Stacking Time Saver

Stacking tends to be an overlooked feature for a lot of new users to Aperture. The idea is that you can group photos together into a pile or collection with the ability to show only the front most photo of the stack. Before we get to the tip here are some basics.

An example of using a stack would go something like this. You photograph little billy kicking the soccer ball. You end up holding the shutter button down and taking 6 shots in a row of billy kicking the cat with the ball. The best of the bunch is the 3rd one in the series where the cat is 2 feet off the ground. Billy is SO cute that you don’t want to delete the other photos but you don’t really care to see all six of them, just the 3rd one. Using the stack command you can select all the photos and stack them together, close the stack and show only the 3rd one as the stack pick (or top/best photo of the stack).

There is a whole menu dedicated to stacking but to keep it simple I’ll just pass on the keyboard shortcut to stack photos which is Command+K. To select photos to stack you can either:

1. Click on the 1st photo, hold Shift (this allows you to select all the photos between the first and last photo), click the last photo, press Command+K… stack made.
2. Click on the 1st photo, hold Command (this lets you select individual photos regardless of where they are in the project), click all the other photos you want to add, press Command+K… stack made.

After you make the stack you will see a gray box surrounding all of the selected photos and a number will appear in the top left of the first photo. This number is how many photos are in the stack and clicking it will close or open the stack showing or hiding all those photos.

You might notice that once you close the stack the photo showing is NOT the 3rd one that you loved so much. The first photo in the stack is what represents the whole stack and is know as the Stack Pick. You can simply click and drag your favorite photo to the front of the stack or you can press Command+\ to move a selected photo to the front.

Now for the tip… shew… took awhile to get here. When you go to initially make the stack you can dictate which photo you want as the stack pick. Using my example before this is how you would do it.

1. Click to select the photo that would become the stack pick… in our case its the 3rd one.
2. Hold Shift.
3. Click the 1st photo from the entire series of photos that you are going to be stacking, continue holding Shift.
4. Click the last photo that will be in the stack, let go of Shift.
5. Press Command+K… stack made… with Stack Pick moved to the front.
6. There is no step 6.

You may have clicked 3 times to make the stack but in trade off it moved the 3rd photo to the front of the stack and you can move on to other things without having to go back and find your favorite of the bunch.

Nathan • @n8smith

www.smithfineart.com

Update on Saturday, August 21, 2010 at 5:05 AM by Joseph Linaschke

Another great tip by Nathan, thanks!

In the six steps above, realize that what’s happening is the first image to be selected becomes the Stack Pick. You might think that the primary selection would be the Stack Pick, but that’s not the case. Even if you select a range of photos, and change the primary selection (the one with the heavier white box around it), and create a stack, that image would become the pick. Sadly, that’s not the case. You really do have to select the one you want to be the pick first, then add to your selection… just as outlined above.

-Joseph @ApertureExpert