Do it yourself: Aperture photo albums

The Aperture photo professional application provides a wide range of options for displaying images. In addition to the usual printout, and several types of web exports, you can also create a photo album directly in Aperture, and then send it to the printout to the Apple service (in our country, however, this service does not work, but you can print the album yourself on your printer). Layout of photo albums in Aperture is much more flexible than a similar feature 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 the tricks and tricks that you need to know to create your own unique photo album in Aperture.


Album templates in Aperture are based on HTML and CSS, but we don’t need HTML and CSS skills because the native tools for editing album templates are quite functional and we can do all the work directly in Aperture.

Layout Album - Basic Information

To create a photo album in Aperture, first select a project that contains the desired images. Select the images to be used in the photo album and then select File> New> Book, or simply click the New button on the Aperture toolbar and select Book. A dialog box appears in which the program will ask you to choose a template (theme) for the future photo album and size. By choosing a theme you choose common album design elements, such as a background color, a font typeface, and a layout (what is the position of the album pages, photo frames, etc.). You can always change the topic later, so choosing a topic is not a critical decision.
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After you have chosen a theme, Aperture will create a new album in your project, and display it in the browser window for further work with it.



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

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

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

Template modification with built-in tools

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

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

You can apply your personal filter to any image. Select 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 the Edit Layout button on the toolbar. When you have enabled 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 to display metadata.

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

The fields for displaying metadata look the same as fields for text labels. However, in order for the metadata field to “know” what information to show, it must be tied to a 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 tied to what is needed and will show the metadata of another image. You can fix this by highlighting both objects (hold down the Cmd key and click on the photo frame and the metadata field), right-click on them, and select the Link Metadata Box from the context menu (or Unlink Metadata Box - to break the link).



If you want to create a photo frame with exactly the same aspect ratio as any desired image, place the picture 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 change the size of the photo frame to fit the placed picture completely into it.

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



Finally, notice that Aperture allows you to drag an image directly to the page. If you drag an image onto the white background of the page (or to black if you choose a theme with a black background) the page will be highlighted. When you release the mouse button, the image will become the background image of the entire page.



Any page element — a picture, text field, or metadata field — will be placed on top of that image. Try applying one of the Photo Wash filters to the background image to make the image subtle. Now you can put other images on top of it, and the background image will not be clearly visible.

Advanced Template Modification

Tools for working with the layout of pages in Aperture have some limitations. For example, you cannot rotate images at an arbitrary angle and cannot set your own background fill color. Finally, there are no ways to add shadow casting, glow, or other effects that may be useful to, for example, visually separate overlapping photos.

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

For example, if you need to change the background color of the page, take Photoshop or another image editor and create an image with the size of your landscape sheet and a resolution of 300dpi. Fill the image with the desired color, then save it to a TIFF file and import it into the Aperture project where your photo album is located. Add this single-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 with your image editor — for example, you can rotate images to a desired angle, add shadows, and so on, and then save as a TIFF file and put it on the page background in Aperture. If you know how to use 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 in our country does not work, you need to save the created album in PDF format, and then print it yourself or carry it into a photo lab.

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