Trying to sharpen an entire album at once + Ratings have disappeared

Question

I'm trying to sharpen an entire album at once (just to apply the basic Edge sharpening values, as all my RAW files look pretty soft, but I don't want to sharpen each individually).
I've followed the instructions here: http://chuqui.typepad.com/imagingreality/usingaperture/index.html
and while it works okay, it leaves me with a problem that it creates a new sharpened Version of each image, which sits underneath the Master. So in each Stack, the unsharpened master is the Pick and not the sharpened version.
Obviously, I don't want to go through each image and select the version to be the pick.
Is there something I'm missing here? Is there an easy way to set the versions to be the Picks and not the masters, or is my workflow just plain wrong?
On an even more newbie-ish note, in the grid view browser, thumbnails are no longer displayed with their ratings, so I can't filter out higer rated images. I expect that there's an easy way to bring this back, but I've searched the manual without success.
Thanks for any help from a confused newbie.
Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2GB RAM
Macbook   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   2GB RAM

Answer 1

Aperture never promotes a version to the stack pick automatically. IMO this should be a preference setting (and I'd set it to Promote Adjusted Version).
so, after stamping all your images, and any other adjustments, you'll need to troll through and promote.
The fastest way I found is to use the keyboard ..... no, you can't lift/stamp or batch change. ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!
OK, here's what I did/do:
Reduce thumbnails in the project viewer to a reasonably small size (sufficient so you can determine the master filename from the version name).
Press "V" to remove the selected image from being viewed.
From the menu, Stacks, Expand all stacks
Click the first image.
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Coffee
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
More caffeine
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
REALLY START VENTING AT APERTURE TEAM
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Press <Apple> and left square parenthesis (promote).
Right arrow, right arrow,
Halucinate!
You get the drill.
Sorry it's so painful.
Engage brain in neutral is my best suggestion.
G.