Finding Adjusted Images in Aperture 3

Recently in the forums, a user asked about how to find the images in their library that they’d spent time working on already. (The reason in this case was to locate all images from a recent iPhoto conversion that they’d adjusted, so they could get rid of everything else and start over with a new strategy—but maintain the work they’d already done).

One of Aperture core strengths is its searching capabilities. You can search by just about anything in Aperture, and combine search criteria to perform exceedingly precise searches, and even save those as Smart Albums that will update in real-time as your library changes.

In this case, the search criteria is just one option away—Adjustments.

Open the Search HUD in any window, and add the criteria Adjustments from the Add Rule pull-down in the top right of the window.

From there, simply choose Adjustments: are applied, and immediately you’ll find every image that you’ve applied any kind of adjustment to.

If you want to refine the search to a particular kind of adjustment, you can do that too.

As you can see, you can restrict the filter to show images that include (or don’t include) specific adjustments, such as Exposure, Curves, or anything else—even Raw Decode version.

Keep in mind that you can always reverse this search, and show all images that don’t have any adjustments applied, as well.