Do it yourself: Photo albums in Aperture

The Aperture professional photo app provides a wide range of image display capabilities. In addition to the usual listing, and several types of web export, you can also compose a photo album directly in Aperture, and then send it for printing to the Apple service (in our country, however, this service does not work, but you can print the album yourself on your printer). The layout of photo albums in Aperture is much more flexible than the similar opportunity in iPhoto, albums made in Aperture have a more complex design, and can also be of arbitrary size. In this article we will look at tricks and tricks you need to know to create your own unique photo album in Aperture.


Aperture’s album templates are based on HTML and CSS, but we don’t need the HTML and CSS skills, since the “native” album template editing tools are quite functional and we can do all the work directly in Aperture.

Layout of the album - basic information

To create a photo album in Aperture, first select the project that contains the desired pictures. Select the images that will be used in the photo album and then select the File> New> Book command, or simply click the “New” button on the Aperture toolbar and select “Book”. A dialog box will appear in which the program will ask you to select a template (theme) for the future photo album and size. Choosing a theme, you choose general elements of the album's design, such as background color, font typeface, and layout (the arrangement of the elements of the album pages, frames for photos, etc.). You can always change the topic later, so choosing a topic is not a critical decision.

After you have selected a theme, Aperture will create a new album in your project and display it in the viewer window for further work with it.



The tools for working on the design of the album are very simple and everything that is called is “in sight”. Use the navigation panel on the left to select the page you want to view and edit. It will be displayed in the edit panel on the right. Using the buttons under the editing panel, you can choose which type of cover you need - hard or soft, and the convenient look you prefer to work with - a two-page spread or one page.

Using the + and - buttons under the navigation bar, you can add or delete pages, while the Set Master Page button allows you to select a new layout for the selected page.


The Set Master Page button allows you to select a new layout for the selected page.

Working on the page design is very simple. Text blocks can be edited simply by double-clicking on them and writing new text. A gray rectangle with a cross + in the middle is the place for the image. You can drag the image from the browser panel to such a "place under the picture" to add it to the album.

Thus, using the simple tools listed above, you work on the pages of your photo album, add pictures and make some labels. If the layout of a page is not suitable for you, select the new layout by clicking the Set Master Page button. Each topic contains a large set of options for "master pages". If you did not find the master page with the markup that suits you, try choosing a different theme by clicking the Theme button in the upper left corner of the album editing panel.

Modifying a template with built-in tools

Apple has built a large number of markup tools directly into the Aperture interface. First, you can re-frame your images after placing them in a photo frame by double-clicking on the image and then moving the Image Scale slider to control the size of the image. In addition to zooming in / out, you can move the image left / right / up / down inside the photo frame - in a word, you can do full-fledged crop. In addition to this, you can rotate images 90, 180, 270˚ directly in the photo frame (the command Images> Rotate Clockwise or Rotate Counterclockwise).

Please note that all these changes that you make over images when working on a photo album do not apply to the original pictures in the project. These edits only work within the photo album you are currently working on.

You can apply your personal filter to any image. Highlight the image on the album page and select the desired filter from the Set Photo Filter menu, which can be found on the toolbar.



You can also freely edit the page layout by clicking on the Edit Layout button on the toolbar. When you enable the markup editing mode, you can use other buttons on the toolbar to create new text and photo frames, control their order of overlapping, and add fields for displaying metadata.

After creating new text and photo frames, you can move them around the page and resize them, and then edit the contents.

Fields for output metadata look the same as fields for text labels. However, for the metadata field to “know” what information to display, it must be tied to some kind of photo frame. By default, Aperture will map each new metadata field to the last photo frame you created. As a result, it may turn out that the fields for metadata will not be attached to what you need and will show the metadata of another snapshot. You can fix this by highlighting both objects (hold the Cmd key and click on the photo frame and the metadata field), right-click on them and select Link Metadata Box (or Unlink Metadata Box - to break the link) from the context menu.



If you want to create a photo frame with exactly the same aspect ratio as any desired image, place the image in the photo frame, then right-click on the image and select Photo Box Aspect Ratio> Photo Aspect Ratio from the drop-down menu. Aperture will resize the photo frame to fit the posted image into it.

Aperture markup tools are very flexible. You can remove ALL objects from the default layout and start designing the page from scratch. If you created the page layout you want to use for other pages of the book, you can save it as a master page by choosing Save Page> As New Document Master from the Action menu under the navigation bar.



Finally, note that Aperture lets you drag an image directly onto the page. If you drag the image onto the white background of the page (or black if you selected a theme with a black background), the page is highlighted. When you release the mouse button, the image will become the background image of the entire page.



Any element of the page — a picture, text box, or metadata box — will be placed on top of that image. Try applying one of the Wash photo filters to the background image to make the image barely noticeable. Now you can place other pictures on top of it, and the background image will not be obvious.

Advanced template modification

Page layout tools in Aperture have some limitations. For example, you cannot rotate images at an arbitrary angle and cannot set your background fill color. And finally, there are no ways to add shadow casting, radiance, or other effects that may be useful to, for example, visually separate overlapping photos.

However, you can use the Aperture feature to place the image directly on the page (turning it into a background image), thus circumventing the above limitations.

For example, if you need to change the background color of a page, take Photoshop or another image editor and create an image with the dimensions of your landscape sheet and a resolution of 300dpi. Fill the image with the desired color, then save it in a TIFF file and import into the Aperture project where your photo album is located. Add this one-color image to the album and drag it onto the background of the page you want to color.



Using this technique, you can create your own unique page designs using your image editor - for example, you can rotate the images to the desired angle, add shadows, and so on, and then save as a TIFF file and put it on the background of the page in Aperture. If you know how to use the program Adobe Illustrator, you can create vector illustrations and then save them as rasterized TIFF for use in Aperture.

Thus, you can achieve any result you want.



If you create images with a resolution of 300dpi, place text and pictures on them, and then use them in photo albums, you will notice that they will be printed with the same quality as the text / pictures that are made in Aperture. In a word - 300dpi is the optimal resolution for preparing auxiliary graphics.

And finally, we note - since the Apple service for printing photos from iPhoto and Aperture does not work in our country, you need to save the layout of the album in PDF format, and then print it yourself or carry it in a photo lab.

This article is also published on my website: Do it yourself: Photo albums in Aperture