Using and Filling Metadata

Question

I'm really into using the Metadata fields to the max, but don't have a great understanding of some of the IPTC fields, as well as a lot of the other fields. I can easily understand things such as Image Location, etc, etc, but am looking for better understand (perhaps even by definition) of all the fields. Does anyone know of a resource that will have this information?
Also, I'm looking for a way to add commentary to certain images as a way of remembering details about what the image is about, what I was doing during the time, history of the place, etc, etc. Is there a good, or appropriate field to do this in? I've even tried creating custom fields for this purpose, but would like to use a more appropriate field if possible? Also, when typing too much information about a photo, it kind of makes the "Filter by Text" less useful.
Thanks for any feedback, comments.
Mac

Answer 1

Hey Kirby,
I started this post because I felt that the system I had wasn't reliable. For the most part, filling in the Metadata isn't an issue at all. It only becomes an issue when I want to include more specific (and lengthy) data about certain photos, or groups of photos. I've tried using the "Description" field, as well as a number of others (that seemed appropriate), but it still always brings me back to the same place - having too much text associated with a given (set) of photos.
This in itself isn't even really the issue. My motivation for posting was (and still is) based on filtering my images by "Text". When I do so, it doesn't seem to work accurately, nor in the way that I want. When you have a lot of text associated with an image, you might have a word in the body of text that will pull that image to include in the filter, only you don't really want that image in the filter at all.
On the other end of the spectrum, I've been noticing a strange occurrence, and it may (or may not) have anything to do with this. I've been testing the "Text" filter and it seems to pull images that don't have the filtered text in them. For example, I start off with my entire Library of photos. I then filter based on "Text," and type the word, "west" into the box. This brings up all the photos with that word associated with them. When I check the images, most of them do in one form or another have the word associated with them, but I also find images that don't have the word west associated with them at all. It is driving me mad that I can't find it, and I have searched every conceivable place, metatdata field, etc, and it just doesn't reveal itself. I'm wondering if Aperture is filtering based on text, where say there is a word like "Domestic" and then another word with a "w" in it and it is putting the text pieces together to come up with "west". I can't imagine that Aperture would do that, but I can't find any other plausible solution, as I can't find the word anywhere else or in any other way.
So, this is part of the dilemma and why I posted in the first place. As for what I am going to decide to do...? Well, first I need to figure out why I am getting this strange filter effect. After that, I will think more critically about what to do going forward. I think that perhaps keeping an outside reference, such as a document that references the images and their descriptions might be the way to go, but then I don't have direct access to the information without opening the document. I'd much prefer to have the information at my fingertips within Aperture while I am viewing the images. That said, I feel that Aperture works best when Metadata is kept simple. I'm not saying that it should be kept to a minimum, but rather less wordy. I'm a huge fan of including tons of keywords, etc, but writing sentences and paragraphs and associating that text with individual and/or groups of images might work more against than for my (our) purposes.
If any one of you can think of what might be going on with my "Text" filter issue described above, please let me know.
Mac