Comments on: Aperture AppleScript – Make Hierarchal Keywords Real v4

By: Patricia

Patricia — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:43:59 +0000

THanks a million. It works just as you said and just as I wanted. Your tip of using/adding a “container” keyword is very helpful. Thanks again.

By: brett

brett — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:42:48 +0000

Within Aperture you can open the Keywords HUD. The Keywords HUD allows you to drag and drop your keywords onto each other to form hierarchal groups (just like it sounds like you wanted). You may want to use the + button to create ‘keyword containers’ to arrange your imported keywords.

For example, I use the ‘Animal’ keyword (which ideally shouldn’t be used by any images) to contain ‘Wildlife’ and ‘Domestic Animal’ (both of which shouldn’t be applied to any images) and inside ‘Wildlife’ I have ‘Bird’, etc until I get to the actual keyword of ‘Great Blue Heron’ several layers deep.

By: Patricia

Patricia — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:23:22 +0000

I’ve just imported all my photos from iPhoto to Aperture. I have them all keyworded in iPhoto, which is NOT a hierarchal file. Is there an easy way to modify these keywords in Aperture into a hierarchal system? It seems like I have to delete and add keywords, etc. I don’t want to lose all my keywords. I was hoping I could just drag and drop my keywords to reorganize them.

Thanks.

By: Eduardo

Eduardo — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:52:41 +0000

Nice work! Good even with 3.0.

By: brett

brett — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:42:25 +0000

This script will read the keyword hierarchy and assign all parent keywords to the image while it is in the Library. The keywords will be visible in the Aperture UI and present when images are exported.

I believe that this script does what you want.

I generally don’t recommend running the script until you have all of your keywords applied and are happy with your keyword hierarchy.

By: Philip

Philip — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:28:41 +0000

Brett,

I have nearly 14,000 images in Aperture now, and am finally getting around to adding keywords. It’ll be painful, I know, but these Smart Albums are really really neat!! I like the virtual keywords when searching, but it’s confusing to only see the lowest-level keyword in the metadata inspector. VERY CONFUSING. I’m thinking your script here is the answer I’ve been searching for. THANKS!!

Just a couple of questions:

Does your script only help things out during export, or will it add the hierarchy of keywords within Aperture itself (so I see all keywords in the metadata inspector)? Or would this be even more confusing? Thanks for the script and for pointing me in the right direction!!

-Philip

By: brett

brett — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:50:02 +0000

I’m glad you found it helpful. One of the great things about AppleScript is that it is pretty easy to dissect others’ scripts to build your own.

By: Mark Ovens

Mark Ovens — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:11:24 +0000

Brett,

Thanks for posting this. I wanted to achieve the reverse as I have imported all my photos from the Linux app Digikam which, like Aperture, has hierarchical keywords (called tags) that it exports in the ITPC keywords field as a path – e.g. People/Friends/David – which I wanted to convert into Aperture hierarchical keywords. Your script gave me the necessary information about handling Aperture keywords to enable me to write my own script.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Mark