One of the ways I have increased my speed and efficiency working with Aperture was to learn a few layout shortcuts that kicked my workflow into high gear. This is particularly important if you’re an Aperture laptop user, which many, if not most of us are. I dream of a two screen set-up and I will edit my work that way someday, but for now these layout shortcuts will make you forget you’re not working on a 30-inch monitor.

Apple>Option>S gives you the basic view.

Control D lets you toggle the Metadata panel, Control A for the Adjustments panel as part of the browser. Play with all these short cut keys and you’ll know them.

Apple Option B gives you a browser showing all your images in that project or album.

Apple Option V maximizes your browser, even the projects panel goes away. To bring it back, press the W key. Toggle it and see what happens.

Of course the F key takes you to a favorite place for most Aperture users: Full Screen Mode. Of course you can move the filmstrip around, placing it on the side for verticals and on the bottom for horizontal views. In the bottom left corner is the Viewer Mode Button. If you activate “Auto” the filmstrip disappears unless you roll the cursor over it. “Avoid” means the image won’t be cut off by the filmstrip, but instead re-sizes itself to show the whole image. Very cool.

Playing around with the browser short cut keys will get you moving swiftly through your images with Aperture. Much more to come on speeding up workflow…