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.

Similar Messages

Smart albums are no longer updating themselves

Smart albums have always worked for me, I have Lion and iphoto 11. They stopped updating about 3 months ago. Even when I open them and fiddle a bit with the settings, for example, changing "videos from the past 180 days" to "videos from the past 181 days", they are stuck three months ago. Any ideas how or why?

Back Up Your Iphoto Library, Depress And Hold The Option (Alt) And Command Keys And Launch Iphoto - Rebuild Your Iphoto Library
LN

So many Partial Albums are broken links?

I just browsed the iTunes Store today. I found plenty of "Partial Albums" that happen to be broken links. You click on the link and the iTunes Store gives an error message: *Your request could not be completed. The item you've requested is not available.*
I'm not talking about only 2 or 3 random albums here. I'm willing to list a dozen examples here if Apple wishes me to do so, in order to track down the "broken links" so that they can fix it. This just happens to be the first time that I noticed this problem is so widespread.

The best way to report this issue is to contact the iTunes Store Customer Service department using the link at the bottom of the Purchase Issues FAQ web page and let them know which albums you've discovered to be experiencing this problem.
Regards.

I have uploaded photos from the past and they are grouped by dates. How do I seperate those photos into their own folder/album so that I can easily identify the contents. Also, what is the difference between Album, Smart Album and folders?

I have uploaded photos from the past and they are automatically arranged by date. As a result, there are many events grouped into one library/event/folder/album (not sure of the proper terminology) I'd like to separate them into folders/albums/smart albums so that I can easily identify the contents. How do I do that and do I delete the originals?

It would be good to take the tutorials and learn iPhoto - these are for the previous version but the concepts are the same and much of the command is the same - and it would be a worthwhile investment of time to take the iphoto tutorials - http://www.apple.com/findouthow/photos/ - they are very helpful and will save you a lot of time and frustration. - also the tutorials in iPhoto Help will be helpful - while iPhoto is easy and intuitive it does have a learning curve and it will save you time and pain if you spend a few minutes learning the basics
as to organization - events are generally time based and are the basic automatic organization - you can merge and split them to make them work better for you but they are not a good way to do detailed organization - best to leave them time based
albums are logical things that contain photos and are just pointers to the photo in the event so they take no extra space and all changes to a photo anywhere are reflected everywhere
Smart albums are the same except they are automatically filled based on the criteria you set when you create them
Folders are containers that you create and a folder can contain albums, smart albums or other folders so they are a big help in organization - like a vacation folder that holds folders for France, USA, China with each of thos folders holding albums of photos from the country
LN

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.

Smart Album Not Loading Images

I have not seen a discussion (nor Apple support document) that answers my newest Aperture 3 dilemma. First of all, let me say that I am not new to Aperture. I've been using the program since Aperture 2 was introduced. I have successfully used Smart Albums in the past so I'm familiar with the function.
I take photos for my son's sports teams. We give a 16x20 framed action shot to the Seniors as a grad gift. I use the jersey number to keyword every image with a senior player. I then create a Smart Album (under the Project in which the images are located) for each senior and select their Keyword (jersey #) as my sort setting... I also select "All" that "Match".
This usually works like a charm. This sorting is important because I'll have all of "John's" images in one folder and then I export the best ones to a folder on my photo website for the parents/players to view and select their favorite for the enlargement.
The Smart Albums were working fine a few weeks ago but now the images are not getting loaded into them. Some albums are empty... some have only a dozen photos when I know I have 300+. I have double-checked the metadata and the keywords are still there. I have even deleted the Keyword and retyped it and that image still does not show in the Smart Album. I have double-checked my settings in the album's "Smart Settings" window and all appears correct and normal. These Smart Albums are located under my project so the photos are "there" to find.
I started experimenting and adding the kid's initials as another keyword, then adding that as a sort preference... the altered ones seem to be showing up (or, at least I have more images than before). So, somehow my original keyword entries are not being recognized. I am in the process of "Updating Previews" hoping that somehow this will "refresh" or "restore" the recognition of the Keywords. Would repairing Aperture permissions or database help?
I have over 7,000 images in this season's project library (almost 70,000 collective images). I have a tight deadline and cannot afford the time to review every image and either add a new keyword or drag the image to a new album or folder. I really need the Smart Albums to work with the original Keywords.
My Mac Store (for "one to one" assistance) is over an hour away... does anyone have a suggestion that I can try right away?
Many thanks for your time.

Hi Tony,
Thank you for your ideas. The "Source" library is correct but I have also experimented by creating a new Smart Album outside the project using my entire Library as the Source... it didn't make a difference.
I feel confident that I have set up the Smart Folder correctly. I believe this is a glitch in my software because I have many Smart Albums set up in various projects and I just discovered that none of them are working properly. I have a Smart Album that contained over 1000 "Fox" images... it's now empty. I have an "Elk/Deer" Smart Album that now only has 20 images (instead of hundreds). I'm not sure where the corruption happened but I know it was recent. The way the program is picking and choosing the images to include/exclude in a Smart Album has no rhyme or reason.
I don't know if restoring my library from the back-up will make a difference or if my back-up (updated recently) is also corrupted.
I can tell you this for sure: When you have over 70,000 sorted throughout your system... the prospect of starting over is daunting.
If anyone else has experienced this, please share the resolution. In the meantime, I think I'll take the computer to a Mac one to one or the Genius Bar and see if they can think of a fix.
Tony and Kirby, thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

How to find out which keywords were used to create a smart album?

Hi,
I actually have 2 questions;
a) Short of scrolling down my very long list of password on the HUD - is there an elegant way to do it - How to find out which passwords were used to create an existing smart album? It's a recurring challenge for me.\ 'cause I like using smart albums, but once in a while need to check or chane the passwords.
b) With annoying regularity when I try to get to this forum and choose Aperture, I get the following message - in pink, no less: It appears you're not allowed to view what you requested. You might contact your administrator if you think this is a mistake.
Any clues?
Thanks guys,
Raphael
<Edited by Host>

b) With annoying regularity when I try to get to this forum and choose Aperture, I get the following message - in pink, no less: It appears you're not allowed to view what you requested. You might contact your administrator if you think this is a mistake.
Any clues?
Raphael,
that message may occur for four reasons at least:
Most frequently, when you are using an outdated link to a post that no longer exists, for example from an email notofication. Sometimes our community host will remove posts, that are in violation of the terms of use: see:
Apple Support Communities Terms of Use
Or you are using the edit button or a bookmark to an "Edit" window, after the fifteen minutes allowed for editing are up.
Or you want to view a page in a restricted section of the ASC - soem perta are only open for members of level 6 or higher.
Or it is one of the unexplained problems with the forum software right now.
a) Short of scrolling down my very long list of password on the HUD - is there an elegant way to do it - How to find out which passwords were used to create an existing smart album? It's a recurring challenge for me.\ 'cause I like using smart albums, but once in a while need to check or chane the passwords.
I really like Kirby's suggestion with the IPTC rule Keyword is. This is very useful for smart albums global to the library.
Frequently a different approach helps for my smart albums. Many of my smart albums are local to projects or folders. In this case the smart HUD will only show those keywords that have been used for the images in the selection. So if I only have tagged the images with the keywords "birds" and "slideshow", the smart settings HUD will only show these two keywords and the list is very short.
My Keywords HUD, is organized hierarchically; this way I can collapse large sections at once, and it is easier to focus on the keywords needed for a specific task.
I use the search field in HUD a lot, to filter the set of keywords shown.

Missing Library Albums and Built in Smart Albums

Hi,
In AP3 I am missing the built in "Library Albums" with the associated smart albums (★★★★★,Rejected etc). I did a search and someone solved the problem by deleting the BuiltinSmartAlbums.plist located at user/library/application support/aperture and then restarting Aperture.
My problem is I cannot locate the plist file. It's confusing, as I can create a new library and the Built in library and associated smart albums are available. However, I would like the option in my existing library.
Does anyone have an idea how I can recover the built in Album/smart albums?
Thanks

Well, they aren't in the libraries that are "split" from another, so I guess that is how you wound up in this situation.
You can simply remake them, takes only a few minutes and put them in your own folder (but then you might have problems with sorting).
How about just importing your entire current lib into a clean new lib that has the albums?

Can you manually add photos to a Smart Album?

I have created Smart Albums using faces. IE one for my daughter. I have some other pictures I want to put in the album that I want in her album but don't have a face that is hers. It wont let me drag onto it. Help!

That is correct - smart albums are automatic and photos are added or removed based on meeting the set criteria - one way to do it is to add a keyword for thos photos and include that keyword as ann optional criteria for the smart album
LN

Smart Album's Display Wrong Photos (By Date)

Compiling the family photos from vacation, about 8 different camera's. Different clocks on all the camera's I'm trying to get photos to show up in Date driven smart albums.
Day 1 June 25
Day 2 June 26
I have adjusted the timezones successfully for most of the photos, now I need to perform some batch changes to clean up problems.
After I do this, my Smart Albums are not showing the right photos -- they keep showing photos from the previous day no mater what I do.
The Image Date is showing up as correct for the problem photos...
Any suggestions?

Where are the Smart Albums located in your library? Aperture actually scopes Smart Albums based on where they are initially created. So if you, say, create a folder called "Smart Albums" at the highest level of your hierarchy, in a folder where there are no projects, the Smart Albums will always be empty. You need to create them somewhere that there are projects with photos.
It's a bit confusing until you understand what's going on. Have a read of the document on Smart Albums which explains how they work in particular. This really is one area where you do have to read the manual to understand… I think their functionality could be cleared up a bit in the UI to make it more obvious that they're scoped.

Smart albums not showing fotos

I created smart albums in fotos on osx. Smart albums are on icloud fotos but they are empty and fotos are not showing.
What can be done? Standard? Bug? Fix when?
Thanks!
Markus

Jump over to the following post: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11000823&#11000823 there solution worked for me.
Kind Regards,
--Eric Ashley

New Smart Album problems PSE9 Mac OSX

I am running PSE9 on a Macbook Pro and an Imac, both using Mac OSX. Creating a new Smart Album on the Macbook works perfectly but on the Imac it is unworkable. When I try to create a new Smart Album I just get a spinning ball and everything stops. I have uninstalled PSE9 and the Organizer and also removed all traces of them in the Library. Installing them again and making sure that I import only a dozen images into Organizer makes things slightly better. This time the spinning ball only lasted for a minute and then I could create a Smart Album. I then tried to create another Smart Album and had the spinning ball for a couple of minutes. Creating the third Smart Album was worse still. There is no problem with normal albums.
Has anybody got a way round this. I have about 9000 images, going back to 2001, and I want to put them into yearly albums so Smart Albums are a very useful tool.
A similar query by another member some time ago received no feedback.
Thanks for any help.

Thanks for your suggestions. I have uninstalled pse9 and Organizer once again and removed all traces in "hard drive>library>application support>adobe". I have also removed the elements and organizer preferences and anything else I could see in my username/library. After doing all this I reinstalled PSE9 and Organizer and then searched for and installed the updates needed. I imported 12 images (jpg) into Organizer and then tried to create three smart albums. In each case I got the spinning ball for about 40 seconds before I could enter the smart album name.
I have just tried to add a fourth smart album and the spinning ball has remained for ten minutes - presumably it has crashed.
Help!

Smart Album Scope

I have been using Aperture 1.5.1 and have noticed what I consider to be strange or, at least, non-intuitive behavior for smart albums. I'm wondering if others have had the same experience and if Apple considers this normal behavior.
First, some background. I have 6 projects in three different folders that are stored at the root level of the Aperture library. Outside of these folders I have other folders containing smart albums that are intended to search all the projects for the appropriate images. These folders are, again, at the root level of the Aperture library. The smart albums were originally created in Aperture 1.1 inside the folders in which they currently live.
Prior to my update to 1.5, this worked spectacularly. However, after my update to 1.5, I found that all my smart albums were empty. The Apple documentation for Aperture claims that the scope of smart album search is influenced by where the smart album resides. Smart albums, according to the documentation, only search projects that are 'downstream' from the smart album. My smart albums were, therefore, not searching any projects because they were created in a folder with no projects. This information can be found here.
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n302626
With this information, it made sense that my smart albums were empty. I'm not sure it was wise of Apple to change smart album behavior in this way between 1.1 and 1.5, but there you have it.
This was really disturbing because I like to keep my smart albums outside my folders with projects. Worse yet, it appeared as though I would have store all my smart albums at the root of my Aperture library to get them to search all my projects in the three different folders. That just felt ugly and very unaesthetically pleasing.
I found, however, that if I created a smart album at the root of the Aperture library and then moved that smart album to any other folder at any level relative to the projects, it retained its scope for searching realtive to where it was created.
In other words, it appears that the Apple documentation at http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n302626 needs to be changed to replaced every reference to where a smart album is placed to where a smart album is created. The scope of smart album searches appears to be dictated by where that album is created, not where it is stored.
So, my question to all of you is whether this is something the rest of you are observing? It seems strange to me, and I'm worried this is not what Apple intends and therefore represents a bug to them that they'll "fix" in the next release and thus destroy my smart albums again.
It seems to me it would make much more sense for Apple to remove this silly "scope of search based on location of album creation" behavior and just insert a line in the smart album setup that allows one to search particular projects or all projects. It seems that Apple has made an elegant search interface way to complex with the scoping issue.
Powermac G5 Dual 2.0 GHz PCI Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2 GB RAM

Dale
what you experience is exactly how it works. there are other threads about the smart album "problem", with the same outcome.
the problem is not really, how smart albums are working. if a smart album is CREATED based on the entire library, it will therefore search the entire library, regardless where you move it afterwards. if you create a smartfolder within a project, it should be project-bound, regardless where you finally store it. that makes sense.
however, the problem is the changed behaviour between previous versions and 1.5.1. smart albums that were created "unlinked" (somewhere in your structure but not within a project or while the library was selected) worked fine before but show no results since 1.5.1.
if someone only has a few smart albums, then this is quickly solved, just re-create them in the right location and move them to wherever you want afterwards. if you have created over a hundred smart albums for subjects, ratings, clients, models, agencies etc etc already, you're in trouble. and this would be me as example.

Can someone explain what a smart album is?

I went to the iPhoto help section but need a basic explanation of what a smart album is and why I should make one.
Thanks!

A smart album is different from a regular album in that you can't manually drag photos into that album. the photos that are in that album are the photos that meet the conditions that you set for that album. Same thing goes to deleting photos from a smart album, you can't do it because as long as the photos meet the conditions you set, they will stay in that album.
Smart albums are automatically updated to include any new photos you import that meet the conditions of the smart album you created.
They are great for many purposes.
I like to have a smart album of all my 5 star rating photos. It is updated whenever I rate my new photos with 5 stars.
I also have a smart album whose conditions are "album" is not" "any".
This album has all my photos in it that I have not placed in an album yet.
This way I can keep track of what photos are not in any albums so I can place them in an album.

PSE 9 Organiser - Smart albums & album categories

Is it posible to move Smart Albums into an Album Category, as the drag and drop is not working for me. I can creat normal Albums and drag them in to an Album Category but Smart Albums do not appear to allow themselves to be moved from the highest level where they are created?

Smart albums are smart for two reasons. The first one is that with a database system like the Organizer, storing a query takes so much less disk space and avoids cumbersome tables and indexes...
The second one, as I stated, is that the definition of criteria instead the listing of individual files will work even if you add files or delete them. This may be considered an advantage... or a disadvantage if you want to 'freeze' the result of the query. That's why I think the only simple way the software could do this would be to duplicate the result in a normal album (or collection). I do not see any reason it could not be done automatically, but the user would have to be aware of this change in some way. I am convinced that would entail much confusion for many users.

Smart Albums are broken!

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