How to remove selected image from a light table?

Question

According to the Aperture User Manual, when I select an image on a light table, I should be able to remove it (while still leaving it in the light table browser). However, this seems to work only for the image I most recently added to the light table -- when I select an image I added just before the most recent, the button at the upper left for "Light Table Put Back Selected" is grayed out. (Also, the command-shift-P shortcut shown in the tooltip doesn't do anything.) Am I misunderstanding the use of this button? Doing something wrong? I added some images, and decided I wanted to put a few of them back, but can't figure out a way to do that. Makes the light table pretty useless except for layout of a set of images you are already committed to. Doesn't seem possible.

Answer 1

Hey, thanks -- everything worked as you described. It never would have occurred to me that the "put back" button refers to the browser selection not the layout selection, for reasons I give below.
I think Aperture exhibits some conceptual confusion here. First of all, a "light table" is created by the New > Light Table command, and you add images to the newly created light table just as you would add them to an album. But those images don't go on the light table layout until you drag them from the browser to the layout table. The "put back" button and "remove from light table" contextual menu command both mean remove from the layout. The phrasing of the contextual menu command make it sounds as if it will remove the clicked image from the light table's collection of images, like removing an image from an album -- it would have made more sense to name this command "put back". Furthermore, the "put back" button is above the layout display, not above the browser, which to me implies that it applies to selections in the layout display. To select an image in the browser, and click "put back selected" seems backwards -- if you just selected the image in the browser, your attention is focused on the browser, not the layout; from the browser's point of view, the button should read "bring back" not "put back".
The documentation didn't really help when I was trying to figure this out. Sometimes the Aperture documentation refers to just a "light table", as on the overview on page 732. On pages 733 and 734, though, it refers to a "light table album". On page 735 of the Aperture manual there is a very brief explanation of how "to add images to the light table" and "to remove an image from the light table". Here, "light table" refers to the layout not the album. The explanation of the "Put Back Selected" button says to select an image then click the button, and the picture shown is of an image selected in the layout, not in the browser.