Aperture is a big program. It might not be as big as Photoshop or Final Cut Pro, but it still does a lot! In fact, there’s so much in there that it’s rare to find someone who uses every single button and feature regularly at an expert level. What this means is that once in a while, you stumble on something new to you that’s incredibly exciting! Unfortunately, sometimes it’s tough to tell exactly what you did that gave you the new, cool result.
Last week, I received a very kind, excited email from Renato Domith Godinho who found one of these features. Specifically, he discovered that you can rotate an image to an arbitrary angle in a book layout, even though the interface doesn’t clearly show you how. When he emailed me, he wasn’t sure exactly what he did to rotate the image, and thought that perhaps he’d found a semi-secret feature. I have to admit that I almost felt like a louse, bursting his bubble of excitement, when I emailed him back to tell him specifically how to rotate images.
In case you’re wondering, to rotate images when making a book:
- Select the Edit Layout button
- Click on the image you wish to rotate
- Move the mouse just outside the image, by one of the gray squares
- The cursor will change to crosshairs, and you’ll be able to drag the cursor to rotate the image
The overall point, though, is that it’s worth spending time exploring features that you might not use regularly, such as making a book or a light table, both in Aperture and other programs (as a side note, I don’t think you can rotate images arbitrarily in the light table). It’s amazing the subtle features you’ll discover! And who knows, perhaps you’ll discover something that completely changes your workflow!
Additionally, I want to encourage everyone reading Inside Aperture to feel free to email us or post a comment, asking us questions you have that other people might be interested in or suggesting topics that you’d like to see us discuss! It’s sometimes hard to think of fresh ideas for posts, and some people get upset if our topic isn’t 100% about Aperture (I found this out the hard way when I posted about what the new MacBook Pro features meant for Aperture users). Tell us what you’d like, and we’ll do our best!
Josh, I'm taking you up on your invitation to submit a question, one that relates indirectly to the topic of this post. I purchased a Canon Rebel XTi in June just before going on a 3-week trip to France. This was my first experience at shooting RAW and I set the camera to save RAW + JPG when in creative modes. I off-loaded my cards onto my MacBook Pro (100GB hd) at the end of each day and captured them as managed files in Aperture. And though not all of my shots were shot in RAW, most were. Needless to say, when I returned from this trip, my hard drive space was quite low.
In a recent podcast of Derrick Story's, I learned that maybe I don't really need those extra JPG file copies since I am doing most initial editing in Aperture and don't need the JPG for instant slide shows or on-site printing. I have, therefore, changed my camera setting to capture only RAW.
However, I now have over 1,200 RAW+JPG images sitting in my Aperture Library and I would like to delete the JPGS, since they, on average, are now taking up (if my math is correct) almost 4 to 5 GBs of my hard drive space! What's the best way to accomplish this 'dump' of the JPGs?
Oh, you mean the filmstrip. If you click the button on the end of the filmstrip with a computer monitor icon, you'll see two choices, On/Auto and Avoid. On/Auto toggles between always showing the filmstrip and automatically showing it when you mouse over it. Avoid, if checked, will cause the filmstrip to push the image out of the way, and if avoid is off, the filmstrip will float up over the image. Click and drag on the other end of the filmstrip to move it around the screen, including being docked to the edges. You can also change the thumbnail size in the filmstrip.
Josh, not keywords and adj. ones, -- but that one, that have no Close button... with previews displayed on it.
Graeme, thanks for the tip! ed and Anonymous, I've looked around a bit, both playing myself and searching around. I haven't found a way to flip it horizontally or to change the rotation point.
Aleksandr, to get rid of the adjustments hud, type h, and to get rid of the keywords hud, press shift+h.
I'm quite a newbie in Aperture, and I can't toggle off the HUD in Fullscreen mode to watch images in their most. I want and I can't do this. Does anybody know how to treat this?
I've often wanted to flip an image horizontally in the book layout. Is there any way to do this? It seems like a fundamental command that Apple overlooked or chose not to include in the 1.x version.
Is there a way to move the rotational point when using the Rotate tool? For instance, I would like to rotate a photo, but not about the center.
While we are on the topic of books you can resize photos in books without moving them by holding down the option key and dragging like normal.