Perform negative filtering on keywords in Aperture

Nov 06, '06 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: bagelturf

A common question is how to do negative filtering on keywords in Aperture. For example, looking for images that have the keyword mom but not dad. The problem arises because, although there are checkboxes for keywords, they only give positive matches. There is no 'is not' option for the keywords.

The answer is to use the IPTC keyword field instead of the keyword checkboxes. Click on the "+" at the top right of the filter dialog. Select IPTC, and then select Keywords from the pop-up. Now select contains to match positively, or does not contain to match negatively. Add as many IPTC keyword matches as you like with repeated visits to the "+" menu.

There are some caveats to this, relative to the way the IPTC keyword field stores its data. And there are at least two other methods for doing negative filtering that do not have some of the disadvantages of using the IPTC keyword field. You can read about negative filtering in greater detail in this post on my Aperture pages.

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