Keyword Hierarchies and Aperture 3

[Rick Baumhauer]

Does anybody have pointers on getting hierarchical keywords from PM into Aperture 3?  I had been using PM and Lightroom 2 together, and set PM to use a separator character (the "vertical pipe" is the only option now, I believe) in hierarchies, and Lightroom read them properly and recognized the hierarchy.

I'm generally more comfortable with Aperture, and only moved to Lightroom 2 because of the features and speed it had over Aperture 2.  Aperture 3 addresses most of my issues and adds capabilities that I like, so I'd like to go back that direction.  However, when I import my images into Aperture, it reads the keywords as a string, and doesn't recognize the hierarchy properly.  For example, instead of getting the following:

Bird
     Raptor
          Osprey

I get Bird|Raptor|Osprey in my keywords list in Aperture 3.

Since PM only supports the vertical pipe as a separator, I don't know if there's any option that will get a hierarchy into Aperture properly.  Lightroom will allow a couple other characters (".", "," and "/", I believe), but I don't know if any of them would fix the problem in Aperture, and, from what I can find, PM won't use those characters anyways.

Looking on the bright side, it appears that Aperture 3 automatically loads metadata updates - I had a folder-full of photos that I had updated keywords on in PM, and Aperture picked up the changes for each photo as I clicked on it.  So, if there's an easy way to get PM to play with Aperture 3, it should be easy to implement on the Aperture side.

Rick

[Kirk Baker]

Rick,

Does anybody have pointers on getting hierarchical keywords from PM into Aperture 3?  I had been using PM and Lightroom 2 together, and set PM to use a separator character (the "vertical pipe" is the only option now, I believe) in hierarchies, and Lightroom read them properly and recognized the hierarchy.

I'm generally more comfortable with Aperture, and only moved to Lightroom 2 because of the features and speed it had over Aperture 2.  Aperture 3 addresses most of my issues and adds capabilities that I like, so I'd like to go back that direction.  However, when I import my images into Aperture, it reads the keywords as a string, and doesn't recognize the hierarchy properly.  For example, instead of getting the following:

Bird
     Raptor
          Osprey

I get Bird|Raptor|Osprey in my keywords list in Aperture 3.

Since PM only supports the vertical pipe as a separator, I don't know if there's any option that will get a hierarchy into Aperture properly.  Lightroom will allow a couple other characters (".", "," and "/", I believe), but I don't know if any of them would fix the problem in Aperture, and, from what I can find, PM won't use those characters anyways.

Looking on the bright side, it appears that Aperture 3 automatically loads metadata updates - I had a folder-full of photos that I had updated keywords on in PM, and Aperture picked up the changes for each photo as I clicked on it.  So, if there's an easy way to get PM to play with Aperture 3, it should be easy to implement on the Aperture side.

Not being Aperture users ourselves, we don't know what would work best.  But you can easily experiment by editing the .XMP file with a text editor.  Try changing the '|' character to one of the others you listed and updating inside Aperture 3.  Let us know if anything works out.

-Kirk

[Rick Baumhauer]

Kirk - thanks!  That had occurred to me, but investigating in a number of places on the 'net has led to the conclusion that there isn't any way to make Aperture import hierarchies properly.  It can create them internally, but you have to jump through hoops to even export them - otherwise they're kept in a "virtual" state in the Aperture library.

So, long story short, I have to decide whether I want to keyword in PM or Aperture, which really means deciding whether I want to use Aperture going forward, or Lightroom.  Decisions, decisions.......

Thanks again for the quick suggestion.

Rick

[platti]

...
Not being Aperture users ourselves, we don't know what would work best. ...

Hi,
what do you use instead?

[Kirk Baker]

...
Not being Aperture users ourselves, we don't know what would work best. ...

Hi,
what do you use instead?

Photo Mechanic and Photoshop

-Kirk

[Rick Baumhauer]

...
Not being Aperture users ourselves, we don't know what would work best. ...

Hi,
what do you use instead?

I ended up going back to Lightroom (combination of LR2 and the LR3 beta 2 at the moment).  There are so many things that I prefer about Aperture, but switching would involve a ton of work just to get my keywords in the shape I want them (and there are major bugs/hurdles in that process), that it just doesn't make sense to keep banging on it, hoping for the best.

At this point, if you can get used to Lightroom's too-modal interface, it's probably your best bet.  You can download, geotag, and keyword in PM, import into Lightroom with everything intact (including color codes and star ratings), and then either process exclusively in Lightroom, or use it as a "hub" to Photoshop, DxO, Painter, or whatever else your heart desires.