I have checked the exif of the photos (To make sure it reads correctly) and checked my system clock.
Has anyone else encountered such a problem?

I haven't seen this problem. I have smart albums that show the last day, last week etc and it has always worked for me.
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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...
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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.
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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

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I'm using iPhoto 8.1.2 and have about 23k photos in the library. I have identified 32 key faces, and would now like to create some smart albums that contain only the face or faces that I want and to exclude all the others. S for example a smart album that has only my son.
I tried using the doesn't contain this face, but you can only have around 10 filters/critiria in a smart album.
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You can't really, because you can't exclude enough of the faces.
I would keyword the preferred images as well, so finding the face and the keyword would find the pics of the person alone.
Regards
TD

Whats the difference between and Album and a Smart Album

OK, just upgraded.... So, whats the difference between an Album and a Smart Album?
Also, I like to organise my stuff, so if I create a folder for each year, and then a project within that year, why is it that the photos are always in both - and then again if I chose to create an album specific to a project, they are there again.
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Does this mean the individual photo is stored 3 times and using 3 times the space?
Thanks guys!

Mrsthebraggster wrote:
So it might look:
          Folder (2012 Equine Photography)
               Project - Specific Events
                    Album - Big Barn Dressage May
Does this mean the individual photo is stored 3 times and using 3 times the space?
No. Conceptually the Master only lives lives in the single (time based) Project you import it into. Albums are just collections of pointers that point to images in various Projects.
"Big Barn Dressage May" could be a Project, but only if it is only one day and a limited number of image files; otherwise an Album. "2012 Equine Photography" should be an album or a Folder of Albums. "Specific Events" could be an Album or a Folder of Albums.
A Project should not be used as a Folder.
From an earlier post of mine:
Folders are indeed flexible organizational tools but IMO often overused. Folders can effectively hide contents from view and therefore require users to remember how folders are nested and what is inside them. Folders were the only way to deal with single-original film, but are IMO limiting to image database thinking.
The way I look at it conceptually:
Aperture is a database (DB), and each image file lives in one Project.
Albums are just collections of Pointers that point to individual image files living in one or more Projects. Since they just contain pointers, albums can be created or deleted at will without affecting image files. Very powerful. And Albums of pointers take up almost zero space, so they are fast and do not make the Library size grow.
Keywords can be applied to every image separately or in batches. Keywords are hugely powerful and largely obviate the need for folders. Not that we should never use folders, just that we should use folders only when useful organizationally - - after first determining that using keywords and albums is not a better approach.
As one example imagine the keyword "flowers." Every image of a 100,000 images Library that has some flowers in it has the keyword flowers. Then say we want to put flowers in an ad, or as background for a show of some kind, or to print pix for a party, or even just to look for an image for some other reason. We can find every flower image in a 100k-image database in 2 seconds, and in another few seconds create an Album called "Flowers" that points to all of those individual images.
Similarly all family pix can have a keyword "family" and all work pix can have a key word "work." Each individual pic may have any number of keywords. Such pic characteristics (work, family, flowers, etc.) should not be organized via folders.
So by using keywords and albums we can have instant access to every image everywhere, very cool. And keywords and albums essentially take up no space in the database.
Another approach is to use a folder "Family" for family pix, a folder "Flowers" for flowers pix and another folder "Work" for work pix. IMO such folders usage is a very poor approach to using an images database (probably stemming from old paper or film work practices). Note that one cannot put an image with family in a field of flowers at a work picnic in all three folders; but it is instant with keywords.
HTH
-Allen

Filtering by time, Smart albums

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