One of my favorite ways of using Aperture is in Full Screen mode. In this mode, you get as much real estate as possible focused on the most important thing: Your photographs. When I first started using Aperture, however, there was something about full screen mode that frustrated me. I tried putting the image navigation bar on the bottom and on the sides, but it was always and just ever so slightly getting in the way. The problem is that it was covering up a bit of my images, taking the magic out of full screen mode.
After fighting with it for a while, I finally found the magic “Avoid” setting in the Viewer Mode control. This menu item can also be easily accessed with the Control-V keyboard shortcut. The location of this setting is shown in the following screen grab:
Once toggled, Aperture will layout the full screen mode in such a way that it will display the photograph without letting it slip under the navigation bar. Perfect.
It’s a simple thing, sure. But, I’ve run into a few other people that for some reason didn’t find this setting right off the bat and they had stopped using full screen mode so much because of it. But, once they know the trick, full screen mode becomes part of their Aperture experience again.
One more tip: You’ll notice in the screen grabs above that I have the navigation strip on left edge. I find that putting it on the left or right edge, instead of on the bottom in its default location, maximizes screen real estate for working on vertical images and doesn’t impact horizontal images much—especially on a wide screen MacBook Pro.
If you have a favorite full screen mode tip, please leave a comment!
A related question: when I use full screen mode with two displays the full image comes up on my laptop screen, not my monitor. The monitor just goes black. Even when I have the viewer window on the monitor, the full image comes up on my laptop. What am I missing?
been reading "Inside Ap" for awhile now, just found this post. extra wonderful, important and useful tip! keep up the amazing work! yay new things!
For me, one of the most useful things to know is that you can toggle the Adjustment HUD by pressing the H key. The HUD will always be on top of the image, so it is absolutely necessary to open it and close it for every image. Without the keyboard toggle, full screen editing of many images at a time is just too slow.
I just wish there were some way to edit even very minimal amounts of metadata (version name, title? -- I know I can do keywords and rating) while in fullscreen mode so I didn't have to switch back and forth. Has anyone found a good way around this?
do you know how long i've struggled to find what you have just posted!!
thanks, saved me loads of hassle when working in full screen mode :0)
Don't know if I can give a shameless plug here, but this tip (and many other "oh wow's") can be found in this book and DVD. Just finished it, in a word, brilliant.
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Pro-Training-Aperture-1-5/dp/0321496620
I wish the nav strip were a bona-fide palate, so I could move it to my second monitor and REALLY have full-screen.
This is just fantastic. I was wondering right from day one that I started using Full Screen Mode why the image kept centering on the screen while visually i could feel that if the picture could move to one side there was enough place for the image strip not to overlap. Great Tip. Now, is there a way to do this with a 2 display setup so that I can have the HUD not interfere with the image on my large screen? :)
OH GOD THANK YOU.
Now i feel dumb for not looking for a fix to this in the first place.
Genius! This was the only reason I avoided full screen mode.
I also find the Y shortcut really useful, it toggles the metadata in the viewer, as I like to hide the metadata in full screen mode and usually have it displayed in regular viewer.
Thank you!
I have it on Auto so that it only shows when my mouse is over it. and Avoid off - so I can view a larger pic but not have part covered.
Also more people know it, but turn the tool bar to auto show too.
Ah, perfect! That has bugged me to no end.
It'd be nice if I could drag it to another monitor, too.
Man, many many thanks.. navigation bar over the photo was very anoying.