I’ve received several messages asking about this in the last few weeks, so that means it’s time to write it up!

You may have at some point seen a notification badge show up on your Aperture icon, like you’d see on Mail or Messages, and wonder what it’s for. The simple answer is it’s from a Shared Photo Stream. Whenever someone “likes” or comments on a photo you’ve shared with them, you’ll get a notification anywhere you’ve enabled Photo Stream. That could be any iOS device on iOS 6, or it could also be in iPhoto or Aperture.

We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

When you see the badge, if you open Photo Stream in Aperture you should see a blue dot on the Shared Photo Stream that has a notification, and if you open that, you’ll see blue dot(s) on the photos that have new likes or comments.

Click on Photo Stream to see where the notifications are

The blue “thought bubble” tells you which photo has the new notification

Finally if you click on the photo itself, and look under the Info tab, and select the Comments view, you can see any comments left or who’s “liked” the image.

The Info tab, under Comments, will show likes and comments

Notice from there you can also add your own comments. The same thing applies to any Shared Photo Streams that you’ve subscribed to; you’ll have all the same viewing, liking and commenting abilities to those collections.

Once you view the collection with a notification, the newness of the notification (i.e. the blue badge) should clear out of all of your devices—meaning if you view it on your iPhone, the notification should clear from your iPad and Aperture as well.

The case of the badge that wouldn’t go away!

However a friend came across a curious situation… he is using Shared Photo Stream on his iOS devices, but had never enabled it in Aperture—yet there was a notification badge. And since he hadn’t enabled Photo Stream in Aperture, there was no way to view, and therefore dismiss, the notification.

Ultimately what I asked him to do that worked was to enable, then disable, Photo Stream in Aperture. And that appeared to do it; as soon as he tried that, the badge went away.

Have you had a mysterious badge pop up in your Aperture even if not using Photo Stream? Sound off below and let us know if you’ve seen this, or other oddities, with notifications in Aperture.

PS—if you’re curious about the photos in the screenshots, those are part of a large gallery show I’m getting ready to hang. I will be doing a post/screencast on the process soon, which involved Aperture, Photoshop, onOne Perfect Portrait and Perfect Resize, and of course Nik’s Silver Efex Pro II (PPS— the discount still works but probably not for long). Some of those files are over 100 megapixel and over 2.5 GB in size! The biggest will be printed at 60ʺ wide. Yowzers.