I have an ongoing problem with Aperture and metadata, I wonder if its just me or a real issue.
I often add or amend IPTC metadata using Photo Mechanic. If I do this prior to importing images, Aperture reads the metadata correctly. If I add or amend metadata after import Aperture will not see that data even after using Metadata -> Update from Original.
I know Photo Mechanic is writing the data into my original NEF files (because other apps will read it). I'm sure at one time this data would automatically appear in Aperture, but not now.
All my files are referenced, Aperture has no trouble writing to them for other apps to read.
Can anyone else update their IPTC metadata using Photo Mechanic and have Aperture see it?
Thanks!
This isn’t really answering your question, but I’m curious why you don’t just edit the IPTC metadata right in Aperture. It has excellent tools for doing so. You can create presets of as many variations as you like that you can apply during either import or later. And you can selectively copy-n-paste different fields from one image to multiple others. I’m sure you can do all of that in Photo Mechanic too, but I think the idea is that once images are in Aperture that you then need to really, fully manage them completely within Aperture. Modifying things outside of Aperture and then trying to get Aperture to recognize those changes is not something I think Apple intended. And even though the mechanisms are there to do it, it doesn’t mean they will continue to be there.
Photographer | https://www.walterrowe.com | https://instagram.com/walter.rowe.photo
I’ll edit metadata using Photo Mechanic http://camerabits.com because its fast and versatile with tools Aperture doesn’t have. in fact Photo Mechanic so fast and versatile at the first edit and metadata input stages that nothing come close.
I use all the time to build date-lines for captions, create the ‘Title’ field from the filename etc etc. Building a date-line (“London, England, GBR - 17 October: “) involves a single entry in the ‘City’, ‘State’ and ‘Country Code’ fields which PM uses to build into the caption on the fly using “{city}, {state}, {countrycode} - {iptcday0} {iptcmonthname}: “. In Aperture I’d have to type all those details manually into the caption, that’s slower and open to error.