Files Exported from Aperture 3 Keep Their Color Labels

If you haven’t used Color Labels in Aperture much, you may not know that the color stay with the image file even after they are imported. This can come in handy when you are looking at the images in the Finder.

Oddly, they do not show up in all other photo viewing apps, like Photo Mechanic. However, Star Ratings from Aperture will show up in Photo Mechanic.

In Aperture…

This is what the Color Labels look like in Aperture.

In the Finder…

This is what the same images look like after they were exported from Aperture and viewed in a Finder window.

In Photo Mechanic…

The same exported images in Photo Mechanic. Notice the Star Ratings show up but the Color Ratings do not.

Comments

[Andrew Mumford]

Colour labels in Photomechanic are by convention synchronized using the IPTC/XMP "Urgency Field".

Media Pro will correctly read/write these fields from/to metadata. The Finder labels are completely divorced from that workflow.

Yet another hole in Aperture's IPTC metadata workflow and one of the reasons why I'm still using Photo Mechanic for Keywording and Ratings.

My Tuppence ...

[Jochen Reimers]

Hi, after I labeled my images in Aperture the colors don't show up on the originals in the finder. What could I do?

Jochen

[Andrew Mumford]

I don't think the Colour Labels ever get synced to the "Originals" even if you "write metadata to masters".

However when you export "versions" you should expect the Colour Labels to show up in the finder then.

Counter intuitively, color labels applied prior to import via Photo Mechanic show up on exported files again in Photo Mechanic by virtue of the metadata tag they use that Aperture does preserve.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some Photo Mechanic zealot - I would love to have a one stop solution but the raw speed of PM coupled with a solid workflow allows me to use PM as a front end and back end for uploading to smugmug leaving mostly image processing for Aperture.