Searching for parent keywords only, Aperture 3

Question

Hello everyone,
I want to search for images that have top-level keywords only, but not the child keywords. For example, if I have a 'birds' keyword with child keywords in it...
Birds
-Bald Eagle
-Heron
--Green Heron
--Blue Heron
-Pheasant
...if I keyword search for 'Birds', it brings up everything else in that birds category.
Normally this would be fine, but sometimes I don't know the name of birds in my photos, so I just assign them the generic keyword 'birds'. Occasionally, I would like to be able to go back to my 'birds' keyword, and find only those images that haven't been tagged with a deeper-level keyword.
Is this possible to do? I can't seem to find a way to do it. I appreciate any help.
-Jeff

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure Apple has actually improved the handling of parent keywords and the keyword hierarchy since 3.0 came out. It used to not really work at all.
Now it works as described in this thread. (Search on the parent keyword, and Aperture will find all images tagged with any of the children keywords.) This is, imho, very useful, and requires (I think) only one small user restriction to give Aperture the behavior most seem to expect from a nested (i.e.: hierarchical) keyword structure.
The "user restriction" is to give a special marker to parent keywords (to identify them as containers of keywords, separate from keywords), and to use these container keywords only as containers (that is, do not apply them to images).
I prefix all top-level containers with "aa.". This is arbitrary, but it has some reasons to recommend it:
. it forces the containers to the top of the keyword hierarchy
. it stands out without making the name harder to read at a glance
. the period allows one to double-click either the prefix or the suffix to select it in isolation
. it allows straightforward modification for hierarchy depth (see below).
In practice (using the example in this thread), the keyword hierarchy might be (as a starting point):
aa.Animals {top-level category}
bb.Birds {second-level category}
cc.Hawks {third-level category}
HawkUnspecified {child in third-level category}
HawkRedShouldered {child in third-level category}
HawkSharpshinned {child in third-level category}
{Etc.}
This immediately (afaict) solves several related usage problems. All hawk images show up when images are filtered for "Animals" or "Birds". One can easily search for "all hawks" or a specific hawk. One can easily tag hawks to be specified later, and easily recall those images. All the "Hawk" tags are gathered together alphabetically (as well as hierarchically) -- makes creating filters much easier. The Keyword HUD is much more useful as a reporting tool. (There is an added complexity: the keyword "HawkUnspecified" must be manually removed after the hawk is specified (a good use of a complex Smart Album).)
Additionally, this system allows for (IME) much easier maintenance of the Keyword list (renaming and moving).
#1 Keyword hint: use "{Option}+click" in the Filter HUD Keyword Rule to limit the selection to the clicked Keyword. Any time you filter on Keyword and don't get the result you expect, this is the first thing to check.
For me, Keyword use in Aperture is still very much a work in progress. Suggestions and comments are welcome.